Justin KirkeyContact
Justin Kirkey

Hi, I’m
Justin.

I’m a product design leader based in Toronto — 15+ years across healthcare and other high-stakes, regulated products, and a hands-on builder who ships with agentic AI. Open to Lead, Staff, and Director roles, and AI-first teams.

I design digital products for healthcare, high-stakes, and AI-first teams — then build them with agentic AI.

At work

Design leadership with my hands on the tools — directing agentic AI like a team, and owning the judgment myself.

I came up through engineering, fell for the craft, and never stopped building. I ask a lot of questions to get at the real problem, then move fast in working code — so the thing we’re deciding on is the thing we’ll ship.

  • Two threads, human in the loop

    A strategy thread for the thinking; an implementation thread — Claude Code — for the build. I decide, the AI executes, I evaluate.

  • Model-selection discipline

    Lighter models for resolved, execution-heavy work; heavier reasoning models for judgment under ambiguity and visual A/Bs.

  • The prototype is the handoff

    Design intent lives in working, production-grade code — a source of truth for engineering, not throwaway mockups.

Experience
  • 2024 — Present

    Future Fertility

    Product Design Lead

    Leading product design & UX research for an AI-powered fertility platform. Redesigned the flagship oocyte-evaluation reports (VIOLET™ & MAGENTA™) into five languages for a global clinical audience.

  • 2020 — 2023

    ExperiencePoint

    Director, Product → Product Design Lead

    Directed strategy for a 10+ product portfolio serving 25,000+ users a year. Led the 0→1 build of Impact, a virtual design sprint now used across 8 countries; clients included half the Fortune 100.

  • 2019

    Fjord · Accenture

    Service & Interaction Design Lead

    Led a design team for TD Bank's international money-transfer product (millions of users) and co-led the Metrolinx / PRESTO service design now used by 50M+ monthly transit riders across Ontario.

  • 2017 — 2018

    Synaptive Medical

    Manager, Product Design → UX Lead

    Led the software (UX) and hardware (ID) design team for a neurosurgical suite. Redesigned the UI for Modus V, a $1M+ surgical robotic microscope, plus a surgeon voice-control UI — under FDA submission protocol.

  • 2013 — 2017

    Healthcare Human Factors · UHN

    Associate Director, Experience Design

    Helped lead the largest healthcare-dedicated human-factors & UX team internationally (23 designers and specialists) across 20+ medical-device and digital-health projects for public and private clients.

  • 2011 — 2013

    Publicis Sapient

    Information Architect, Experience Design

    UX for large-scale cross-channel platforms — Jeep Badge of Honor (100k+ downloads), Chrysler International's 60+ market sites, plus work for Intel and Unilever.

Education
  • University of Toronto

    BASc, Industrial Engineering · P.Eng.

  • Product School

    Product Management Certificate

Selected clients & employers
  • Future Fertility
  • Synaptive Medical
  • Metrolinx
  • ExperiencePoint
  • Accenture
  • Ford
  • Medtronic
  • TD
  • Movember
  • UHN
  • Jeep
  • Publicis Sapient
Recognition
  • ADPList Mentor
  • Service Design Network — speaker
  • Certified — AI in the UX Design Process
Off the clock

Vinyl on the turntable, two opinionated cats, and an unreasonable love of crunchy autumn leaves.

  • Justin speaking at a design talk
  • Justin sketching at the whiteboard
  • Candid
  • Candid