I've been a design engineer since before the term existed. I learned graphic design in high school and took my first job as a graphic designer while studying software engineering in university, then went to design school and shifted my focus toward web design and web development. That path led to a full-time software engineering role that grew to include design responsibilities too — colleagues started calling me “Unicorn” for straddling both worlds fluently. Today I run my own creative practice, working across product design and product engineering, handling the full arc from design and UX through development, from first sketch to shipped product.