Experience
While my primary focus has been high-level IC contribution, I have spent the last several years acting as a de facto lead — defining standards, mentoring peers, and scaling design operations for global fintech products.
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Senior Product Designer
Lead IC & Process Strategy: overhauled the product discovery framework for bank-to-investor communication tools, reducing estimated development waste by 25%.
Complex Logic Design: architected end-to-end workflows for high-stakes document generation systems, ensuring compliance and clarity for multi-persona financial stakeholders.
Research & Validation: led cross-team discovery workshops and usability sessions to de-risk technical constraints in high-pressure, fast-paced environments.
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Senior Product Designer
Design System Leadership: unified 7 legacy fintech brands into one scalable system, establishing a “Single Source of Truth” that ensured technical parity across iOS, Android and Web.
Operational Impact: engineered a white-label framework for 10+ industries, reducing sales-to-prototype time by 80% and optimising delivery costs by 30%.
Enablement & Mentorship: created a collaborative governance model for designers and devs; facilitated structured critiques and pairing sessions to raise the collective UX bar.
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Web / UI Designer
Brand & Web Execution: designed and established the digital presence across multiple Progress sub-brands, delivering cohesive website concepts, branding and custom illustrations.
Cross-Functional Delivery: partnered closely with engineering teams to ensure pixel-perfect implementation of web designs, while simultaneously art-directing and producing multimedia marketing assets (video, graphics).
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Product Design Lead
Business Pivot: directed the UX strategy for a marketplace transition into a multi-market platform, scaling the service into Greece and Spain with a unified booking engine.
Funnel Optimisation: reduced bounce rates by 30% through evidence-based booking-flow redesigns, supporting 180k+ annual bookings with a 98.5% satisfaction rate.
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Freelance Art Director & Artist
Creative Direction & Branding: partnered with diverse clients to elevate their digital and physical presence, delivering end-to-end solutions across product & web design, branding, and print materials.
Visual Arts & Aesthetics: maintained an active fine-arts practice, occasionally participating in exhibitions. Leveraged this deep artistic background to bring unique, high-quality visual aesthetics to commercial user-centred designs.
- Skills
- Product Strategy, Design Systems & Optimisation, UI/UX Strategy & Cross-Platform Design (iOS, Android, Web), Design Ops, Mentorship, Accessibility & Inclusive Design, User flows, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Research, Graphic design & illustration, UX writing.
- Tools
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Figma, Figma Make, Adobe CC,
Claude, Claude Code, Gemini, Bolt, ChatGPT.
- Education
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Master of Arts — Illustration, Book and Print Design, National Academy of Arts, Sofia.
BA in Poster and Visual Communication, National Academy of Arts, Sofia.
Erasmus student, Glyndŵr University.
- Languages
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Bulgarian (native).
English.
Recognitions
Thanks for helping to drive forward the agile testing team focussed on website improvements. Your leadership and experience here has been invaluable. Great work!
Poli, your leadership in shaping the Global Design System has not only set the foundation for consistency but has inspired all of us to aim higher — thank you for being the glue holding this vision together.
Truly appreciate your leadership and support during the rebranding initiative! I learned a lot from you that I can apply in my day-to-day activities. It was a pleasure to collaborate and I hope we keep it going in the future!
Poli, your dedication to rebranding is truly inspiring! Your support and hard work are invaluable and make a remarkable difference!