Civic Design & Product Leadership
I'm Jesse Hammond — a designer and agile product manager specializing in digital services for government and public institutions. I build tools that work for the people who need them most.
View selected work →About
I'm a designer and product manager based in Montréal, working at the intersection of technology, public service, and human need. For the past six years I've been embedded in government organizations through Code for Canada — building fraud reporting systems for the RCMP, redesigning legacy websites, and piloting water delivery apps in remote Inuit communities in Canada's north.
My work is rooted in a simple belief: that the people who most depend on public services are too often the last ones consulted in designing them. I try to fix that — one research session, sprint, or workshop at a time.
Outside of work I organize Civic Tech Montréal and mentor designers breaking into civic tech as a Top 100 UX Research Mentor on ADPList.
When I'm not at a screen, I'm usually somewhere vertical — I've cycled long distances, hiked trails around Montréal, and climbed in Taiwan and the Andes, with an Alps trip in the works. Back home I cook seriously: family Indian curries, handmade pasta, South American soups, fresh bread, and anything I can throw in my pizza oven in the summer. I read broadly, play PC and board games, and have a soft spot for a good tabletop campaign.
I care about building things that last — in code, in communities, and in the wild.
Selected Work
Justice & Public Safety — RCMP · National Cybercrime Coordination Centre
RCMP · Code for Canada · May 2023 – Sep 2024
Led the end-to-end design of an AI triage system for the RCMP's Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre — where 200+ fraud and cybercrime reports arrive daily and a database of 350,000+ records had outpaced what staff could manually review.
16 months
Actions
RCMP · Code for Canada · Oct 2022 – May 2023
In 2023, 41,000 Canadians reported fraud and cybercrime cases with $554M and $3B in losses respectively — yet the national reporting tool had never been tested with real, diverse users or brought to accessibility standards. Took it from beta to live.
Civic Infrastructure — Workers' Compensation & Indigenous Communities
Workers' Compensation Board of NS · Oct 2024 – Dec 2025
WCB Nova Scotia's digital presence was fragmented across 12+ standalone websites and 2,200+ pages on an end-of-life platform. Administrative costs were 42% above the Canadian average. The CEO made a full redesign a strategic priority.
Kativik Regional Government · Oct 2024 – Aug 2025
Kuujjuaq's 2,800 residents depended on truck-delivered water with no formal dispatch system — requests coordinated through shortwave radio, Facebook, and phone. A matter of public health, not just logistics.
Capacity Building — Municipality of Grey County
Grey County · Aug – Oct 2024
Two separate municipal working groups, two different needs: one wanted to responsibly explore AI for public services, the other needed to adopt agile for a small development team. Four workshops, designed and facilitated from scratch.
AI Series (10 staff)
Agile Series (8 staff)
Approach
Good government services start with understanding real people's lives — not assumptions. I invest deeply in inclusive research, whether it's a national study with 75 Canadians or a handful of sessions with frontline workers in a remote northern community.
I build quantitative measures alongside qualitative insight — usability metrics, survey data, behavioural analytics — so progress is visible and defensible to stakeholders and funders.
My most important deliverable is often the one that stays after I leave — a team that knows how to continue. I design hand-off plans, workshops, and processes to ensure sustainable change.
Tools & Side Projects
AI Model Design & UX — with external developer
A two-part tool that scrapes government procurement platforms for RFPs, bids, and tenders, then runs results through an AI model to score and prioritize opportunities based on fit criteria. I designed the AI model logic, scoring criteria, and end-to-end UX. Client work — details anonymized.
Solo — strategy design & framework development
A structured framework for assessing the digital maturity of government organizations across service design capability, agile adoption, data practices, and accessibility. Produces a clear baseline and prioritized path forward. Built from patterns across six government engagements.
Solo — product & design
A single-source-of-truth application that pulls and synthesizes data from Canadian open government data platforms — reducing the time researchers and policy teams spend hunting across fragmented portals.
Contact
Available for embedded design roles, consulting, and workshop facilitation.