Product Design Leadership · Dubai
16 years leading design across consumer products, crypto, fintech, and government transformation. Built products used by 80M+ people, from strategy to final delivery.
Impact
Perspective
Over 16 years I've lived in the gap between what a business needs and what actually gets built, and closed it. Crypto exchanges. Super-apps. Neobanks. Travel platforms. Regulated banking. Products that millions of people depend on, where the wrong call costs real money and the right one changes a company's trajectory.
I started as a front-end engineer. I know what it costs to build the thing I'm designing. That changes how I design. I scaled the design org at Almosafer from 14 to 25 people. I built Metro Bank's design team from the ground up. I led 11 designers across Careem's super-app. I delivered a neobank MVP at a top 10 crypto exchange that generated $7M in its first eight weeks. I've been the solo IC designing or writing code at midnight and the director in the room where strategy gets set. There's no part of this process I haven't owned.
Selected Work
Top 10 Crypto Exchange · Neo-Banking · 0→1 Launch · 2025
Blank canvas to five-market launch. $7M+ revenue in 8 weeks, 30K+ card orders, 6× weekly transactions. 0→1 product-market fit.
Careem (Uber) · Super App · Subscriptions · 2024
Data-led contextual subscription system. 150% subscriber growth, 96% retention, 4× service usage. Turned a declining metric into a growth engine.
Careem (Uber) · OpenAI · 2025
Rebuilt super-app search on OpenAI. +67% conversion, 94% intent accuracy across 10+ markets and 4 languages.
Metro Bank · UK Retail Banking · AI · 2018
Personetics AI insights. 2.4M+ insights delivered, 80% retention. Shifted average customer balance from negative to positive.
AI Track Record
Beyond the featured work — five more AI products across three companies, four industries, and seven years. From voice biometrics to LLMs to generative design systems.
Companies I've Shaped
These are the people who were in the room, they saw how I work, not just what I delivered.
"Few leaders inspire enough confidence to follow them from one company to another. Jay is incredible at making sense of business chaos for his design team."
Hakeeb Bashorun
Lead Product Designer· Careem & Almosafer
"What sets Jay apart is his rare combination of creative vision and practical execution."
Sam Rapp
Sr. Director of Product Design· Careem
"He is a role model for any design team, not only for his professional impact but for the way he leads with empathy and purpose."
Samantha Hamadeh
Product Marketing Manager· Careem
"If you get the chance to work with him, take it. You won't just improve, you'll level up."
Khussan Djabbarov
Product Designer· Careem
How I Lead
I don't design what looks good in a review. I design what moves numbers in production. If it doesn't trace back to an outcome, it doesn't deliver.
Most rework happens because someone skipped alignment. I make sure the room agrees on where we're going before anyone opens Figma. That's how you deliver fast without throwing work away.
I've left three companies now. Every design org I built kept delivering at the same standard without me. That's not an accident. It's the whole point. I hire people with taste and judgment, then give them the context to own it.
Not a talking point on a slide deck. A genuine competitive edge. Faster exploration, better decisions, less wasted time. The taste and judgment are still mine. The speed is multiplied.
How We Work Together
01
I embed as your Director or VP of Design: setting direction, raising the hiring bar, managing stakeholders, and holding the quality line. You get full leadership without full-time headcount. Your team gets someone who's done this at Careem, Metro Bank, and beyond.
02
You're about to make a big bet: a product pivot, a platform rebuild, a design org restructure, and you need someone in the room who's seen this movie before. Sixteen years of pattern recognition, on demand.
03
Sometimes you don't need advice. You need the work done. Discovery, UX strategy, UI craft, and delivery through RUONALIM, my Dubai-based design studio, backed by a network of world-class designers and developers. From blank page to production-ready, with the same standards I'd hold for my own product.
Beyond the Interface
"The conversations most design leaders have in private, about politics, failure, and the stuff that actually moves a product forward. That's what this show is.", Listener review
Co-hosted with Warren Nugent. This is the podcast for design leaders who are past the portfolio stage: the ones making the calls that shape products, teams, and companies. The messy middle. The trade-offs. The decisions you can't undo.
Design directors, CPOs, and operators from Booking, Careem, Metro Bank, and more. No rehearsed takes. Just real conversations about what it actually takes to lead design at scale.
Listen to the podcastBackground
I started building websites at 15. Got a BSc in Product Design from Brunel, then an MBA with a focus on Digital Banking from Cranfield. Somewhere in between, I stopped being a designer who understood business and became a business leader who happens to think in systems, interfaces, and user behaviour.
I've written production code. I've run design teams of 25+. I've presented to exec boards and I've pushed pixels at 2am. Front-end engineer, IC designer, team lead, design director, co-founder. It's the reason I can walk into any room, at any altitude, and add value immediately.
AI is embedded across my entire workflow. The taste is mine. The throughput is multiplied.