Thomas Schluchter

Design and Research leader – AI-forward, EI-first

Berlin, Berlin, Germany

About

Great products are powered by great people doing their best work. As a leader in Product Design and User Research, I focus on building teams that have the skills, systems and standards that help them excel. As a practitioner, I bring an analytical mind, technical fluency and strong grounding in User Experience principles.

Experience

  • Interim Head of Product Design at Self-employed
    Apr 2026 - Present · 4 mos

  • Zalando (10 yrs 9 mos)
    • Head of Product Design
      Jan 2024 - Jun 2026 · 2 yrs 6 mos

    • Head of Product Design
      Jan 2024 - Jan 2026 · 2 yrs 1 mo

    • Head of Product Design
      Dec 2021 - Jan 2024 · 2 yrs 2 mos

      Managed the designers on the B2E team responsible for internal systems that drive core business processes. Increased efficiency (e.g. a 60% reduction in banner production time) and effectiveness (e.g. a 9pp lift in profitability through better pricing decisions) through rigorous understanding of user problems and setting high quality standards for execution.

  • USEEDS° GmbH (7 mos)
    • Senior UX Designer
      May 2015 - Oct 2015 · 6 mos

      Leading client projects in the financial sector with a focus on strategic innovation.

    • Senior User Experience Designer
      Apr 2015 - Apr 2015 · 1 mo

      Consulted on the UX Strategy for a French financial institution wanting to increase their footprint in the German market.

  • salesforce.com (3 yrs 7 mos)
    • Lead Product Designer
      Sep 2014 - Feb 2015 · 6 mos

      Leading the Sales Productivity effort for the company's flagship mobile product, Salesforce1. Working with a small team of designers and researchers to help sales people be more efficient and effective in their work. This includes reinventing the Salesforce tasks and notes experiences as well as activity logging, calendaring, email integration and more.

    • Sr. User Interface Designer
      Jun 2012 - Sep 2014 · 2 yrs 4 mos

      - Interaction design and strategy across a variety of features - End-to-end product design of a tablet app for sales meetings, collaborating with an external development firm to execute and pilot the product. - Worked closely with product managers, developers and prototypers on the next-generation Salesforce UI for desktop - Facilitated numerous stakeholder workshops to align on product strategy, generate ideas and collect design feedback

    • User Interface Designer
      Aug 2011 - Jun 2012 · 11 mos

      - UX design for the Salesforce integration of an acquired business contact crowdsourcing platform - Worked with two Scrum teams to deliver delightfully simple solutions to complex problems like data cleansing, industry-based contact search and company hierarchy trees

  • Freelance UX Designer at Youth Radio
    Dec 2010 - Apr 2011 · 5 mos

    Developed mobile web design concepts for Oakland Youth Radio, including wireframes and mockups.