# Luca Orio, Designer

[Homepage](http://lucaorio.com/)

[Contact me](mailto:luca.orio@me.com)

![Luca Orio, home](http://lucaorio.com/assets/logo-light.svg)

![Luca Orio, home](http://lucaorio.com/assets/logo.svg)

## US-based Italian Designer, currently Principal at Netflix.

23+ years of precision, discipline, commitment, systems thinking, and cross-functional skills.

## Skills

### Whatever the work requires.

I stay adaptable rather than committing to a particular process or practice. The problem, the people involved, and the circumstances determine how I approach the work.

#### Strategy

Data-informed prioritization, cross-functional requirements gathering, dependency-driven roadmapping, governance modeling, system architecture definition, scalability assessments, and risk mitigation planning.

#### AI

Context engineering, system prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent orchestration, persistent memory systems, custom harnesses, tool integration, model routing, LLM evaluation, conversational agents, local LLM deployment, and inference tuning.

#### Design

Design systems architecture, development, rollout and adoption, systems-oriented product design, UX/UI, prototyping, and rapid iteration.

#### Development

Custom tooling and plugins, infrastructure and front-end development, API integration, workflow automation, and rapid prototyping, with an emphasis on self-contained, domain-specific solutions.

## Professional timeline

23+

Years of cross-disciplinary work.

### Different environments and evolving disciplines. One shared experience.

I have more than 20 years’ experience in design, including 9 in front-end development and 8 in systems, alongside 6 years in management and business ownership and 7 as a touring musician, all overlapping to varying degrees.

Each part of my background fits into a bigger picture. What I’ve learned across different fields transfers between them.

### Mindflow — Design Engineer

2004–2008

My first official design job as a freelancer, back when “web designers” wore every hat and much of the web was built and shipped in Macromedia Flash. As a self-taught designer, I learned and cut my teeth in the field this way.

There wasn’t much room for error. I was learning as I went, and mistakes could cost me money, clients, or both.

### MinoiaGroup — Design Engineer

2006–2008

I started working as a clerk, selling streetwear and snowboards. I eventually managed the entire franchise’s branding, visual identity, and online presence.

I also designed, implemented, and launched one of Italy’s first online snowboard stores on my own, contributing directly to the business’s growth by handling everything from online payments and order fulfillment to customer service.

### Upon this Dawning — Drummer, Tour Manager

2007–2014

Playing drums for a metalcore band and touring Europe on weekends was a long-running hobby. When an American label signed us, it eventually became a job.

We moved to the States to tour full-time; our LP landed on the Billboard 200 and Heatseekers charts, as well as the iTunes Hard Rock chart, and our YouTube videos accumulated millions of views.

### Timmagine — Design Engineer

2008–2010

I joined one of northern Italy’s largest marketing and design agencies as a hybrid designer and front-end developer, working across marketing websites, white-label CMS platforms, e-commerce, and more.

Drawing on my background in Flash development, I also supported R&D projects, including developing content for a glasses-free 3D monitor that clients used at trade shows, helping the agency gain visibility and attract new business.

### Uncle Pear — Design Engineer

2010–2011

Uncle Pear was a boutique agency that grew into a large enterprise now known as Gummy Industries. This brief chapter helped me shift from prioritizing quantity and speed to focusing on craftsmanship and branding.

Designing and developing with open-source CMSs taught me to put clients in the driver’s seat whenever possible, building trust and shaping how I approached client relationships throughout my career.

### Shootfolio — Director of Product

2011–2013

As photographers moved from Flash websites to CMS-driven HTML/CSS/JS portfolios, they could update their work themselves, but front-end quality often suffered.

As Director of Product at Shootfolio, I led the design and implementation of high-quality front ends that let photographers’ work shine, while guiding the CMS team to deliver performant applications grounded in validated user needs.

### Scozzese — Design Engineer

2011–2013

During the Flash → HTML/CSS/JS transition, I joined one of Europe’s most prominent boutique web agencies. There, I sharpened my coding skills, pushed my creativity further, and developed an obsession with quality.

Every project I worked on won awards and received coverage in design publications, with some even influencing broader design trends. This was an environment where being “good enough” was, in fact, not good at all.

### Lukibear — Managing Partner

2014–2016

A dev shop I founded with a former business partner, focused on shipping MVPs on tight, one-to-three-month timelines, with loose scope, highly iterative processes, and a philosophy of launching early to find product-market fit.

We reinvested all the company’s profits to secure the E-2 visa that enabled our move from Italy to the United States, a pivotal moment in both my career and personal life.

### Netflix — Senior Product Designer

2016–2018

I worked on applications in the Netflix enterprise suite supporting Rights, Contract, and Deals Management. These represented a substantial departure from existing workflows: industry-critical tasks that once took days to complete could now be done in seconds, thanks to a redesigned experience and modernized infrastructure.

I collaborated with industry experts to design tools that managed hundreds of thousands of records, determining when content went live on Netflix and when it had to come down.

### Netflix — Design Systems Lead

2018–2021

I bootstrapped Hawkins Professional, Netflix’s enterprise design system, initially tailored for a Studio audience and eventually adopted across thousands of applications.

Wearing multiple hats across product, design, and engineering, I collaborated with hundreds of people across organizations, advocated for a centralized engineering team, and turned the system from a simple utility into an integral part of designers’ daily workflows. I also brought Professional’s learnings to Hawkins Consumer, its sibling system.

### Netflix — Design Systems Manager

2021–2022

As a manager, I expanded my responsibilities across Hawkins Professional and Consumer, the latter powering the Netflix experience we all know and use.

Over two years, I managed up to five direct reports, partnered with peers across the design org, and focused on coaching, team health, and resourcing. I helped stabilize and mature Professional, guided Consumer toward adoption, and built stronger relationships with the Growth organization.

### Netflix — Principal Designer

2022–present

My work is often described as that of an “agent of change”, spanning hands-on technical projects, urgent challenges, and long-term strategic initiatives across design, AI, and development.

My objective is to create value across organizational boundaries, disciplines, and timelines, while collaborating closely with business stakeholders to set shared goals. Some of this work requires me to make decisions and establish direction with considerable autonomy, often with limited resources and shifting priorities.

## My current job

### A decade at Netflix.

Over ten years at Netflix, I grew through four different roles, collaborating with hundreds of people across the organization and expanding the scope of my work and the problems I took on. My work ranged from hands-on execution to long-term strategy, sometimes owning initiatives end-to-end, other times building foundations for others to expand on. Below is a ruthless selection of projects from a much broader body of work.

### [AI Data Readiness](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Hawkins Consumer

![AI Data Readiness](http://lucaorio.com/assets/ai-data-readiness.jpg)

### [Hawkins](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Design System

![Hawkins](http://lucaorio.com/assets/hawkins.jpg)

### [Expansion Packs](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Hawkins Consumer

![Expansion Packs](http://lucaorio.com/assets/expansion-packs.jpg)

### [Theming](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Hawkins Consumer

![Theming](http://lucaorio.com/assets/theming.jpg)

### [Specs Handoff](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Commerce / Growth

![Specs Handoff](http://lucaorio.com/assets/specs-handoff.jpg)

### [Accessibility Toolkit](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Design Org

![Accessibility Toolkit](http://lucaorio.com/assets/accessibility-toolkit.jpg)

### [Distribution Toolchain](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Hawkins Professional

![Distribution Toolchain](http://lucaorio.com/assets/distribution-toolchain.jpg)

### [Documentation Platform](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Hawkins Consumer

![Documentation Platform](http://lucaorio.com/assets/documentation-platform.jpg)

### [Rights Management](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Netflix Studio

![Rights Management](http://lucaorio.com/assets/rights-management.jpg)

### [Tokens Infrastructure](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Hawkins Professional

![Tokens Infrastructure](http://lucaorio.com/assets/tokens-infrastructure.jpg)

### [Premium Expansion Pack](http://lucaorio.com/work)

Commerce

![Premium Expansion Pack](http://lucaorio.com/assets/premium-expansion-pack.jpg)

## Side projects

### Room to explore.

Projects shaped by personal needs, curiosity, or something I wanted to learn.

More often than not, what I learned found its way into my professional work, too.

### Agents

#### A fully custom agent harness.

Inspired by projects like Hermes and OpenClaw, I built Agents to explore agent orchestration, tool integration, memory architectures, and local inference firsthand. It became a personal experiment in making AI agents genuinely useful beyond answering questions.

My agents help me plan my days, organize groceries, and connect the dots across different aspects of my life. They remember past conversations, draw on personal knowledge, execute tasks, and interact with one another, sometimes proactively and without my involvement.

A custom local-first server powers native iOS and web clients, with configurable permissions, scheduled activities, and inspectable execution histories. The project is as much about understanding the technical challenges of autonomous agents as it is about putting them to work in everyday life.

### Control Hub

#### Keeping local AI under control.

I built Control Hub for macOS to manage inference of local AI models and coordinate workloads across multiple applications. It provides a shared infrastructure for model deployment, request scheduling, and resource allocation, with configurable priorities and automatic memory management.

A live dashboard tracks model activity, queued jobs, system performance, and execution history. It also provides direct controls for managing workloads, troubleshooting failures, and adjusting model configurations.

Everything runs locally, with privacy controls for sensitive data and a central interface for keeping increasingly complex AI workflows manageable.

### Gen-Studio

#### An entirely local creative studio.

I built Gen-Studio for macOS to bring generative AI tools into a single workspace, without relying on cloud services. It combines six creative environments for image generation and editing, music composition, voice synthesis, persona design, transcription, and video generation.

Each workspace goes beyond prompting, offering hands-on controls to refine results, explore variations, and work with different models. A shared project system preserves settings, references, and previous generations, making it easy to pick up where I left off.

Everything runs locally, with projects and generated content stored on the Mac. The result is a growing collection of creative tools that I can experiment with, customize, and use without depending on external services.

### Little E

#### TV time without the negotiations.

I built Little E for my son. I wanted him to enjoy movies and shows independently, but I wasn’t comfortable leaving him alone with streaming platforms designed to maximize engagement, endless recommendations, and constant stimulation. I wanted something calmer, with content that encouraged curiosity rather than competing for his attention.

Little E is an offline Android TV app with a visual, remote-friendly interface that children can navigate independently. Parents curate the library, control when content is available, and set viewing limits based on actual watch time. Configurable breaks respect natural stopping points, avoiding interruptions near the end of a video.

### Obsidian Gallery

#### Images deserve better than a list.

I built an Obsidian plugin that turns folders of local images into dynamic masonry galleries, without requiring users to manually arrange or embed individual files.

The plugin supports horizontal and vertical layouts, works directly within notes, and includes a lightbox for browsing images. Galleries update based on their source folders, making them useful for visual references and collections that change over time.

It’s available as a community plugin and has attracted contributions and interest from other Obsidian users.

[https://github.com/lucaorio/obsidian-image-gallery (opens in a new tab)](https://github.com/lucaorio/obsidian-image-gallery)

### Intentio

#### The mouse becomes optional.

Intentio is a layered keyboard shortcut system I built to make macOS navigation and window management faster and more predictable.

It combines Karabiner, Yabai, custom shell scripts, and Nero into a single workflow for launching applications, organizing windows, switching spaces, and controlling system functions. Instead of memorizing increasingly complicated key combinations, I organized shortcuts into dedicated layers that can be activated on demand.

The configuration is open source, allowing others to borrow individual pieces without adopting my entire setup.

[https://github.com/lucaorio/intentio (opens in a new tab)](https://github.com/lucaorio/intentio)

### Nero

#### Keeping tabs on the desktop.

Nero is a macOS desktop widget I built to monitor Yabai, a tiling window manager. It displays active spaces, window states, and layout information across multiple monitors, automatically adapting to macOS light and dark modes.

Rather than constantly polling for changes, Nero responds to Yabai’s native signals, keeping the interface responsive without unnecessary background activity.

[https://github.com/lucaorio/nero (opens in a new tab)](https://github.com/lucaorio/nero)

### Confidential work

Some of the projects in my portfolio involve internal tools, systems, and workflows that were never intended for public distribution. While I can share the broader context and outcomes of this work, certain details and visual materials require a little more discretion.

If you’d like to explore these projects in greater depth, please email me to request access. I’m happy to review requests individually and usually respond within a couple of days.

In the meantime, feel free to explore my [side projects](http://lucaorio.com/#side-projects), where I share more of what I’ve been building and experimenting with on my own.

[Contact me](mailto:luca.orio@me.com)

© 2026 Luca Orio