received this morning  ·  scroll to open
via post · first class
From Marco van Hylckama Vlieg
Portland, Oregon · USA
ai-created.com
marcovhv [at] gmail
Personal  ·  please read
To: the hiring manager
wherever you’re reading this from
somewhere on the internet
— May 17, 2026 —
Marco van Hylckama Vlieg Portland, Oregon · USA
marcovhv@gmail.com
ai-created.com
linkedin.com/in/marcovhv
Sunday, May 17, 2026
written by hand · printed once

Dear hiring manager,

Thank you for opening this. I assume you came here looking for a senior designer, a design engineer, or somebody who can carry an AI‑native product from a half‑formed idea through to a thing that actually ships. I've been doing that work for twenty years, so I thought I’d write you directly. The portfolio version of all of this is over at ai-created.com, but a letter felt more honest.

My practice sits at the seam where strategy, design, interaction behavior, and the realities of implementation collide. I write the prototype, ship the build, and stay around for the slow, unglamorous part where the thing has to be good for real users. That part is most of the work. It’s also the part most portfolios skip, which is why I’d rather hand you the resume below than show you another deck.

a quick note, in pen:
AI didn’t shrink the design problem. It made the problem about judgment, not output. Worth pinning on a wall somewhere.

Twenty years has meant time at Google, Yahoo!, Walmart Labs, Kohl’s, and Endemol, plus an independent product lab that doesn’t sleep. I’ve led prototyping teams, mentored designers, shipped retail and AI features at enterprise scale, and built consumer apps end-to-end on my own. I’m comfortable as a senior IC, a lead, or a director — whichever shape your team actually needs. Here’s the short version, typed below:

2021 — present
Kohl's
Senior product designer · generative AI specialist · UX across cart, checkout, wallet, account, in-store self-checkout; drove AI adoption inside the design org.
earlier
Walmart Labs
Principal product designer / design technologist · mobile, voice, personalization during Walmart’s digital transformation.
earlier
Google
Senior UX engineer / prototyper · high‑fidelity prototypes for Google Cloud AI, Google Assistant, Android.
earlier
Yahoo!
Director of UX prototyping & senior UX manager · global prototyping teams across multiple offices.
earlier
Endemol
UX & engineering lead · multilingual content systems and large‑scale web platforms across an international entertainment portfolio.
always
AI‑Created (lab)
Independent product lab · eighteen+ artifacts shipped — AI tools, design utilities, music, video, arcade games. Built end‑to‑end by one person.

These days my focus is AI‑native product design: systems where the model is the interaction, not a chat panel bolted onto a SaaS shell. I’m comfortable with the whole stack the work demands — Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, Vercel, the major model fleets, Whisper, Web Crypto, prompt pipelines, plus Figma, Figma Make, and Lovable for the design surface. I lean on AI to collapse the distance between concept and execution. The judgment, the craft, and the responsibility for the user are still mine.

I’ve enclosed a small dossier below — a card with my coordinates, a press clipping that gives you the second opinion, and three polaroids from the lab. If anything in there sparks a conversation, my email is on the card and your reply will reach me directly. I read everything personally.

Enclosed

  • Resume cardcoordinates & .docx download
  • Press clippingthird-party context
  • Three polaroidsfeatured projects from the lab
  • Contact sheeteight more from the same roll
  • Index cardthe working manifesto

Yours in design and engineering,

M. van Hylckama Vlieg  ·  Portland, Oregon
P.S.  If you got this far, you already know how I work. Send a note to marcovhv@gmail.com — tell me what you’re building, what’s ambiguous about it, what timeline you’re on. The fastest path is usually a direct one.
P.P.S.  You can also reach me on LinkedIn, on X, or by watching the experiments at @AIandDesign. The lab is at ai-created.com.
P.P.P.S.  This whole page is a single HTML file. No frameworks. The envelope and the stamps are SVG. The seal is a wax circle made of CSS. The signature is real. So is the offer.
↳ ENCLOSED · 04 ITEMS

Marco van Hylckama Vlieg

Senior product designer · AI-native builder
linkedin /in/marcovhv
locale Greater Portland, OR · USA
status ● open — available for new work
auth U.S. work authorized
The Lab Review Vol. XII · §003

A one-person studio that actually ships.

What separates Mr. van Hylckama Vlieg from the rest of the AI-design conversation isn’t talk — it’s output. My AI Diary, a voice-first journal with zero-knowledge encryption, ships as a PWA. Vectronix, a hardcore arcade game, runs in a browser. Eighteen artifacts. All real.

“The work is choosing what to build and how it should behave in someone’s actual life,” he writes, “then shipping it before the moment passes.” A position worth taking.

Index Card · No. 001
I design products at the seam where intent becomes interface — where a half‑formed idea has to choose what kind of system it wants to become. The interesting decisions live there. — Marco, in pen, May 2026