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.

Portfolio

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.