Josh Schoen

I'm a cross-disciplinary design leader who has spent the better part of two decades working at the intersection of design, engineering, product, analytics, AI/ML, and software systems.

I did not follow a traditional engineering path. I learned through building, problem-solving, experimentation, and necessity. Every system I've designed eventually required me to understand how it actually worked, and then, inevitably, to fix the parts that didn't.

This site is where I write about that intersection: the space between design and engineering, between systems thinking and hands-on building, between careful strategy and the reality of shipping software.

What I think about

• Agent skills as the new UX design language
• Designing systems of capabilities, not just components
• AI-first workflows and orchestration patterns
• The joy designers find when they start building again
• Why process theater kills more products than bad code
• Nonlinear growth, dyslexia, and learning by doing
• The future of interfaces, tools, and software design

About this site

The Accidental Engineer is a design-engineering notebook. It's part editorial publication, part personal lab. The writing is serious, but the perspective is informed by the kind of career that doesn't fit neatly into any org chart.

Built with Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and MDX. Designed to be read. No tracking, no pop-ups, no newsletter gate. Just writing.