Ralf Groene, Microsoft's veteran leader responsible for Surface design, has now retired
Groene's journey with Microsoft began in 2006
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Key notes
- Ralf Groene, Microsoft’s head of design for Windows and devices, announced its retirement.
- The news arrive just around a month before the new Surface & AI event in May.
- Groene has spent almost two decades with the Redmond tech giant.
Microsoft is undergoing yet another important leadership change, as Ralf Groene, the company’s long-serving head of design for Windows and devices, is leaving Redmond for good.
Groene began his career with the company in 2006. The Microsoft veteran, who’d spent the last 17 years designing Microsoft’s devices, like the Surface tablets and Hololens, shares on his LinkedIn page, “I’m happy to share that I’m now retired.”
Formerly Head of Industrial Design for Surface, Groene took on the leadership of the Windows design team back in March 2020.
Microsoft has yet to announce the new head, but the announcement didn’t come as a surprise. Last year in September, Panos Panay, the creator behind the Surface brand, left Microsoft to join Amazon. Insiders of the company said that he left because he was “unhappy” with recent internal changes.
Speaking of which, Microsoft’s new Surface event is just around the corner. The upcoming Surface & AI event will take place on May 20, 2024. Rumors on the streets are saying that the new consumer models of Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors, will take the most airtime during the event.
