About

Fifteen years turning hard problems into products people trust.

I'm Jay Trainer — a design executive and former Head of Design / Senior Director who builds high-performing teams, raises product craft, and makes ambiguous, workflow-heavy domains feel obvious.

Jay Trainer, Design Leader

My work sits where complex domains meet the people who have to use them every day.

For 15+ years I've led UX, product design, and research for complex digital products at Tebra, Kaiser Permanente, Life360, and Glassdoor — and advised clients including IDEO, AT&T, and Sony. I build and develop teams, raise the bar on craft, and translate user insight into product strategy, design systems, and measurable business outcomes.

Lately my focus is AI-native healthcare workflows and AI-enabled design operations: agentic clinical experiences, human-in-the-loop review, AI-generated documentation, dynamic command-center UX, and internal learning tools that help designers use AI with judgment, safety, and craft.

Experience

Where I've led

Tebra
2021 — Present · Remote

Director of Product Design — Patient Experience & Care Delivery

Lead product design for Tebra's patient experience platform and AI-native provider workflow initiatives, partnering with Product, Engineering, and GTM.

  • Directed UX strategy for an AI-native mental-health provider workflow: "prepare for next patient," command-center experiences, AI-surfaced clinical context, note review, and extraction.
  • Defined trustworthy-AI interaction patterns — deterministic data ownership, provenance markers, and review before record commitment.
  • Led an AI-powered clinical documentation system with AI-generated SOAP notes, reducing provider burden and supporting throughput.
  • Built a live flow and design-system review environment for cross-functional critique of end-to-end provider workflows.
Kaiser Permanente
2018 — 2021 · Remote

Principal Product Design Lead — Receive Care & Navigate to Care

UX design and research leadership across Kaiser Permanente's digital health ecosystem for millions of patients and providers.

  • Orchestrated product roadmaps with C-suite executives, driving innovation in telemedicine and digital health.
  • Architected a design system spanning 100+ digital touchpoints.
  • Built and led a globally distributed design team rooted in critique and customer-centered development.
Life360
2016 — 2018 · SF Bay Area

Head of Design

Set UX vision and led design execution for the core family-safety and location-sharing product.

  • Spearheaded a core redesign that doubled engagement and improved retention by 38%.
  • Aligned design with strategy, contributing to a 22% increase in premium conversions.
  • Advanced a design-system approach that cut time-to-market for new features by 15%.
Glassdoor
2012 — 2016 · Sausalito, CA

Senior Director — UX, Product Design & User Research

Built the design organization and practices that supported product scale during a high-growth period.

  • Built and led a 20+ person UX, product design, and research team.
  • Executed a UX strategy that contributed to Glassdoor's growth and eventual $1.2B acquisition.
  • Spearheaded Glassdoor's first comprehensive design system and pioneered patented UX solutions.
Jay Trainer Design
2010 — 2012 · Remote

Independent Consultant — Product Design & UX Strategy

Advised clients including IDEO, AT&T, and Sony on product design strategy, UX direction, and stakeholder alignment.

  • Developed strategic design plans aligned to client business objectives.
  • Established design standards that improved consistency, quality, and delivery.
How I work

Principles

01

Evidence over enthusiasm

Product direction stays grounded in workflow evidence and research synthesis — not abstract AI hype.

02

Humans stay accountable

AI proposes and recommends; experts review and approve; deterministic systems own the facts.

03

Teams make the work

Craft scales through people — critique culture, design systems, and operating models that endure.

Core strengths
Executive UX Leadership AI-Native Product Strategy Design Org Development Human-in-the-Loop Workflows Agentic UX Enterprise SaaS Healthcare Technology Product Strategy UX Research JTBD & Discovery Research Synthesis Design Systems Information Architecture Interaction Design C-Suite Partnership DesignOps AI Design Enablement
Education
West Virginia University
Graphic Design
1991 — 1995