Designer by craft, mentor by habit, and a founder at heart.
Experience
With 7+ years in product, I’ve moved from freelance branding to leading design at Rumble and INSCALE — across ad tech, SaaS, healthcare and fintech — and to shipping apps with the community behind Bearacle.
I bridge strategy and craft: research, rapid prototyping and design systems, delivered alongside the engineers who build them.
Lead Designer · Rumble
Joined as Senior UX Designer, promoted to Lead in Nov 2024. Leading product design across Rumble Advertising Center — owning the long-term redesign while shipping improvements every cycle.
Case study →Founder & Product Lead · Bearacle
A community of builders I made official, so the apps we make can reach the public — I lead product strategy, design and releases across mobile and web.
Case study →Pocket ID →Vibeshift →Clear Roam →CEO & Co-Founder · Aequalitas Social
A social-impact venture — leading product, design and operations alongside a small partner team.
Instructor & Mentor · Brainster
UX/UI Academy, then the English-language International Academy. 350+ junior designers mentored through feedback, critique and hands-on craft.
Case study →Head of Design · INSCALE
Led design on long-term engagements with pharma clients, primarily for the Swedish and global market.
Case study →Chief Technology Officer · Atlas Solutions
Joined as Art Director & UX/UI Lead, promoted to CTO — tech-team management, project planning and product architecture.
UX/UI Designer · Upwork
56 freelance projects shipped for 32 clients — mobile apps and websites.
Guardian Wealth →Graphic Designer · Fiverr
Where I started freelancing — primarily branding and graphic design.
Personal branding →
Services
Product Design
End-to-end product thinking, not just screens. I balance user value, business strategy and technical feasibility — and keep the long-term thread across years of incremental shipping.
Design Systems
Building, scaling and governing systems alongside engineering. Tokens, components, documentation and the unglamorous work of keeping a system alive — treated as a side-effect of shipping, not a separate project.
UX Research
Pragmatic, time-aware research: stakeholder interviews, content audits, heuristic reviews and lightweight usability tests. A well-defined v1 informed by five conversations beats waiting for a 30-person study.
Interaction Design
Motion and micro-interactions that make a product feel inevitable rather than decorated — empty states, transitions, loading and success, where craft becomes obvious.
AI-assisted Workflows
LLMs and AI tools as accelerators — early directions, copy drafts, code prototypes. I treat AI like a fast junior: useful, occasionally wrong, always needing a senior eye.
Mentorship & Leadership
Design reviews, critique rituals and 1:1 mentoring — from leading squads at Rumble and INSCALE to guiding 350+ juniors into their first product design roles.
Toolkit
Design
Build & AI
Organization
Languages
Education
- UI / UX Design Specialization — California Institute of the Arts, 2022–2023
- SEO, Social Media Marketing, Front-End Development — Brainster, 2018–2019
- Enterprise Design Thinking — Team Essentials for AI
- Figma Advanced Certificate
Outside Work
Friends call me Mechka — Slavic for bear. The nickname stuck. So did the appetite for big, patient work.
Beyond the day job
- Community founder: I turned a builder community into Bearacle, a company that ships real apps — Pocket ID is live on the App Store and Google Play; Vibeshift is in Early Access.
- Mentor: teaching what I know has been part of my week since 2020.
- Co-founder: product, design and operations at Aequalitas Social, a social-impact venture.
- Builder: I write front-end code too — this site included.
Right now I’m open to Lead Product Designer roles, freelance product work and collaborations through Bearacle — and open to relocating.