Resume

Vlad Malik

Full-Stack Product Designer specializing in UX research and workflows within complex domains. Highly skilled in cross-functional teamwork and managing stakeholders. My design practice is rooted in building a deep expertise in the customer’s domain to become a trusted advisor. Emphasis on balancing solving the right problems with time-to-market, development effort, and design quality. Experience growing products 0-1 and building a cohesive user experience.

Skills

UX Research: Continuous discovery via customer interviews, Direct and remote user testing, Behavior/business analytics, Synthesis and presenting actionable insights

UI/UX Design: Figma, Miro, Maze, Prototyping, Copywriting, Close collaboration with engineers

Design Leadership: Building customer-centered culture and practices, Cross-departmental relationships, Mentoring designers/non-designers, Design systems

Product & Technical Acumen: Agile, Product management, Managing stakeholders, Strategy workshops, Presentations, Writing user stories, Breakdown and prioritization, Business Analysis, HTML/CSS/SQL, Gen AI

Work History

Founding/Principal Product Designer. Relay Platform (B2B SaaS). 07/2019 – 07/2024

  • Owned UI/UX design for entire product (multiple insurance product lines)
  • Shipped features that lead to startup acquisition anddrove 50X growth in 2014
  • Shipped industry-leading AI Assistant; validated via Wizard of Oz prototype; as acting PM, managed agile team to ship MVP and led go-to-market (plan, brief, presentations)
  • Shipped reinsurance platform that saved customers 50% of time on submissions, used to transact tens of millions in premium, and earned industry awards
  • Shaped customer-centered culture and led design partnerships with key customers
  • Led highest visibility cross-functional initiative to create customer profiles with Sales and CX partners to increase sales conversion success and slash onboarding time in half
  • Implemented lean design system and processes to bring unity to the product as we grew

Full-Stack Interaction Designer. Linowski Interaction Design. 06/2013 – 12/2018

  • Co-founded boutique agency specializing in A/B testing and SaaS pattern library: sold projects, full-stack analysis-concepting-design and web development, sales copywriting
  • Invented new type of statistical calculator to make statistics more intuitive for clients

Business Analyst. Toronto Public Health. 05/2010 – 03/2013

  • Designed accessibility course for the City’s largest division (~2,500 employees)
  • Led product discovery and ethnographic research for high-profile web and digital transformation projects (won awardfor ChemTRAC, a website used by thousands to view emissions from local businesses); shadowed a city inspector for a paper-to-tablets project
  • Led major IT services audit – surveyed and interviewed program heads about gaps in services, presented service blueprint and governance recommendations to executives

Enterprise IT Consultant (Inventory & Logistics). Ideaca. 06/2007 – 05/2010

  • End-to-end discovery and software implementations: coal mine, manufacturing, insurance
  • Built warehousing/inventory, transport, and assembly training simulations

Mentorship & Community

Guest Judge. University of Toronto UX Program
Instructor/Facilitator. Design Thinking Program at Centennial College, George Brown College
Meetups: DesignX, Design Leadership Summit, ProductTO

Education

Honors BA in Linguistics (cognitive science). University of Toronto

Interests

Hobbies: sci-fi, kickboxing, motorcycles, guitar/piano/drums, mountain climbing, languages

Favorite Books: Timeless Way of Building (on architecture/design systems), Competing Against Luck (jobs to be done, human-centered business strategy), The Mom Test (talking to customers)