Dan Rosenthal

I build design systems, lead interface teams, and make new technology feel obvious to the people using it.

Based in Cincinnati. Fifteen years building for the web, most of them on design systems, accessibility, and UI infrastructure.

Index

Equal parts systems thinker, interface obsessive, and recovering copywriter.

I’m an engineering manager on Shopify’s Online Store team. Before I wrote code, I wrote copy and checked facts for magazines, and it still shapes how I build interfaces: say it clearly, then get out of the way.

Dad. Midwesterner. INTJ, Enneagram 8.

Where I do my best work.

Design systems

Polaris, Checkout UI, HubSpot’s next-generation system: tokens, components, and multi-brand foundations teams can build on.

Accessibility

Accessible by default, not by audit: labeling wired in automatically, keyboard navigation designed in from the first commit.

UI infrastructure

Performance, stability, resiliency, and observability across the front end and the systems behind it.

AI in commerce

Putting LLMs to work where they actually help: in the product for buyers, and in the toolchain for the engineers building it.

From ambiguity to a system people can use.

Shopify / 2025–now

Rebuilding the storefront for AI

Engineering manager for Online Store buyer experiences, leading a team from interns to staff+. Building foundational design systems for commerce and making storefronts faster, steadier, and easier to observe.

HubSpot / 2022–2025

A design system, rebuilt

Technical lead on HubSpot’s next-generation design system: multi-brand, accessibility-first, composable. Architected the DataGrid behind index pages in 2,000+ HubSpot apps.

Shopify / 2016–2022

From Polaris to Checkout

Top-five contributor to Polaris React and Rails, then grew the Checkout Design System team from 3 to 9 engineers and launched the Branding API for customizing checkout.

Operating principles

Clarity is a feature.
Systems should create freedom.
The details are the product.

Bring me the messy problem.

A talk, an advisory gig, or a hard design systems question. Tell me what you’re working on.

Or find me on LinkedIn