Joe Woodham

CEO & Founder @ Torii

About

Products fail when design can't keep up.Your roadmap is packed, but design work piles up. Everything waits on design capacity, design decisions, or just design bandwidth.I'm Joe Woodham, Founder of Torii. I started this in 2012. Spending years working with fast-moving product teams where I saw the same problem repeatedly: companies hit a growth point where their design function couldn't handle the load, but they couldn't justify (or didn't want) the overhead of hiring full teams.Over the last 13 years, we've helped product and design leaders at companies like Redbubble, Culture Amp, NAB, Coles, Telstra, and Australia Post solve this problem, not by running six-month recruitment processes, but by placing senior design capacity exactly where it's needed.What we do:→ Place senior designers and researchers who can start delivering within days, not months→ Build or rebuild design systems so they support product development instead of slowing it down→ Run focused research projects that answer specific product questions without spinning up a permanent research function→ Provide fractional design leadership when you need strategic thinking but can't justify (or don't want) a full-time VP of DesignWe work with teams in two situations:1. You're moving fast and design can't keep up. Your roadmap is packed, but design capacity isn't there. Work gets stuck waiting for decisions, reviews, or just bandwidth.2. You're growing and your design function hasn't caught up. What worked at 10 people doesn't work at 50. You need more structure, clearer standards, and people who can own delivery without constant oversight.We're not a recruitment agency. We don't run job ads or manage candidate pipelines. We're designers who've run teams, shipped products, and built design functions inside scaling companies. We know what breaks at different growth stages because we've been there and fixed it.We measure success by delivery. But we also care about whether your internal team gets stronger while we're working with you, not just whether the backlog clears.Who this is for:- Product leaders who need design capacity now, not after a hiring process- Design leaders building or scaling teams who need senior expertise without full-time overhead- Companies in growth phases where the design function hasn't kept pace with product demands🚀 Growing your product or design practice? DM me or visit https://www.toriiconsulting.com.au

Country

Australia

City

Greater Melbourne Area

Industry

Design

Skill

User Experience, User Interface, Table Tennis, Software Design, Web Applications, TDD, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, jQuery, HTML 5, Java, Hibernate, .NET, HTML5, CSS3, JSON, REST, C#, JSP

Experience

CEO & Founder

Torii

2012-8 - Present · 14 yrs 2 mos

Melbourne, VIC

Torii helps scaleups and enterprises turn design into a growth engine. Since 2012, we’ve partnered with high-growth teams—from Redbubble, Culture Amp, and PaperCut to Telstra, NAB, and Coles—to build design maturity where it matters most: inside the product team. We embed senior designers, researchers, and fractional leaders to solve critical execution gaps and scale your internal capability—not just your headcount. But we're more than design talent on tap. x. Our senior designers don't just execute—they strengthen your entire product team: x. Zero ramp-up time: They manage stakeholders, bridge Product and Engineering, and deliver on-brand work from day one—no hand-holding required x. Built-in knowledge transfer: Your team learns as they ship. No painful handoffs or locked-away expertise when the project wraps x. Continuous upskilling: We keep designers current on AI workflows, modern design systems, and emerging practices—you get cutting-edge expertise without spending on their professional development x. Flexible scaling without dependency: Ramp up for a 3-month sprint, scale down when priorities shift—all context and momentum stays with your team, not trapped in external files The result? Compressed delivery timelines, stronger cross-functional collaboration, and a team that's more capable when we leave than when we arrived. If your senior designers are drowning in stakeholder management, or you're staring down a 12-week hiring cycle while delivery dates slip, let's talk.

CEO and Co-Founder

ToriiDS

2025-10 - Present · 1 yr

United States

Torii DS builds design systems that actually get used. Most product teams know the pain: designers rebuilding the same components, Figma files that don't match production, front-end engineers fixing UI bugs that shouldn't exist. Everything's inconsistent, and shipping new features takes twice as long as it should. We fix that. We audit your existing setup, build component libraries that work in the real world, align your design and engineering workflows, and set up governance so teams actually adopt what we build. We also train your people so everyone's speaking the same language. What you get: x. Faster shipping with less rework x. Consistent UI across your product x. Engineers who stop rebuilding components from scratch x. Designers who can move quickly without creating chaos We've done this for scale-ups dealing with fragmented Figma files and enterprises trying to align multiple product squads. If you're scaling and your UI is holding you back, we can help. Our goal: Get your teams building better products faster, with a design system that solves actual problems instead of creating new ones.

CEO & Founder

Kintsugi

2023-8 - Present · 3 yrs 2 mos

At Kintsugi, we specialise in connecting visionary companies with exceptional design leaders. With our unique focus on design leadership recruitment, we have established ourselves as a market leader in the industry. Our mission is to transform organisations by placing proven design leaders to drive innovation, elevate brand presence, and achieve strategic visions. 📱: 0406 497 870 📧: joe@kintsugibydesign.com 📧: https://www.kintsugibydesign.com

Principal Consultant - Design

Ambition

2010-12 - 2012-4 · 1 yr 5 mos

36/140 William Street, Melbourne

Ambition recruits high calibre candidates across Asia, Australia and the UK in the following specialist areas: • Accounting & Finance • Banking and Financial Services • Technology I was employed by Ambition Technology as a specialist IT consultant focused on design. User Experience, UX Research, UI Design, Visual Design, Service Design, Product Design, Content writing, UX writing

Senior Consultant

Milestone IT (Milestone Information Technology)

2008-12 - 2010-12 · 2 yrs 1 mo

I worked with Milestone as a Senior IT Consultant managing many major accounts with reputable clients dealing within the contract space. www.mstone.com.au Working for Milestone Search: www.mstone.com.au Home IT&T Recruitment Offering Permanent Selection Contracting services Offering Technology About Us Our Heritage Working at Milestone Blog Contact Us Candidate... Milestone Search is a leading provider of delivering the best and most strategic HR and recruitment solutions in the Australian market place. Servicing the Asia Pacific region, Milestone Search is a leader in the recruitment of IT professionals ranging from system programmers through to network engineers and IT sales and marketing professionals. We offer either a a leading contracting service and also provide permanent recruitment capability whilst delivering the very best and most competent employees in the IT and Telco domains. We service only the top blue chip companies and leading government organisations in the Asia Pacific region www.mstone.com.au