Curriculum Vitae

Experience

Staff Product Designer @ Octopus Deploy

2024 – 2026

Octopus Deploy is an end-to-end solution for releasing, deploying, and operating software at scale. I joined in 2024 as a Staff Product Designer, responsible for maturing Octopus’s design system and the underlying infrastructure that enables designers and engineers ship consistently at speed.

I led the migration from ZeroHeight to Supernova and built the design system’s contribution architecture, including guidelines, pattern templates and a decision log practice, along with communications channels. As a result, engineer documentation appreciation rose by 34%, contributions increased 700% quarter-over-quarter, and trust in the design system rose by 38%, with zero respondents reporting distrust across three consecutive surveys.

I was the leader of Modern Forms Experience, a multi-year initiative to modernise the primary interaction surface across Octopus’s configuration-heavy product, owning pattern guidance, components, and end-to-end migration. I also raised the intersection of AI tooling and the design system ahead of it becoming an organisational priority, and built skills to augment design system contributions and management.

Co-founder and Principal Designer @ Calibre

2017 – 2024

Calibre is a bootstrapped, profitable software as a service platform for measuring and improving web performance. I joined in 2017 in a part-time capacity, became a full-time employee and co-founder in 2020, and co-led the business alongside product and engineering.

As a Principal Designer, I was responsible for design systems, branding, marketing, and product design. I established two design systems with accompanying documentation and usage principles. I designed and managed the end-to-end release process for numerous high-impact features.

As co-founder, I also owned communications, support, product marketing and hiring — running newsletters, changelog and content strategy, building a support framework that sustained a 97-100% satisfaction rate, and authoring a hiring process candidates praised as one of the most considerate they’d encountered.

Design Engineer @ Help Scout

2018 – 2019

Help Scout is a remote organisation building a robust platform for customer support. As a Design Engineer, I was the technical owner of Help Scout’s marketing site and its design system.

Reporting to the Head of Design, I worked closely with Design and Marketing to lead a full rebrand with accompanying guidelines and a new help documentation design. I also managed stakeholders while researching a CMS migration path to make content easier to contribute. Alongside these initiatives, I improved the performance and accessibility of Help Scout’s marketing site and reduced technical debt.

Front-end Developer @ Envato

2016 – 2017

Envato is one of the world’s leading communities for creative assets and tools. I joined the Envato Market team as a front-end developer to rebuild the search and results experience. In that effort, I established a new, modern design system and used it to successfully ship a crucial part of Envato’s product.

Additionally, I coached designers on preparing effective deliverables for implementation and authored front-end standards for other developers to follow.

Design Lead @ &yet

2013 – 2015

&yet is a creative agency offering design and software development expertise as well as building their own products. Reporting to the CEO, my primary responsibilities were leading the design through mentoring, strategic decision-making and hands-on visual design work. This involved managing the design discovery process, conceptualising (through wireframes and prototypes), visual design execution and, in some cases, front-end implementation.

During my time, I designed interfaces for several products, such as Talky (a video chat and screen sharing platform) and And Bang (a pre-Slack team communication tool). I also created a design system and authored the accompanying CSS framework to help the team build maintainable, cohesive products without prior design knowledge.

Product Designer @ Nodejitsu

2012 – 2013

Nodejitsu (acquired by GoDaddy) was one of the first cloud platforms as a service, providing hosting for Node.js applications. As a Product Designer I reported directly to the CEO and CTO, translating their vision for the product, brand and marketing into reality. I’ve remotely collaborated with engineers to design and implement the front-end of the product dashboard, providing an easy-to-use way to deploy and run Node.js applications. I was also responsible for designing and updating Nodejitsu’s marketing website.

Career timeline

Community experience

• Conference speaker

  Spoke at over 50 events worldwide, including Creative Mornings, Web Directions, DDD, Tech Inclusion, Nordic.js, CSSConf, JSConf, and Future of Web Design.

• Event director and organiser

  Organised over 15 industry-leading conferences with six-figure budgets, including JSConf Australia, JSConf Europe, and CSSConf Oakland.

• Writer

  Published on numerous design and development publications, such as .net Magazine, Smashing Magazine, Adobe, Offscreen, Creative Bloq, Shop Talk Show, Uses This, Hack Design, and more.

Education

• BA in Human Computer Interaction

  2007 – 2010, Jagiellonian University

References

Contact details available on request.

• Mandy Michael, Lead Software Engineer @ Octopus Deploy

  Colleague in the same team

• Ellen Poutanen, Senior Product Designer @ Octopus Deploy

  Coached by Karolina

• Ben Schwarz, CEO @ Calibre

  Managed Karolina

• Buzz Usborne, Principal Product Designer @ Help Scout

  Colleague in a different team