I research, design, and build products teams actually ship.
Looking for my next full-time role
I'm a product designer and engineer who helps ambitious teams ship bold products without compromising quality.
Eight years embedded with cross-functional teams across gaming, fintech, consumer apps, and government digital services. Design is my craft, but I rarely stay in one lane: I move from research to design to front-end code, and I'm happiest building the systems, templates, and tools that let everyone around me ship faster and stay coherent.
How I work alongside a team:
- Shape strategy with PMs and engineering, without drowning anyone in docs.
- Build high-fidelity prototypes the whole team can react to.
- Ship production front-end myself, from reusable UI components to performance-tuned custom code.
- Build design systems and templates the team keeps extending long after I've moved on.
- Use AI daily, and build my own tools with it when the off-the-shelf ones fall short.
Capabilities
Product Design Design Systems Web Design Mobile Service Design User Research Games Research Brand & Identity Games UX/UI Prototyping Product Management Frontend
Approach
01
Understand before designing.Workshops, interviews, and LUMA facilitation to frame the real problem with the team and build empathy before any screen gets made. The right question beats the right answer.
02
Shape what gets built, and where it fits.Scope initiatives, write user stories, and align stakeholders, then step back a level: will this scale across the product, should it be a shared pattern instead of a one-off? Decisions hold when everyone agrees on what's being built and why.
03
Make things to think with.A working prototype ends debates that a hundred frames can't. I build them fast, increasingly with AI in the loop, to learn alongside the team rather than present at them.
04
Sit next to engineering.Pair with devs, write enough frontend to keep specs honest, and hand off what's actually buildable.
05
Build scaffolding, not just screens.Tokens, components, and templates so the next person, designer or not, can ship on-brand without me in the room. Good systems make the work repeatable.
06
Share as we go.Loom walkthroughs, Figma comments, preview deploys. No surprise reveals at the end of the sprint.
Experience
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In their words
Kosta is a fast, efficient, thorough operator and a pleasure to work with. Over 12 months I've found him to be an excellent designer, continuously going above and beyond expectations. Dedicated, passionate, deeply knowledgeable, creative, and often provides the kind of constructive feedback that lifts the whole product suite.
Nicholas Malcolm Web3 Product Management, Illuvium
Kosta brings industry rigour into the classroom. His students leave with a sharper eye and a clearer sense of what it actually takes to ship design work that matters.
Susannah Emery Course Coordinator, Adelaide University
As our Lead Designer, Kosta was the quiet engine behind a lot of what made PLAYA3ULL feel like a real product. Strategic when we needed strategy, fast when we needed pixels, and always raising the bar on everyone else.
Tom Griffin COO, PLAYA3ULL Games
Kosta takes fuzzy, ambitious briefs and turns them into something we can actually ship. He cares about the craft, moves quickly, and isn't precious about his work. A rare combination in a designer.
Kieran Warwick CEO, Illuvium
One of the strongest product designers I've had on my team. Kosta pairs sharp visual judgement with real product thinking, and he's generous with both. The work around him got better because of it.
Florian Charnace Head of Design, Illuvium
Latest notes
Notes on product, design and craft. Short writings from the day-to-day.