John Konnakkottu
Summary
Product Designer and Senior Engineer with 9+ year background spanning aviation, manufacturing, and digital product design. After starting my career in gas turbine technology at Rolls-Royce and advancing to the level of Skywise/ Palantir Foundry SME at Hawaiian Airlines, I founded Bullbrook Studio to pursue my passion in design. I have since worked with startups in the fintech, energy, and health industries designing intuitive web and ios applications - collaborating closely with their engineering, product, and business teams to deliver under tight deadlines.
Work Experience
Designer
Bullbrook Studio
2023 - Present
Founded and operated an independent design studio specializing in product design for start-ups and nonprofits
Led design for multiple end-to-end digital products, from initial discovery to high-fidelity mockups and developer handoff, across fintech, energy, health, and non-profit sections
Owned client relationships from pitch through delivery; scoping work, negotiating deliverables, and aligning design strategy with business goals
Managed studio operations, including contracting, budgeting, and resource planning across multiple simultaneous client projects
Created internal automations, tooling and templates (e.g., design system starters, Figma libraries) to speed up delivery by 50% and ensure consistency in service
Delivered phased product rollouts, enabling iterative validation and stakeholder buy-in across long-term engagements
Designed and maintained scalable design systems, ensuring visual and interaction consistency across complex enterprise platforms
Collaborated with cross-functional teams, including developers, project managers, and founders to deliver on-time, development-ready solutions
Facilitated design workshops and working sessions with clients to uncover requirements, align on vision, and gather feedback
Translated ambiguous business needs into clear product requirements, user flows, and visual guidelines
Built complex information architecture and navigation models for products serving multiple user roles and workflows
Specialized in Figma and Framer to communicate interaction patterns and layout behavior
Senior Engineer
Hawaiian Airlines
2023 - Present
Served as Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Skywise/ Palantir Foundry, leading adoption and training across Tech Ops and championing a unified data governance strategy:
Redesigned and refactored Operations and Reliability data repository, consolidating several dozen legacy python pipelines into a modern, maintainable structure that improved scalability and readability
Designed and deployed multiple applications, including:
Maintenance Operation Control (MOC) Delay and Cancellation Tracker - capturing maintenance-related operational interruptions and enabling daily operational insights
Operational Highlights Report - capturing operational interruption related lessons learned from stations across the Hawaiian island, North America, Asia, and Australasia
Operational Insights Dashboard - monitoring dispatch reliability at a fleet and aircraft level over the past 12-months, main impactors for the previous month’s dispatch reliability, and station performance
Fleet Reliability Reports - reengineered two monthly reports with 120+ stakeholder distribution (including the FAA, Airbus, Boeing, Honeywell, Lufthansa, and Amazon Air) reducing processing from 6 days to 5 minutes through only 5,000 lines of Visual Basic
Onboarded and mentored two University of Hawaii interns for eight weeks, resulting in a:
Repetitive Defects Tracker - leveraging a Machine Learning model and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically recode log page ATA codes and identify ETOPS significant systems related repetitive defects on an aircraft in a predefined period
3- and 6-month Reliability Index, scoring ATA codes using delays, cancellations, abnormal interruptions, out-of-service minutes, cost, and pilot reports across each fleet to identify the top-20 drivers on the fleet dispatch reliability
Conducted monthly Skywise training sessions to boost data literacy and empower analysts, engineers, and managers with advanced self-service analytics
Rivian
Transport
JoonaPay
Finance
Helios Nexus
Sales
Starbucks
Retail
© 2023–2025 John Konnakkottu. All rights reserved.
Rivian® and Starbucks® are registered trademarks of their respective owners. These logos appear here strictly as part of concept designs and do not imply affiliation, endorsement, or sponsorship.