Director, AI Experience Design Lead
What I'd Bring
Dear Pfizer Hiring Team,
Owning how AI looks, sounds, and behaves for 80,000 colleagues sits exactly where my career has been building toward: design systems, agentic AI, and hands-on leadership in regulated, high-stakes environments.
On design systems as the foundation for AI
On the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program team, I led the architecture of a token foundation in Figma, Style Dictionary, and JSON, enabling React and Angular teams to extend one system without forced migration or fragmentation.
As UX Design Lead on the CMS Design System team, I helped consolidate three separate design systems, Medicare, Healthcare.gov, and CMS.gov, into one themeable design system without sacrificing brand traits across the individual product lines. I'm now extending that discipline through Brad Frost's AI and design systems program into how systems govern AI.
On agentic and conversational AI
On a VA AI pilot, I designed the frontend interface connecting a clinical LLM workflow to live patient data inside VA's legacy EHR system, setting explicit boundaries for where AI ends and practitioner judgment takes over. The client called it "setting the bar at VA for AI."
Before Siri existed, I designed conversational UI for some of the first enterprise chatbots, Ask Jenn, Ask Julie, and Sgt. Star. I've spent the last six months hands-on with AI coding tools and agent workflows, work I'd bring directly into shipping production design as code.
On building and leading teams
I've built and managed teams from the ground up twice: at Eastern Washington University, and now at Coforma, directing a 12-person practice and coaching three direct reports into senior and lead roles. I've written the job descriptions and hiring criteria at both Coforma and Ad Hoc, so I know what it takes to set a hiring bar and grow a team around it, not just manage one that already exists.
On regulated, high-stakes craft
WCAG accessibility has been embedded in my process since the City of Spokane and EWU, and it stayed non-negotiable through federal and clinical AI work at VA, IRS, and CMS, environments where regulatory compliance isn't a checkbox; it's the operating baseline. I know what it means to ship trustworthy experiences where the cost of getting it wrong is real, and where compliance itself has to be designed for, not audited after the fact.
I'd welcome the chance to bring that combination, systems, agentic AI, and team-building, to Pfizer.
Warmly,
Brent Schneider
P.S. If you're curious to see my AI and design thinking in practice, visit my AI lab, where I write about the same agentic and design questions this role is built around. Happy to walk through it live with you.
Owning how AI looks, sounds, and behaves for 80,000 colleagues sits exactly where my career has been building toward: design systems, agentic AI, and hands-on leadership in regulated, high-stakes environments.
On design systems as the foundation for AI
On the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program team, I led the architecture of a token foundation in Figma, Style Dictionary, and JSON, enabling React and Angular teams to extend one system without forced migration or fragmentation.
As UX Design Lead on the CMS Design System team, I helped consolidate three separate design systems, Medicare, Healthcare.gov, and CMS.gov, into one themeable design system without sacrificing brand traits across the individual product lines. I'm now extending that discipline through Brad Frost's AI and design systems program into how systems govern AI.
On agentic and conversational AI
On a VA AI pilot, I designed the frontend interface connecting a clinical LLM workflow to live patient data inside VA's legacy EHR system, setting explicit boundaries for where AI ends and practitioner judgment takes over. The client called it "setting the bar at VA for AI."
Before Siri existed, I designed conversational UI for some of the first enterprise chatbots, Ask Jenn, Ask Julie, and Sgt. Star. I've spent the last six months hands-on with AI coding tools and agent workflows, work I'd bring directly into shipping production design as code.
On building and leading teams
I've built and managed teams from the ground up twice: at Eastern Washington University, and now at Coforma, directing a 12-person practice and coaching three direct reports into senior and lead roles. I've written the job descriptions and hiring criteria at both Coforma and Ad Hoc, so I know what it takes to set a hiring bar and grow a team around it, not just manage one that already exists.
On regulated, high-stakes craft
WCAG accessibility has been embedded in my process since the City of Spokane and EWU, and it stayed non-negotiable through federal and clinical AI work at VA, IRS, and CMS, environments where regulatory compliance isn't a checkbox; it's the operating baseline. I know what it means to ship trustworthy experiences where the cost of getting it wrong is real, and where compliance itself has to be designed for, not audited after the fact.
I'd welcome the chance to bring that combination, systems, agentic AI, and team-building, to Pfizer.
Warmly,
Brent Schneider
P.S. If you're curious to see my AI and design thinking in practice, visit my AI lab, where I write about the same agentic and design questions this role is built around. Happy to walk through it live with you.
