About
Austin Regnery
What others say
"You are a leader, you are brilliant, and working with you was so much fun. You get stuff done, you are excellent at your craft, and you help everyone else in the room execute at a higher level."
Senior Product Management Executive, GitLab
The short version
I am a Staff Product Designer at GitLab. I currently work on special projects reporting directly to the Sr Director of Design, focused on strategic initiatives with platform-wide impact.
Before that I spent several years on the Foundations team working on the experiences every GitLab user touches: navigation, AI integration, design system quality, and the platform-level decisions that affect every team building on top of them.
My background is not a straight line into design. I bootstrapped my way in, spent years growing the design community and building design systems from scratch, and eventually landed at the intersection of design and engineering where I have stayed ever since. My happiest days are the ones where I ship something: a design, a merge request, or both.
What I do
Most of my work falls into one of three modes.
Setting direction. At the platform scale I tend to work at, the most important thing a designer can do is create enough clarity that many teams can move in parallel without constant coordination. That means clear principles, a coherent architecture, and a design language that answers the questions nobody thought to ask yet.
Closing gaps. The Foundations role means owning quality across the product, not just within a feature boundary. When a designer departs, when an interaction accumulates inconsistencies across milestones, when a community contribution needs a UX eye before it merges, I step in. Not because it is assigned but because it needs doing.
Shipping code. In FY26 I merged 64 code changes across GitLab's repositories. I contribute to the core product, to duo-ui, and I am a maintainer of the Pajamas design system. AI has made the design-to-code gap smaller than it has ever been and I intend to keep pushing on that.
Pajamas
I am one of the maintainers of Pajamas, GitLab's official design system at design.gitlab.com. That means merge and approve rights on the component library and guidelines that every GitLab team builds on. A contributor submits work. A maintainer decides what gets in.
It is one of the things I am most proud of. Every team at GitLab that ships UI is building on a foundation I help maintain.
How I work
I joined GitLab on June 8, 2020. Five years of working fully remote and async has shaped how I think about communication and collaboration in ways I did not expect.
I keep my calendar as clear as possible. If there is a gap, take it. I will tell you quickly if it does not work.
I believe in asking for specific feedback. Vague feedback is cheap and not very useful. When I ask for your input I will tell you exactly what I need from you, and I prefer to receive it in person so we can discuss.
I try to show early and often with low-fidelity work. My instinct is toward polish and I have to fight it. Call me out if I am only sharing finished things.
I think the designer is as responsible for the product as product management and engineering. I will groom the backlog, review the CSS, and go wherever the work needs me.
Outside of work
I live in Charleston, South Carolina with my wife Kelly, our dog Sully, and our sons Parker and Sawyer. I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta.
I care about making things. I wrote about how I got into design on Medium if you want the longer version of the career story.
Get in touch
I am always open to a conversation. The best way to reach me is by email.