# Trace Orozco Trace Orozco is a product designer building design<>code workflows with AI and design systems. She works product end to end: product discovery, product design, brand design, and design systems. She is currently at Noterro, building a design-to-code workflow loop with a design system that's readable by AI on Figma and from the codebase. Before that, she led design operations at Helcim and designed products at Tiller. Portfolio: https://traceorozco.com/ CV: https://traceorozco.com/trace-orozco-cv.pdf Email: hello@traceorozco.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceorozco/ X: https://x.com/traceorozco Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/traceorozco/ ## Strengths - Design systems from zero to one, and making existing ones buildable - Design-to-code workflows: systems that both engineers and AI agents can build from reliably - AI-assisted design operations: Claude skills, agent workstreams, linted handoffs - Product discovery and customer research that turns into a roadmap a team keeps using - Design operations: cross-team operational architecture, intake systems, workspace structure, handoff standards - Brand and illustration systems that carry across product, web, and marketing - Clear communication with engineering, product, and leadership ## Selected work ### Noterro Design System Case study: https://traceorozco.com/work/noterro-design-system Noterro makes practice management software for clinics. When Trace joined in May 2026, its design system was a component library that neither engineers nor AI agents could reliably build from. She learned the system from the code, set the standards for tokens and components, and wrote them where both people and agents read them. When the team deployed AI agents, they built from the system at 90% fidelity. The other 10% became new components she built and added to the system. - 100+ components and tokens built and handed off 33 days ahead of target - Handoff velocity went from 8 to 37 per 2-week sprint, 4x the throughput, after gaining access to the codebase and chaining Claude skills - 90% fidelity in AI-led implementation ### Helcim Design System & Ops Case study: https://traceorozco.com/work/helcim Helcim, a fintech company, grew from about 30 to more than 120 people in under a year, and brand and product stopped keeping pace with each other. Asked to organize the design team's artifacts, Trace's audit revealed the need for the Helcim Design System framework: one ecosystem serving product, internal, and marketing, powered by an intake system she built. The result was a more consistent user experience from first touchpoint all the way to the product. - One design architecture serving three audiences: product, internal, and marketing - 80% reduction in ad-hoc design requests - The intake system was later adopted and replicated by other departments ### Jotson Utility Toolkit Case study: https://traceorozco.com/work/jotson Jotson is an energy management app. When leadership was still working out who they were building for, Trace built a customer discovery roadmap, the plan for how the research would run, in a format the team already used every day. The research produced opportunity trees mapping user outcomes, the behaviors behind them, and where the product could step in. The CEO asked for the trees to be printed so he and the team could mark them up, and months later the COO confided that he still refers to them when problem solving with the product roadmap. The work led to the Utility Contract Comparison Toolkit, which helped the team reach its first 1,000 users. - Surpassed 1,000 subscribers by late 2024, exceeding the product's goal for that year - 8 usability improvements across onboarding, HQ, analytics, resources and the toolkit, including charts that stay readable at large text sizes and carbon footprint benchmarks - The contract comparison feature became a key growth driver ### Jotson Design System Case study: https://traceorozco.com/work/jotson-design-system Trace helped Jotson get ready to bring design in-house. She organized their Figma workspace with clear lanes for cross-channel collaboration, and together with another designer built their first design system, redrew their icon library, and established their illustration system. - A design system built from zero, with a new illustration system - 2x faster handoffs - 3+ organized workspaces for product, web, and marketing teams ### Ultimarii AI Case study: https://traceorozco.com/work/ultimarii Ultimarii set out to build an AI-powered research platform for regulatory professionals, who spend hundreds of hours reviewing legal and compliance-heavy documents. Trace led product discovery and UX to define how people work with an LLM in a high-stakes regulatory setting where every insight has to be traceable: provenance and precedence surfaced in every answer, summaries with citations users can follow, and full edit control over every output. - 15 enterprise clients in the first year, including major energy and utility companies - $2M in funding raised on the back of the MVP - Took the platform from concept to an enterprise-ready MVP ## Side projects - Pawmodoro (https://traceorozco.com/pawmodoro): a pomodoro timer made for play time, a tiny macOS app in the menu bar - Claude double sidebar mod (https://github.com/traceorozco/claude-double-sidebar-mod): a rail to organize chat sections, and a second sidebar for sub filtering session chats for the Claude desktop - 8-bit Ho-ho-holiday Card (https://pixel-holiday-card.vercel.app): make and send a personalized 8-bit holiday card - Full Stop (https://fullstop.figma.site/): an early exploration of turn-based human and AI chat - Birds flying high (https://traceorozco.com/birdsflyinghigh): a murmuration of starlings to lead across the sky - Fortune Flowers (https://traceorozco.com/luckyfield): a pointillist meadow where every visitor plants a flower ## What people say - "Working with Trace has been a delightful experience that made me grow as a leader." Rodolfo Ferro Casagrande, Head of Design, Helcim - "Trace has a fantastic visual sensibility and brought real polish to our product." Sheldon Manabat, Senior Software Developer, Jotson - "Trace brilliantly handled our customer discovery work and building our first design system at the same time." Michelle Walstra, Senior Product Designer, Jotson - "Trace played a pivotal role in solving a major pain point within a client's design system." Josh Lewis, Full Stack Project Manager, Tiller - "Trace is one of the best people I know who can take a problem and get it unstuck." Steven Peters, Senior Copywriter, Tiller - "Trace was an amazing leader who genuinely cared about the team. I learned so much from her about what it means to lead." Gina Gong, Product Designer, Helcim ## Contact Trace is open to talking about AI and design. Email hello@traceorozco.com or reach out on LinkedIn.