Design System Expert

With project PRIZMA, DB will modernize its infrastructure on the one hand, and develop a fail-safe IT landscape on the other hand, which can be restored quickly and securely in case of a disaster.

• Capture current architectures of existing systems as well as methodical consulting and development of target architectures
• Deepen and maintain the building plan / target IT landscape
• Implement technical architecture concepts & architecture descriptions
• Implement migration concepts for updating and further developing the platform and information systems
• Assess submitted improvement suggestions as part of the project
• Capability management: identify capability gaps, develop target visions, and support transformation planning within the enterprise architecture.
• Create a compatibility matrix of the components in use and compare dependencies of specific versions
• Create an IT concept for extending the platform with the following topics: hardware and software requirements, security, licensing, high availability, load balancing, backup & recovery, update strategy, monitoring integration, etc.
• Coordinate with business architects as well as technical architects from the cross-functional architecture area of the PRISMA program for the topics (backup, Active Directory, monitoring, Citrix, and business applications ...)
• Status meetings and alignment of project planning with the Release Train Engineer / Project Manager
• Advise the Release Train Engineer / Project Manager in identifying project risks
• Advise the System Architect Engineers in steering the implementation of the concept
• Implement the IT concept
• Document the infrastructure

Label: MS Project, LINUX, Windows, ORACLE, Java, REST, SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, UML, Enterprise Architect, BPMN, AZURE, AWS, V-MODEL, Micro Service, VisualStudio, SAP S/4HANA, SCRUM(SAFE), ESB (TIBCO), Python, Innovator, LeanIX (TOGAF), Ansible, Ansible Tower, Ansible Automation, ROBOT, SpringBoot

I served as the Lead Designer for two cross-functional teams at Casavi, a software platform for property managers. Casavi is a central platform for all aspects of digital property management, which streamlines operations and business processes.

SmartTask: The team focuses on ticket management, workflow automation, AI integration, enhancing communication between property managers and their clients.

Customer app/portal: The team is dedicated to fostering community engagement among residents of managed properties. The customer portal in combination with the Casavi app solves the challenges for property and facility managers.

My role spans the full design lifecycle, covering UX/UI design, user research, usability testing, and strategic design planning, across Casavi's web platform, mobile app, and customer portals. Each team comprises around 10 members, including a project manager, designer, developers, and QA testers. I am also responsible for the accessibility assurance of the whole product.

Design unit role: In addition to my core responsibilities, I actively contribute to the development and maintenance of the company's design system and style guide ensuring consistency and scalability across all products. Mentor junior designers is my official and moral responsibility.

• Leading UX for a Property Management System, an all-in-one solution for vacation rental agencies and tourism regions, covering marketing and rental of holiday apartments and houses
• UX audits, conception, and implementation of UX strategy with a focus on regulatory, security, and user-centered requirements
• Advising C-level stakeholders on UX strategy and design best practices
• Planning and conducting research with agencies and property owners
• Design system strategy and definition of UX architecture

• Development and optimization of the RTL+ frontend application for SmartTV and set-top box platforms with React and Next.js.
• Key role in the technical coordination of developers within the team and in coordinating implementation.
• Central interface to adjacent teams to simplify development processes and improve cross-team alignment.
• Improved frontend performance, stability, and rendering behavior on low-powered devices in a restricted runtime environment.
• Implemented a frontend testing strategy with Jest, React Testing Library, and Playwright.
• Implemented accessibility improvements according to WCAG 2.2 and WAI-ARIA.
• Integrated Didomi Consent Management as a contribution to increasing ad monetization on streaming platforms.
• Used AI-supported engineering workflows with Cursor for structured implementation, refactoring, and faster problem solving.

Technologies used: React, Next.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, GraphQL, Apollo Gateway, Zustand, Tailwind CSS, Styled Components, React Testing Library, Playwright, Jest, HTML5, CSS3, AWS Lambda, EC2, CloudFront, S3, GitLab CI/CD, NX, Cursor

• As UX Manager and UX Team Lead, my focus is on creating the conditions for excellent UX design – not only by improving results, but also by investing in people, culture, and systems. I am convinced that sustainable UX design comes from a combination of autonomous teams, clear rituals, and a shared vision of product and user value.

• My job is to enable successful UX design within a company. This includes setting up and growing the UX team, establishing a design system, designing design processes, defining and developing UX maturity and UX culture within the company, and developing strategies that combine business requirements and user experience design.

• Consulting and conceptual support in UX and product topics (project-based)

• Deepening strategic topics: UX Strategy, Organizational Design, UX Maturity

• Market and role orientation with a focus on Head of UX / UX Leadership positions

Designing AI-native digital products by combining product strategy, UX research, interaction design, software engineering, and modern AI workflows. Leading projects from discovery to implementation while integrating AI throughout the entire product development lifecycle.

Key responsibilities

• → Product discovery, stakeholder workshops, Jobs-to-be-Done and user research
• → User journey mapping, information architecture and interaction design
• → Wireframes, high-fidelity UI, prototypes and scalable design systems in Figma and Penpot
• → AI-assisted interface generation and rapid concept exploration using Figma AI, Figma Make and generative design workflows
• → Design-to-code workflows with AI-supported frontend generation and engineering collaboration
• → Building accessible interfaces following WCAG 2.2 and enterprise design standards
• → Usability testing, iterative validation and KPI-driven product optimization
• → Development of AI knowledge systems, MCP-powered design workflows and human-in-the-loop review processes
• → Close collaboration with engineering teams to ensure production-ready implementation

• Designed role-based delivery assignment workflows, switchable between own fleet and partner carriers, with traceable status chains from „pending“ to „in delivery.“
• Designed AI-assisted route optimization, where dispatchers review drive-time-optimized route suggestions as drafts and apply them in one click.
• Designed a central planning interface for delivery and route management, bringing table view, map view, and route composition into a single workflow.
• Built interactive prototypes to align new product features early with stakeholders and engineering.

Key methods: AI-assisted Product Design, Workflow Design, Role-Based Workflows, Dashboard Design, Interaction Design, Prototyping, Logistics/Operations UX, Stakeholder Collaboration

• Leading end-to-end UX for two AI SaaS products in closed beta, including LLM-interaction design, prompt-UX, and human-in-the-loop patterns with commercial distribution signed for launch in Q3 2026
• Built a self-built LLM reframing and RAG-correction pipeline powering multi-profile CV and case-study generation in production use
• Shipping real code alongside research, including Three.js/GLSL portfolio work, Figma-API tooling, and a Chrome MV3 extension for session-sync automation

• Designing UX for a B2B AI SaaS platform covering the full software development lifecycle, including an orchestration transparency panel showing users which AI model is active at each stage, reducing AI opacity and building user trust in multi-model workflows.

• Spearheaded efforts to enhance product consistency and achieve significantly better usability, ensuring a more intuitive experience
• Partnered with the founders to define a new go-to-market strategy through product discovery
• Directed the process of creating a new company website from concept and wireframes to design and final implementation in Webflow
• Responsive Webdesign
• WCAG
• Corporate Branding
• Product Discovery
• MVP
• Product Design
• User Experience
• Rapid Prototyping

As part of the migration from Shopware 5 to 6, it was decided to rethink the entire e-commerce landscape of the regional FUNKE online shops from scratch. The main goals, besides creating a reliable platform with multiple sales channels for each regional brand, were the "rebranding" and the brand development around it.

The rebranding was also transferred into the advertising materials CI, which in the daily newspaper sector, alongside digital performance ads, still has print as a strong focus in the target group segment.

My responsibilities/tasks in this project:

• Creating the UI design system
• UX research
• Prototyping
• Rebranding & creating the new CI manual across all regional shops
• Shopware 6 front-end & back-end development
• Design & creative lead
• Ad design, landing pages

• Analysis and structuring of complex service processes
• Development of customer journeys, user journeys, and service blueprints
• Moderation of workshops for requirements definition
• Derivation of an MVP with stakeholders
• Clear basis for decision-making
• Reduction of uncertainty in early project phases

• Designing AI-first workflows that integrate AI into existing product experiences
• Developing UX concepts for prompt management, reusable and combined prompt workflows, tagging, search and information organisation
• Creating user flows, wireframes, prototypes and high-fidelity interfaces in Figma
• Defining reusable UI patterns, components and interaction logic for scalable products
• Exploring human-AI interaction patterns with emphasis on user control, transparency and manageable cognitive load
• Translating product requirements and technical constraints into developer-ready UX/UI specifications

Co-founded a software agency building custom web and cross-platform products. I owned the technical decisions across the whole portfolio and led 12 people, while carrying delivery planning, process and client relationships for 11 clients across 3 industries.

• Technical leadership: owned the technical decisions for the codebase across every project — stack, architecture, code conventions and the tooling the team worked with — and led the developers on how work got built through code reviews, pair programming and mentoring across a team ranging from junior to senior, keeping the codebase coherent as the portfolio and the team grew

• Delivery planning against the financial plan: built the company's financial plan and derived from it the billable hours each developer had to reach per month and the hours each project could absorb to stay within budget; planned capacity and scope against those figures and negotiated budgets and delivery dates directly with clients

• Client ownership: technical contact across the portfolio — requirements gathering and prioritisation, scoping and estimates, timeline communication, budget negotiation, and consistent transparency throughout delivery

• Team and people: owned the hiring and interview process end to end and took responsibility for offboarding where it was needed; designed an onboarding that got new developers productive within 1–2 days; cleared blockers daily and kept a close eye on where effort was creating value and where it was not

• Process ownership: consolidated a micro-service landscape spread over 15+ repositories into a single monorepo, cutting backend development time by ~40% and simplifying releases for 6 engineers; set up deployment pipelines with GitHub Actions and GitLab CI; ran retrospectives and turned the feedback into concrete changes; introduced AI agents into day-to-day development

• Delivered short-staffed: when the team shrank from 8 developers to 2, restructured scope, introduced AI-assisted development to hold the schedule and took on Go backend work alongside my own frontend scope

• Architecture and code: defined the architecture for every project in the portfolio — the structure the rest of the team built within — and wrote roughly 90% of the frontend code myself, from SSR applications with Next.js and Remix to cross-platform apps with Capacitor

• From zero to production: took a practice management platform — administration, inventory, integrated online shop, chat messenger — from an empty repository to production. Live in 7 markets with at least 7 more coming up, serving tens of thousands of users

• Delivery under pressure: built and shipped a replacement online shop for a Fortune 250 client in 4 days, restoring order intake while their global shops had been offline for several weeks

• Design system: built a cross-project design system used across 7 products, so new projects and features started from a shared, consistent base

• Cross-platform and real-time: built iOS and Android apps with Capacitor for a client live event with 1,000+ participants — web sockets and push notifications for real-time content, Stripe payments supporting PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and cards

Key technologies: React, TypeScript, Next.js, Remix, GraphQL, ConnectRPC, Redux, Zustand, Go, Node.js, Turborepo, Nx, Capacitor, Ionic, WebSockets, Stripe, PostgreSQL, Playwright, Cypress, Vitest, Storybook, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot