Currently designing at Ona

I build for the reality beyond the demo. I design the systems that turn complex technology into human agency.

I'm Carl Thomas, a design leader with a decade building tools for developers and AI agents. Currently leading design at Ona. Before that: Neon, Kong, Postman, Google, Microsoft.

Case StudiesView all

Ona·AI & AgentsAgentic orchestrationInfrastructure0-1

Ona Automations

Trigger-based workflows that blend AI reasoning with deterministic execution, unlocking parallel changes across 1,000 repositories from a single engineer.

Neon·DXGrowth

Instant Postgres Playground

Zero-config database environments that spin up in milliseconds. No signup required.

Neon·Infrastructure

Console Navigation

Restructuring the mental model for a multi-tenant cloud console.

Neon·Growth

Upgrade Flow Redesign

Reducing friction in the path from free to paid without the hard sell.

Kong·InfrastructureDX

Serverless Gateways

Turning complex infrastructure setup into a zero-to-one experience developers could complete in minutes.

Now

Right now I'm thinking about trust: specifically, how much of it AI tools have actually earned versus assumed. Watching how background agents and parallel workflows are reshaping what engineering work even needs to be real-time anymore.