Staff Product Designer

Siarhei
Makarau

Portrait of Siarhei Makarau

At a glance

16+

Years in Product & UX Design

15+

Products and Platforms

6

Product Domains, Enterprise to AI

3

Companies, Startup to Global

What I Bring to a Team

Product Strategy
Problem Framing · Discovery · 0→1 Definition · Vision · Roadmap Influence
Design Leadership
Alignment · Critique Culture · Mentoring · Standards · Multi-Team Consistency
Experience Strategy
Information Architecture · Complex Workflows · Service Journeys · Design Systems
Evidence and Outcomes
Hypotheses · Success Metrics · Validation Loops · Decisions from Evidence
Design Engineering
Working Prototypes in React, TypeScript, Node.js, Python
Complex Product Systems
B2B · Enterprise Software · Expert Users · Human-in-the-Loop AI

About me

I’m a staff product designer who brings clarity to complex products, from strategy to delivery.

I partner with product and engineering leaders to shape direction, align business and user needs, and design critical workflows. I stay hands-on, turning ideas into working solutions.

Across 16+ years, I’ve worked on 15+ products across six domains, from startups to global enterprises, combining strategic thinking, systems perspective, and hands-on design.

Method

Think beyond the interface. Shape the system.

I connect human needs, business strategy, and technical realities to identify where product change creates the greatest value. I look beyond individual touchpoints to understand workflows, dependencies, and the wider ecosystem.

I turn that understanding into product direction: aligning stakeholders, challenging assumptions, resolving complexity, and establishing patterns that scale across teams and products.

Design × Engineering

AI-fluent. Product-minded. Hands-on.

I use code and AI to move from product decisions to working solutions. With 16+ years in product design and six years of coding experience, I bridge product strategy, design, and engineering.

  • Full-stack understanding

    I work across React, TypeScript, Node.js, and Python. Understanding how front end and back end fit together helps me prototype realistic workflows, evaluate AI-generated code, and make informed product decisions.

  • Cross-platform execution

    I prototype experiences across web, mobile, and native integrations, testing how products behave across platforms and technical constraints.

  • Prototype to production

    I deploy working prototypes to cloud and local environments using Docker, making ideas tangible for product and engineering teams and helping validate solutions before committing to full-scale development.

Teams I led

2022–2023

EPAM Systems · Poland

Principal Product Designer

12 designers

Led 12 designers as head of design for EPAM’s Warsaw office while staying hands-on with enterprise product work. Set direction through critique, helped designers resolve ambiguous requirements, and aligned product and engineering partners around experiences they could implement.

2018–2020

EPAM Systems · Belarus

Lead Experience Designer

4 designers

Led four designers and stayed hands-on across EPAM Anywhere and Schlumberger. Set direction for multi-role journeys and aligned product, engineering, service, and domain partners around clear, consistent workflows.

2016–2018

Zensoft IO

Head of Design

15 people

Led a multidisciplinary group of designers, product managers, and front-end engineers. Rebuilt Zensoft’s flagship experience with product and engineering, turned the work into a reusable design system, and mentored designers on both project decisions and career growth.

Work

Selected work

A closer look at the problems I've tackled, ideas I've shaped, and products I've helped bring to life.

Contact

Have something in mind?

Have a challenge worth solving or an idea worth exploring? I'd love to hear about it.