HEAD OF PRODUCT DESIGN
Available for work June 2026
10 years shaping product design for fintech, SaaS, and e-commerce.
The hands-on kind of leader.
I lead product design end-to-end, from research and strategy to shipping and iteration. I've built UX functions from scratch, worked across AI-native platforms, compliance products, loyalty apps and subscription e-commerce. And I came at this the long way round.
Pharmacy dispenser. Songwriter and producer. IC designer. Now a design leader building teams, culture, and products I'm genuinely proud of.
I don't lead from a distance. I'm in the room asking the questions, celebrating the small wins, and making sure my team leaves feeling more capable than when they arrived.
The joy for me isn't just in the output. It's in watching people deliver with confidence. I feel like I became the leader I always needed.
These are the stories that got me here.
ABOUT ME
The long way round
is still a way round.
Before I was a designer, I was a pharmacy dispenser for thirteen years. High stakes, complex systems, real consequences. It taught me more about human behaviour than any design course ever could.
Psst... come closer, music was supposed to be the career. Pharmacy was just the job that paid. BUT, if you want to know more about that chapter, let's have a chinwag.
I came into UX the long way round and I wouldn't change a thing.
Every scar, every wrong turn, every industry I didn't expect to land in, it all made me the kind of leader who actually gets it. The pressure, the ambiguity, the moments when your team needs you to just hold the line.
Ten years in UX later, I lead teams, shape culture, and create conditions where good design can actually happen.
I work best when I'm close to the problem, in the research, shaping the design direction, building the system thinking into the team, and making sure we're solving the right thing before we solve it beautifully
Financial Services (compliance) | E-Commerce | Healthcare | Charity | B2B SaaS | Media | Loyalty
BRANDS AND AGENCIES I'VE COLLABORATED WITH
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
'Nimi is an exceptional design leader who balances strategic vision with hands-on collaboration. Her feedback was thoughtful and constructive, helping me grow significantly as a designer. She's the kind of leader who elevates everyone around her.'
Maxim Shadrin
Head of Product Design, Ciklum
'Nimisha brought an incredible amount of positive energy, structure, and cohesion to the team. She created an environment where everyone felt valued and supported, and her leadership had a huge impact on our motivation and collaboration.'
Soudin Ceric
Senior Product Designer,
HelloFresh
'Nimi has an extremely positive attitude with a high degree of emotional intelligence and empathy. Her design process from start to finish is always well-thought-out and sets not only herself but the team up for success.'
Greg Doherty
Staff Product Designer, Behavioural Change
Read more recommendations on LinkedIn
CORE STRENGTHS
What I bring
to the table
AI-Native Product Design
Designing intelligent products from the inside out. Currently building AI-native solutions using AI tools throughout the process.
Research and Insights
Grounding every decision in real user behaviour. Not assumptions, not best practices alone.
Design Strategy
Turning those vague and ambiguous business problems into clear design direction that teams can rally behind and ship.
Design System Thinking
Understanding the strategic value of systems, advocating for them, and growing them through teams rather than alone.
Design Leadership
Building and scaling design teams that deliver. Comfortable leading from the front or getting hands on when it matters.
Cross-Functional
Collaboration
Working fluently across product, engineering and data. Speaking everyone's language without losing the design perspective.
Stakeholder Influence
Building the case for design at board level. Built a successful business case for a design system at Beauty Pie and countless others at SymphonyAI.
Coaching and Mentoring
Growing designers into confident, autonomous practitioners. The quiet work that compounds over time.
HOW I WORK
Three Principles
I work by
01
Understand before acting
Whether I'm designing a product or leading a team, I start in the same place.
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What is the full picture?
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What are the problems we're trying to solve for?
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What do people actually need, not what they think they need?
Jumping to solutions too early is the most expensive mistake in design and in leadership.
02
Make it real, together
Ideas stay abstract until you can see, touch or discuss them.
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I push towards prototypes; more recently in Claude Code or Figma make; workshops and shared artefacts as early as possible.
The goal is never to present an answer. It is to create the conditions where the right answer becomes obvious to everyone in the room.
03
Build for what comes after
My measure of success is never the output alone.
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It is what the output enables.
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A product that empowers users.
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A team that delivers with confidence.
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An organisation that understands why design matters.
I am always building for what comes next.
TOOLS
How I work,
what I use
AI & RESEARCH
CHAT GPT
Notebook LLM
Perplexity
Dovetail
UserTesting
Pendo
HotJar
Otter.ai
Claude
Figjam
Miro
DESIGN & PROTOTYPING
Figma
Figma Make
Claude Code
PROJECT & OPS
Jira
Confluence
Notion
It's a really exciting time to be in design. I work day to day in Figma and FigJam for design, Claude and Claude Code for prototyping and writing, and Dovetail and UserTesting for research.
I treat AI tools the way I treat design methods, pragmatically. You don't always get the full double diamond, and you don't always need the fanciest model. You pick what fits the goal, try it, and keep what works. (No, the design process is not dead.)
SELECTED WORK
Projects that
moved the needle
CURRENTLY
What I'm working on
right now
HOSTING
Chai & Chinwag
A podcast about the human stories behind the digital industry. The messy bits, the politics, and the quiet wins nobody talks about.
CREATING
Back in the Studio
After a decade away from producing and songwriting, I'm finally recording a new EP. Music was always the plan.