Karen Ma

Director, Head of UX @ SingleStore

Selected Highlights

Culture Building @ SingleStore (2025)

I introduced new working models, such as paired designing, moonshot workshops, and team sprints to encourage team bonding across a global team, reduce information silo-ing and keep things fresh. I defined core design principles and introduced recurring UX audits to create a consistent design culture and uplift our design quality.

Strategic Leadership @ SingleStore (2025)

I revised the planning process and standardized a UI rollout strategy to provide stability for designers and more transparency across the engineering and product roadmaps. I set up cross-functional relationships to embed design across the product and sales lifecycle and evangelize the design function.

Product-led Growth @ SingleStore (2025)

I worked with our growth PM and VP of Product, to provide a new self-service product-led growth motion. I led a team of designers to revise the end-to-end flow, including documentation site revisions, the sign up and onboarding experience, and touchpoints for converting customers to upgrade their usage.

Navigation Refresh (2024)

After observing the user interface was getting overcrowded, I initiated a project to revise the navigation on the platform. I created a new object hierarchy to better align to our customers' mental models and scale with our growing feature set.

Developer Experience @ SingleStore (2024)

I led the design for the Developer Experience, a 0->1 initiative to create a platform that allowed users to develop, deploy and manage everything from SQL scripts to dashboards to LLMs.

Role-based Access Controls (2023)

I set up the foundation for Role-based Access Control, allowing us to provide stronger security for customer data. Access controls affect every part of the platform, limiting what actions users have permission to perform.

Automations Rule Builder (2022)

Automations is a rule builder that allows users to automate parts of their work. I joined as the squad’s first product designer and defined our product vision – to make Automations easier to use and more trustworthy.

Risk Quantification (2022)

Risk Quantification is a product differentiator to shift users from using LogicGate as a repository of audits to include us as defining their risk strategy. I led the beta run of the new product.

Design System Contributions (2021)

I contributed to several internal design systems by auditing existing components for consistency, as well as creating and documenting new components. I created guidelines for content strategy, such as error messages, help text and empty states.

Self-service Retirement Wizard (2020)

Following a pivot in product strategy from financial advisors to the everyday user, I worked to reframe our existing product for a more novice user base, including a simplified onboarding flow and educational dashboard experience.

I started my career in product design because of my interest in Cognitive Science; I loved the interaction between the behavioral research and analytics and the technical applications of the field. In my career, I’ve worked at multiple growth-stage startups, as an early design member, setting the stage for the design culture. My specialty has been bringing a pragmatic execution to complex problem spaces, including databases, risk management, and financial investment.

Work keeps me engaged when I have flexibility to zoom in and out, working on product and process. I enjoy defining high-level product vision and strategy as well as taking a magnifying glass to the finer details of what we’ve shipped. I've found it is important to me to define processes and explore ways to improve team workflow where I can. I believe product design needs to work well with all departments and I love to be in an environment where I can embed cross functionally.

Outside of work, I also mentor on Merit. I irregularly keep up with the industry via podcasts ( Twenty Thousand Hertz ) and other literature ( Filterworld ). With so much of our work being intangible, I like to dabble in a variety of physical crafts, such as soldering keebs, wheel-throwing ceramics, metalsmithing and textile arts.