Early. Before a team commits, while the problem can still change shape, while subtraction is cheap. Zero to one with founders.
Fractional design leadership. A steady hand, including the parts nobody writes into the spec: hiring, mentoring, getting reviews to actually review.
When something's drifted. Products that quietly went somewhere nobody meant to go.
Started at Epam in Lviv, the first designer in the office, figuring out the job while doing it. Then SoftServe, mostly enterprise systems for US and UK clients, which meant designing for whatever domain walked through the door. Uncomfortable at first, genuinely useful later.
Then product companies. RingCentral, on the SMB side of a cloud communications platform competing with the likes of Slack and Teams. OpenVPN, where I led design. A design system overhaul, a slow shift away from opinion-driven decisions toward evidence-backed ones, the rest of what leading a team actually involves.
Now running Tau, an independent practice, mostly with early-stage founders.
If your project sounds like a fit, I'll say so. If it doesn't, I'll say that too, usually faster.
zalygaiev@icloud.com