Igor Šalagin · Job Applications · June 2026

Job Applications In-house roles

73 applications tracked - 23 sent, 3 replied, 1 rejected. Click any row to expand.

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Wise (Global money transfer & fintech) EN
Senior Product Manager - Customer Reporting · Tallinn · Full-time
Applied Jul 8 Fit 3.5/5 57+ applicants
Apply via LinkedIn → Wise Tallinn · Full-time · PM role (not design - pivot)
Salary
€5,850 - 7,250/mo gross (stated)
Salary ask
€6,500/mo gross€78,000/yr grossMid-range of stated band
Why
  • Best brand + highest stated salary in this batch
  • Tax reporting across 50+ markets = making complexity invisible - exactly what UX/product design does
  • Estonian freelancer and Wise user - inside the product's actual user base
  • B2C/B2B dual-audience on same data surface - familiar from Bidmii (homeowners + contractors)
Risks
  • No formal PM title on CV - significant stretch for "Senior PM" at Wise scale
  • 5+ years PM experience required - Igor has 0 years PM title
  • 57+ applicants - competitive pool at a well-known company
Subject
Senior PM - Customer Reporting - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 - The problem I know from the inside
Filing Q2 taxes as a cross-border freelancer means Upwork CSV in USD, a GBP invoice, an Estonian declaration, and a Wise transaction log - all needing to reconcile into one picture. I've lived this problem for seven years. Designing the product that makes it disappear is the kind of work I'd actually want to show up for.
Hook 2 - The export my friend never has to explain
A friend of mine has been on Wise for years. He told me once that it's the only platform whose export he hands to his accountant without explaining it first. That kind of trust - the kind that removes a step the user didn't know they were dreading - is genuinely hard to build. I want to be involved in extending it.
Hook 3 - Seven years, same quarterly complexity
Seven years of international clients from a Tallinn business account means seven years of multi-currency, multi-source quarterly accounting. I know this problem well enough to have opinions about how to solve it - which is exactly why working on the product that's building the answer sounds like the right kind of work.
Hook 4 - Making necessary complexity disappear
The most interesting design challenge in financial products isn't the visual layer - it's making necessary complexity disappear so completely that users don't think about it anymore. Tax compliance for cross-border freelancers is invisible work that takes visible time. Designing that time away is the kind of brief I'd want on my desk.
Hook 5 - Watching it from outside, thinking about the inside
My friend's been on Wise for years and keeps telling me I'll switch eventually. I've been watching the product closely, thinking about making the move, and somewhere along the way found myself more curious about what designing it looks like from the inside than about the product itself as a user.
Hook 6 - "You'll switch eventually"
My friend has been on Wise for four years. Every time my banking setup comes up, he says the same thing: "You'll switch eventually." Two years of hearing that and I still haven't - but the reason I keep coming back to think about it is the reporting and financial clarity piece, which is exactly the area your squad is building. That's not a coincidence.
Hook 7 - Watching it get better from the outside
I've been watching Wise evolve through a friend who uses it. I noticed when the product got cleaner. Noticed when it got cleaner again. There's something compelling about a product that improves that visibly and consistently toward something better - it makes me want to be on the inside of what comes next.
Hook 8 - Two different experiences worth designing for
Receiving money internationally and having a genuinely clear picture of your financial position are two different experiences. The design problem in between - how you get someone from transaction complete to financially oriented - is the kind of challenge I find interesting. It's subtle, it's hard, and it compounds across every user who crosses borders for work.
Hook 9 - Trust is built one interaction at a time
Trust in financial products is earned one small interaction at a time - and the reporting and clarity layer is where that trust either deepens or stalls. Designing that consistently, across different financial situations and user contexts, is where I've spent most of my career. Wise's reporting product is that challenge at meaningful scale.
Hook 10 - A product heading somewhere interesting
There's a specific energy around products that are clearly heading somewhere - where you can feel the direction even mid-journey. My friend uses Wise, I've been watching it closely for a while, and I find myself genuinely curious about the inside of where the financial clarity and reporting work is going next. That curiosity is what made me apply.
Letter

Hi Wise Customer Reporting team,

A friend of mine has been on Wise for four years. Every time I ask why he doesn't just use his bank, he says the same thing: "You'll switch eventually." I've been thinking about switching for about two years now. I've opened the app a few times, watched it rename itself, seen it redesign twice, watched it get closer. The reporting surface is the part that still holds me back - it still feels built for a compliance team, not for the person who just needs to know where their money went quarter to quarter. I want to work on fixing that from the inside.

The problem your reporting squad is closing isn't a missing-data problem. It's an irrelevance problem. The data exists across four sources - Upwork export, GBP invoice, Wise transaction log, Estonian tax declaration - and none of it talks to each other without someone manually becoming a part-time accountant. The traditional approach to cross-border income reporting has become irrelevant; what hasn't caught up yet is the product experience that proves it.

The most relevant work I can point to here is Bidmii, a Canadian home-services marketplace I was embedded in from 2020 to 2022. The product complexity was always about making money moving between parties legible - homeowners, contractors, platform, payouts - in a way that felt simple and trustworthy even when the underlying transactions weren't. We contributed to a $1M pre-seed raise, got 5,700+ users on platform, and moved leads up by 52%. Not because we made it pretty. Because we made the financial state of the product readable at a glance.

Seven years of international clients from a Tallinn business account means seven years of this reconciliation problem on personal repeat. I'm not designing from a persona. I'm designing from the quarterly pain of having four data sources where there should be one view.

Two things I'm genuinely curious about: where does your team see the biggest gap between what freelancers and small business owners actually need from the reporting surface and what's currently there? And how much of the roadmap is driven by power-user needs versus the occasional-transfer user who does one thing a month?

Looking forward to connecting.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Bob W (Tech-enabled hospitality · direct booking growth) EN
Product Manager, Commercial Growth · Tallinn · Hybrid
Applied Jul 8 Fit 3/5
Apply at Bob W → bobw.co · Hybrid Tallinn · Estonian work authorization required
Salary
Not stated. Application form asks for monthly gross expectations.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossSenior IC PM at growth-stage startup
Why
  • Forest Hotel case study - direct booking funnel redesign, 20-25 reservations/month - exact domain overlap
  • 40+ Airbnb stays = genuine hospitality user perspective from supply AND demand side
  • Best case study fit in this batch - strongest opening hook
  • Funnel/conversion design work maps directly to commercial growth PM brief
  • Hybrid Tallinn = accessible role, no relocation
Risks
  • No formal PM title - same gap as other PM roles in this batch
  • 4+ yrs PM experience required
  • Strong data/analytics requirement - Igor's analytics experience is design-side, not SQL/BI tooling depth
Subject
Product Manager, Commercial Growth - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
20 options - pick one
Hook 1 - Airbnb personal
I've stayed in 40+ Airbnbs over seven years. Developed strong opinions about every check-in flow, every booking confirmation, every "welcome" email. Bob W is the first hospitality brand that's made me genuinely want to switch.
Hook 2 - Forest Hotel + Bob W scale
Forest Hotel gets 20-25 direct bookings a month because we built a site that made guests feel the place before they arrived. Bob W is trying to do that across a footprint that's meant to more than double by 2027. Same design problem, different scale.
Hook 3 - Airbnb as baseline
Seven years of Airbnb stays taught me what the baseline is for flexible hospitality UX. Most hotel brands haven't touched it. Bob W is the exception - and I'd like to understand how you're thinking about holding that standard as you scale.
Hook 4 - Expansion as product problem
Doubling a hospitality footprint by 2027 isn't a real estate problem. It's a product problem - every new property has to feel like the same brand, same promise, same experience. That's the design challenge I'd want to be in the room for.
Hook 5 - Airbnb trust angle
Forty-something Airbnb stays. The one thing every good one had in common: the booking experience matched the actual experience. Bob W is building that coherence at a brand level, not just a listing level - and I've been paying attention.
Hook 6 - Forest Hotel outcome, Bob W scale
The last hospitality project I worked on went from OTA-dependent to 20-25 direct reservations monthly. The shift wasn't the design - it was convincing the guest that the direct channel was worth trusting. Bob W is that problem at a different order of magnitude.
Hook 7 - Personal stake + product curiosity
Seven years of Airbnb stays means I've developed a very specific instinct about what makes flexible accommodation feel like a deliberate product choice rather than a logistical one. I'm curious whether Bob W thinks about that distinction explicitly.
Hook 8 - Expansion sequencing
More than doubling a footprint by end of 2027 means the product and brand systems have to be ready before the properties are. I'd want to understand how Bob W is thinking about that sequencing - whether design is leading the expansion or catching up to it.
Hook 9 - Brand intimacy at scale
Forty Airbnb stays and counting. The hardest thing a multi-property brand can do is feel intimate at every individual property without a host personality carrying it. Bob W seems closer to solving that than anyone else in the category.
Hook 10 - Direct / honest
My Airbnb habit has been running for seven years. I know what the experience feels like when it works and when it doesn't. Bob W is building something that could genuinely replace it - and I'd like to help build the product side of that.
Hook 11 - Forest Hotel, direct booking trust
Forest Hotel had a Booking.com problem - not because the platform wasn't working, but because every OTA reservation is a guest the property never really met. Building a direct channel people actually trusted was the whole brief. 20-25 reservations a month later, they had one.
Hook 12 - "Bob is your friend" as product bet
"Bob is your friend in travel" is a product bet, not a marketing one. A friend doesn't hand you a terms and conditions page before they help you. The entire product stack has to earn that relationship - booking flow, loyalty mechanics, post-stay communication - before the guest decides whether Bob kept the promise.
Hook 13 - Brother at Bob W Tallinn
My brother stayed at a Bob W in Tallinn last spring. His exact words: "It's like the building actually knows you're a guest." That's a product standard, not a brand one. I'd like to understand how you build it deliberately - and consistently - across a footprint that's doubling by 2027.
Hook 14 - 2027 infrastructure framing
The booking and loyalty systems that work at 2,000 apartments won't work the same way at 4,000. The product decisions that feel like edge cases today become load-bearing infrastructure fast. Bob W's 2027 footprint target makes that problem urgent rather than theoretical.
Hook 15 - OTA dependency as business model bet
Every reservation through an OTA is a guest you never really own. Bob W's bet is that the direct channel - and the loyalty relationship behind it - is worth more than the distribution advantage. Building the product that makes that bet pay off is a specific kind of design problem.
Hook 16 - NextCrew multi-stakeholder parallel
Four years at NextCrew taught me what it costs to design a product where workers, managers, dispatchers, and payroll integrations all have different mental models of what "done" looks like. Bob W has the same multi-stakeholder complexity - guest, property, operations, loyalty - one product serving all of them.
Hook 17 - Brand intimacy at scale
The hardest thing a multi-property hospitality brand can do is make every individual property feel like it was designed for you specifically - without a host personality doing the heavy lifting. That's an infrastructure problem disguised as a brand problem.
Hook 18 - Guest-outward product logic
Most hospitality software was built for the property manager, not the guest. The guest-facing layer is almost always a wrapper on something that was never meant to be seen. Bob W seems to be building from the guest outward. That's a different starting point - and a harder one to get right.
Hook 19 - Trust mechanics, Forest Hotel
Getting a guest to book direct instead of through an OTA isn't a conversion optimization problem. It's a trust problem - you have to convince someone to bypass the safety net they already know. Forest Hotel taught me what those trust mechanics actually look like in practice.
Hook 20 - Design systems + footprint doubling
When you're doubling your footprint by 2027, the question isn't just which markets - it's whether the product experience scales with the properties. Brand coherence at 4,000 apartments is a design systems problem as much as a strategy one.
Letter

Hi Bob W team,

Bob W is building something specific: boutique apartment hotels where the direct booking relationship replaces the OTA dependency, and loyalty mechanics replace the transactional stay. That's not a property management play - it's a trust infrastructure play. The whole product has to earn the kind of relationship a friend has with you before you've paid them anything.

"Bob is your friend in travel" is a product philosophy before it's a tagline. A real friend in travel doesn't surface terms and conditions before the experience - they give you the right room, remember your preferences, and make you feel like the stay was designed for you specifically. The booking flow, the loyalty mechanics, the post-stay communication: those have to deliver that feeling before the guest ever checks in. My brother stayed at a Bob W in Tallinn last spring. He texted me: "It's like the building actually knows you're a guest." That's the product standard you're holding yourselves to, and it's a hard one to build.

The most directly relevant thing I can point to is Forest Hotel in Lithuania - a boutique property I built a direct-booking site for. The brief was: make the website the most trusted booking channel the property has, not a fallback from Booking.com. Result: 20-25 direct reservations a month. That's the same commercial question Bob W is working on, at a different scale.

The hook in your roadmap that interests me most: the plan to more than double footprint by end of 2027. The booking and loyalty systems that work at 2,000 apartments don't work the same way at 4,000. The product decisions that feel like edge cases now become load-bearing infrastructure fast. That's the kind of scaling problem where getting the product architecture right before the growth hits is everything.

I also spent four years embedded in NextCrew (2022-2024), a staffing SaaS where the product complexity was multi-role: workers, managers, dispatchers, payroll integrations - all in one product, all with different mental models of what "done" looks like. 2.5x sales increase over the contract. The parallel to Bob W's multi-stakeholder product (guest, property, operations, loyalty) is more than surface-level.

Two things I'd want to understand better: how are you thinking about the loyalty mechanics as footprint scales - is it a centralized program or does it flex per property? And where does the product team currently feel the most friction between the guest-facing experience and the operations layer underneath it?

Looking forward to the next steps.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Creditstar Group (European fintech · lending/savings · SmartSaver) EN
Senior Product Manager - Investments & Funding · Tallinn · Remote
Applied Fit 2.5/5 57 applicants
Apply via LinkedIn Easy Apply → LinkedIn · 57 applicants · 1 month ago - verify listing is still active
Salary
Not stated. Estonian fintech - estimate €4,500-6,500/mo gross for Senior PM.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossSenior PM at EEA fintech - reasonable anchor
Why
  • Estonian company, pan-European - local market context advantage
  • Financial trust UX is the core design challenge Igor has navigated across fintech/marketplace work
  • SmartSaver savings product = user trust problem before it's a feature problem
Risks
  • No PM title - same pattern as all roles in this batch
  • 5+ yrs PM required, investments/fintech domain-specific
  • Listing is 1 month old - may have filled or be closing
Subject
Senior PM - Investments & Funding - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
15 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Trust gap
The obstacle between someone keeping money in a current account and starting to invest isn't the interest rate - it's the "is this safe?" question they can't shake. SmartSaver's job is to answer that question with the product experience before they ever read the terms. That's a trust design brief, and it's where I've spent most of my career.
Hook 2 - Multi-market complexity
Creditstar has been scaling across EEA markets since before it was fashionable. Building a savings product that earns regulatory trust in Switzerland and consumer trust in Lithuania at the same time requires product thinking that's different from a single-market startup. The multi-jurisdiction constraint is the interesting part.
Hook 3 - Intention to action gap
The fintech products that actually move user behavior do it by shrinking the gap between "I should do this" and "I just did this." For investing, that gap is enormous - most people agree they should invest and do nothing. The product question is how you design the step from intention to action to be so small it just happens.
Hook 4 - Financial trust mechanics
I've designed for financial and near-financial products for seven years: payroll-adjacent workflows, marketplace payments, digital service platforms. The trust mechanics are consistent: perceived safety, transparency, and clarity of outcome. Those don't change across verticals.
Hook 5 - Estonian market context
Estonian company, multi-European operation, English-first working environment. I'm based in Tallinn, have operated across European markets, and understand the local market context that Creditstar is built on.
Hook 6 - I am the user
I have a Wise account, a small ETF portfolio I set up three years ago and haven't touched, and a mental tab permanently open titled "should invest more." I am SmartSaver's user. I know exactly what makes me open a savings app and what makes me close it without doing anything. That either makes me useless for this role or the most relevant person in the room - I've been trying to figure out which.
Hook 7 - I signed up first
I signed up for SmartSaver before sending this application. I wanted to see the product, not read about it. The thing that stayed with me was the post-deposit confirmation state - it's warmer than it needs to be for a financial product. Someone made a specific decision about how a user should feel in the thirty seconds after putting their money somewhere new. I'd like to meet whoever that was.
Hook 8 - Freelancer problem
Seven years of freelancing means irregular income, no employer pension, and no automatic contributions to anything. The months I actually did something productive with my money were the months when the product made it feel less like a financial decision and more like pressing a button. That gap - between "I should" and "I just did" - is the exact design problem Creditstar is working on. It's the one I want to spend the next few years on.
Hook 9 - Tallinn local
I've lived in Tallinn for most of my adult life, so I watched Creditstar grow from a local lending operation into a pan-European fintech from closer range than most. I knew the company name before I knew the product, which tells you something about the brand. What surprised me when I actually looked at SmartSaver was how different the product problem is from the lending side - lending is take-it-now, saving is convince-me-slowly. I want to work on the slower, harder one.
Hook 10 - What this role actually is
Most PM roles I see are "ship features fast" or "manage stakeholders while pretending to ship features." This one reads differently. Investments and Funding at a pan-European savings platform means getting people to do something most of them find confusing and slightly terrifying, then making them glad they did. That's behavioral design work with real financial stakes. I haven't seen that framed this clearly in a job description in a long time.
Hook 11 - Multi-market as trust problem
The multi-market complexity is what I keep coming back to when I think about this role. An Estonian user and a Spanish user might both want to grow their savings, but what makes each of them trust a platform with real money is different - not just in regulation, but in the mental model they bring to the product. That's not a localization problem. It's a trust architecture problem. It's also the most interesting challenge I've seen in a JD in a long time.
Hook 12 - Products that stick
The financial products I actually keep using have one thing in common: at some point, they stopped feeling like financial products. They became tools I use without thinking twice. Getting from "I should look at this" to "I already did it" is where most savings apps fail quietly and permanently. I think SmartSaver is working on exactly that gap. That's the job I want.
Hook 13 - Honest stretch
I'm not going to pretend this is a perfect fit on paper. My background is design, not a PM title. But seven years making product decisions alongside founders at small-company scale means the design work and the PM work are usually the same conversation. Whether that translates at Creditstar's scale is a real question - and honestly, it's the first thing I'd want to talk through if we meet.
Hook 14 - Confirmation moment
Most savings products treat the post-signup moment like a receipt - something functional you print and file away. SmartSaver treats it differently. There's warmth there that I didn't expect and couldn't stop thinking about. That's not an accident; it's a product decision. It means someone on the team understands that trust isn't built by the interest rate, it's built by the feeling after the first transaction. That's the kind of product thinking I want to be part of.
Hook 15 - Close to home accountability
Creditstar's headquarters are in Tallinn. I'm in Tallinn. The Estonian fintech ecosystem is small enough that I've heard the company name in conversations I wasn't invited to - which is either a good sign or just a sign that I go to too many of the same networking events. Either way, if I'm wrong about something in this application, I'm wrong about something close to home. That's a different kind of accountable.
Letter

Hi Creditstar Group team,

The obstacle between someone keeping money in a savings account earning nothing and moving it into SmartSaver isn't the interest rate. It's the "but is it actually safe?" question they can't shake - not because the product is unsafe, but because nothing in the experience has answered it yet. That's a trust design brief. And I've spent seven years building products where trust is the load-bearing element: financial workflows, marketplace payments, compliance-adjacent UX, multi-party transactions where one moment of doubt loses the user permanently.

The part of SmartSaver's challenge I find most interesting is the EEA multi-market complexity. Earning regulatory trust in Switzerland and consumer trust in Lithuania at the same time requires a different kind of product thinking than a single-market startup. The constraint is the interesting part - you can't just localize the surface; you have to localize the trust architecture itself. Estonian company running pan-European operations: I know that context from the inside, not from a market research deck.

The most transferable work: four years embedded in NextCrew (2022-2024), a workforce management platform where payroll-adjacent workflows meant every UX decision had compliance implications and every clarity failure had real financial consequences. 2.5x sales growth over the engagement. Before that, Bidmii (2020-2022) - a Canadian marketplace where financial trust between homeowners and contractors was the core product problem. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users.

The gap SmartSaver is closing - between "I know I should invest" and "I just did it" - is where product design either earns its keep or doesn't. Most saving products assume the user has already resolved the hesitation. The ones that actually move behavior are the ones that design that resolution into the product flow itself.

Two questions I'd genuinely want to explore: how does SmartSaver currently handle the trust-building moment for users who've never invested before and aren't sure they should? And how much of the product roadmap is shaped by the regulatory differences between markets versus the behavioral differences between user segments?

Ready to dig deeper with your team - whenever works.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Pipedrive (CRM SaaS · sales pipeline · 100K+ customers · Tallinn HQ) EN
Product Designer - Design Systems · Tallinn · On-site / Hybrid
Applied Jul 9 Fit 4/5 EE
Apply via Startup Jobs → Also listed on UI/UX Jobs Board · Tallinn on-site · Verify listing still active before applying
Salary
Not stated. Pipedrive Tallinn designer estimate: €4,000-5,500/mo gross.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossDesigner (not lead/principal) at large established tech co - mid-senior anchor
Why
  • Tallinn engineering hub - 300+ people locally, one of Estonia's flagship tech companies
  • Design systems: Igor built from scratch at Bidmii (full component library, states, docs, Figma-native) and maintained system across 4yr NextCrew engagement
  • Frontend fluency (HTML/CSS) = real differentiator in a DS role working directly with React devs
  • CRM users = salespeople under time pressure - Igor has 7 years of designing for commercial outcome-focused users
Risks
  • More narrowly focused than Igor's full-stack design preference - long-term DS-only scope may feel constraining
  • 300+ person company = less autonomy than solo-designer embedded engagements
  • No CRM case studies in portfolio - verify listing still open before investing full effort
Subject
Product Designer (Design Systems) - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - System as language
Design systems don't fail at the component level. They fail when the team that's supposed to use them doesn't feel like the system is theirs. The gap between "we have a design system" and "the product feels consistent" is almost always a documentation and adoption problem, not a missing component. I've built and maintained systems across two multi-year embedded engagements - and the most valuable thing I learned is that a design system is a shared language, and languages only work if people feel invited in.
Hook 2 - CRM as human surface
Pipedrive's users are salespeople. Their relationship with their CRM is different from any other tool: used under time pressure, during live conversations, often on a second screen while talking to a prospect. Design system components built for that context have to earn their place differently than most enterprise software. The stakes of a confusing interaction are measured in deals, not complaints.
Hook 3 - Dev partnership
The role sits at the boundary between design system and React component implementation. I write HTML and CSS well enough to have real conversations with front-end engineers about implementation constraints - not just hand off specs and wait. The gap between design intention and implementation reality is where most design systems quietly degrade over time. I close that gap by being in the conversation early.
Hook 4 - Scale without drift
When a design system has to serve 300+ people across multiple product squads and multiple platforms, the challenge isn't the components - it's drift. How does the system stay canonical without becoming a bureaucracy that slows product squads down? That's the question I'd want to work on from the inside at Pipedrive's scale.
Hook 5 - Tallinn context
Tallinn-based, available on-site. Seven years working alongside founders and small commercial teams who rely on sales process tools tells me something about who Pipedrive's users are and what their actual tolerance for complexity is - not from a persona, but from real client conversations across 100+ projects.
Letter

Hi Pipedrive team,

Design systems don't fail at the component level. They fail when the team that's supposed to use them doesn't feel like the system is theirs. The gap between "we have a design system" and "the product feels consistent" is almost always a documentation and adoption problem, not a missing component. I've built and maintained systems across two multi-year embedded engagements - and the most valuable thing I learned is that a design system is a shared language, and languages only work if people feel invited in.

At Bidmii (2020-2022) I built the complete system from scratch: full component library, interaction states, spacing tokens, Figma-native documentation, handoff specs. The system had to cover both the public-facing website and the SaaS product under a single visual language. +52% lift in leads post-redesign, $1M pre-seed contributed to with the team, 5,700+ users onboarded. At NextCrew (2022-2024) I maintained design ownership across a 4-year engagement as the company repositioned from SMB to enterprise - which meant the system had to evolve without breaking the consistency existing users relied on. 2.5x sales growth.

The part of this role I find specifically interesting is the developer partnership layer. I write HTML and CSS well enough to have real conversations about implementation constraints - not just hand off specs and wait. The gap between design intention and React component reality is where design systems quietly degrade. I've learned to close that gap by being in the conversation early, not at the review stage.

Three things I'd want to understand about how Pipedrive approaches this: how does the design system handle product squads that need to move quickly and deviate from canonical components? Is there a defined path for promoting a squad-level component into the system, or is that still case-by-case? And is the Figma library and the live React component library treated as one canonical source or maintained separately?

Looking forward to connecting.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Reiterate (Fintech startup · payment reconciliation automation · €4bn+ in payments) EN
Product Designer (mid-senior) · Tallinn · Hybrid
Not Pursuing - Expired (listed May 2026) Fit 3.5/5 EE
Apply via UI/UX Jobs Board → UI/UX Jobs Board · Central Tallinn office · Very small team (<5 people) · Verify listing active
Salary
Not stated. Early-stage fintech startup estimate: €3,500-4,800/mo gross + equity.
Salary ask
€4,500/mo gross€54,000/yr grossEarly-stage anchor - confirm equity component in first conversation
Why
  • Sole designer at a startup = Igor's highest-fit operating model: full scope, no committee reviews, full design ownership
  • Payment reconciliation UX = compliance-adjacent, high-stakes workflow design - mirrors NextCrew payroll work exactly
  • Central Tallinn office, small team, can own design direction from day one
  • €4bn+ in payments with <5 people = strong PMF signal before any scale investment
Risks
  • Very early stage - team size risk, funding runway unknown
  • No payment reconciliation or finance automation case studies specifically
  • Finance team users have zero tolerance for errors - high design standard expected
Subject
Product Designer - Reiterate - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Month-end close
Month-end close is the finance team's sprint. Every data point has to be right. Every reconciliation discrepancy has to be found, explained, or resolved before anyone goes home. The design challenge isn't to make the product beautiful - it's to make the person running the close feel like the tool is on their side at the worst moment of the month. That requires a specific kind of trust design: not in the brand, not in the feature set - trust in the output of every single reconciliation run.
Hook 2 - Boring on purpose
The best finance tools are boring on purpose. Finance teams don't want their reconciliation platform to surprise them. They want it to do exactly what it said it would do, every time, with no ambiguity about what happened or why. That's a different design brief than most product roles - and one I find more interesting than most.
Hook 3 - Scale without headcount
Fewer than five people. Over four billion euros in payments. That product-to-headcount ratio tells me something important: the core technology already works at scale. The design question is how to make four billion euros in automated reconciliation feel like it's under the finance director's control - not just running in the background.
Hook 4 - Compliance-adjacent UX
Four years at NextCrew, a staffing SaaS where every UX decision had payroll compliance implications. A mistake in the workflow wasn't a friction point - it was a missed payroll run. The same stakes translate directly to payment reconciliation: errors are measured in real money, not user complaints. That's the design environment I'm used to.
Hook 5 - Finance team as user type
Finance team users are peculiar: they know their domain better than any designer will, they're impatient with onboarding, and they trust their own process over any software's suggestions. Designing for them means earning trust incrementally, not asking them to change how they work. I've been doing that across compliance, payroll, and financial workflows for seven years.
Letter

Hi Reiterate team,

Month-end close is the finance team's sprint. Every data point has to be right. Every reconciliation discrepancy has to be found, explained, or resolved before anyone goes home. The design challenge isn't to make the product beautiful - it's to make the person running the close feel like the tool is on their side at the exact moment the pressure is highest. That requires trust design at the output level - trust in what the reconciliation result actually says, not just in the interface around it.

The most direct parallel in my work: four years at NextCrew (2022-2024), a workforce management SaaS where every UX decision had payroll compliance implications. A confusing field or an ambiguous confirmation wasn't a UX issue - it was a financial error downstream. I owned all design across the engagement as the company repositioned from SMB to enterprise. 2.5x sales growth. At Bidmii (2020-2022) financial transactions ran through every interaction on a two-sided marketplace where the trust stakes were real for both sides. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users. Neither is a reconciliation product, but the discipline is identical: design for a user who can't afford to be wrong, already knows their domain better than I do, and will trust the tool only after it has earned that trust repeatedly.

The product-to-headcount ratio tells me the core technology already works. The design question now is how to make it feel like the finance director is in control - not just that the system is running. That's a visibility and confidence problem, not a feature problem.

Three things I'd want to understand: where does the biggest friction sit for first-time users going through their first close cycle? How do finance teams currently handle the exceptions - the items that don't auto-reconcile? And is the current user base replacing an existing tool or building a new process from scratch?

Ready to dig deeper with your team - whenever works.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Printify (Print-on-demand marketplace · 500K+ merchants · Riga / Tallinn) EN
Senior Product Designer · Tallinn or EMEA Remote · Hybrid
Ready to draft Fit 3.5/5 EE
Apply via MeetFrank → MeetFrank · Also on startup.jobs · 5+ years required (Igor: 7) · Tallinn or Riga office or EMEA remote
Salary
Not stated. Printify Senior PD estimate (Tallinn/Riga): €4,000-5,500/mo gross.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossSenior PD at established marketplace - mid range anchor
Why
  • Two-sided marketplace SaaS - Bidmii is the direct structural parallel (homeowners + contractors = merchants + end buyers)
  • EMEA remote option: Tallinn-based, can work from Tallinn office without relocation
  • 7 years exceeds 5+ year requirement; 100+ projects for small business owners = Printify's exact user
  • Discovery-heavy role (spend significant time in opportunity space) - matches Igor's research-led approach
Risks
  • No e-commerce, merchandise, or print-on-demand portfolio - domain gap is real
  • Larger company than Igor's typical solo-operator environment - more stakeholders, more process
  • Merchant platform experience explicitly expected in JD - Bidmii needs tight framing to bridge this
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Printify - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Platform invisibility
The best marketplace products for small business owners are the ones they stop seeing. Printify's merchants are focused on their creative work, their customers, their margins. A POD platform that keeps pulling attention back to the platform layer is one that hasn't finished its job yet. The best outcome the product can achieve is when the seller forgets it's there.
Hook 2 - Merchant empathy (7 years)
Seven years designing for the exact user Printify serves: founders and small business owners who need to get a commercial product up without becoming platform experts. I've learned what they actually use versus what they ignore, what makes them feel capable versus overwhelmed, and where they go when the tool doesn't answer their question fast enough. That's not theoretical - it's from 100+ projects.
Hook 3 - Bidmii parallel
At Bidmii, the design problem was identical in structure: a two-sided marketplace where homeowners and contractors both had to trust the same platform with entirely different needs. One side came to solve a problem. The other came to run a business. Designing both without breaking either is the specific challenge I know well.
Hook 4 - Discovery focus
The role explicitly asks for someone who spends significant time in the opportunity space before jumping to solutions. That's the most expensive investment a product team can make, and also the one that separates products that keep improving from ones that accumulate features. I've run research-first cycles across every major engagement and built it into how I work.
Hook 5 - Hidden complexity
Print-on-demand has enormous operational complexity under the surface: supplier networks, shipping times, SKU management, quality variation across fulfillment providers. None of that should be visible to a merchant who just wants to sell a hoodie. The design job is to keep all of it invisible without hiding the things merchants actually need to know. That's a UX architecture problem I'd want to work on.
Letter

Hi Printify team,

The best marketplace products for small business owners are the ones they stop seeing. Printify's merchants are focused on their creative work, their customers, their margins. A POD platform that keeps pulling their attention back to the platform layer is one that hasn't finished its job yet. The best outcome the product can achieve is when the seller forgets it's there.

Seven years of designing for the exact user Printify serves: founders and small business owners who need to get a commercial product up without becoming platform experts. I've learned what they actually use versus what they ignore, what makes them feel capable versus overwhelmed, and where they abandon the tool when it doesn't answer their question fast enough. That's not theoretical - it's from over 100 projects for commercial clients.

The closest structural parallel: Bidmii (2020-2022), a two-sided marketplace SaaS where homeowners and contractors both had to trust the same platform with entirely different needs. One side came to solve a problem. The other came to run a business. I owned the full design cycle - research through design system through handoff - across a product that went from prototype to $1M pre-seed and 5,700+ users. At NextCrew (2022-2024), the merchant equivalent - staffing agency owners - needed enterprise-level compliance workflows without losing the operational speed they relied on. 2.5x sales growth.

No print or e-commerce case studies in my portfolio - that's the honest gap. The discipline maps; the specific domain doesn't yet. I'd close it fast.

Two things I'd want to understand: how does Printify currently think about the experience for a merchant in year two - someone past the template but not a power user yet? And where does the biggest gap sit between what merchants try to do on the platform and what the product currently makes straightforward?

Looking forward to the next steps.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Lightyear (Fintech · investment platform · $35M raised · Lightspeed · Jaan Tallinn · Taavet) EN
Product Manager - Platform · Tallinn (Kalamaja) · Hybrid
Ready to draft Fit 3.5/5 EE
Apply via LinkedIn → LinkedIn · Kalamaja Tallinn office + remote option · Stock options (monthly vest after 1yr cliff)
Salary
Not stated. Lightyear PM estimate: €4,500-6,500/mo gross + equity. London equivalent: £73K-113K.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossPM at funded fintech startup - plus equity discussion separately
Why
  • Tallinn startup (Kalamaja) - local context advantage, in-person option
  • Platform PM = infrastructure that makes the product work - Igor understands this as a systems problem
  • Backed by Lightspeed + Jaan Tallinn + Taavet Hinrikus - serious company, serious investors
  • Igor trades personally (Binance/BTC/altcoins, TradingView, cross-currency invoicing) - genuine user empathy, not claimed
Risks
  • No PM title - consistent gap across all PM roles in this batch
  • Platform PM is technical: API contracts, payment flows, banking integrations - need to frame systems thinking as the bridge
  • 22-country regulatory complexity = depth of PM experience expected may be high
Subject
Product Manager - Platform - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Infrastructure as earned trust
Platform PMs work on what customers don't want to think about. The job is to make paying, converting, and withdrawing so frictionless that users stay focused on the thing they came to Lightyear to do: invest. When the infrastructure earns trust - fast, reliable, no ambiguous states - the product layer on top gets to be about investing. When it doesn't, every support ticket is about the platform, not the portfolio. That architecture of earned trust is the job.
Hook 2 - Estonian fintech tradition
Wise built cross-border payments on the insight that the existing infrastructure was built for banks, not people. Pipedrive built CRM on the insight that salespeople needed something different. Lightyear is building on the insight that retail investing in Europe has the same access gap. I've worked in the Estonian tech market long enough to understand what that tradition demands from the products that come out of it.
Hook 3 - Personal investor angle
I trade for my own account - BTC and altcoins on Binance, TradingView as primary charting layer, multi-currency accounts across seven years of international invoicing. I know the operational friction of maintaining positions across platforms and currencies. Lightyear's platform promise is the product I've been waiting for someone to build properly for the European market.
Hook 4 - Cross-currency invisibility
The multi-currency account layer is where Lightyear's user experience lives or dies for European investors. Most people have never had to think about currency conversion as a decision they make - it just happens, usually expensively. Designing the platform layer that makes that invisible without hiding the cost is a trust problem as much as a product problem.
Hook 5 - 22 countries at once
Launching in 22 countries from a Tallinn startup in two years is an infrastructure-first story. The compliance layer, local payment rails, currency handling - those have to work before the investment product earns trust. I've designed across multi-jurisdiction clients for seven years and understand what it means to hold regulatory requirements and user clarity at the same time.
Letter

Hi Lightyear team,

Platform PMs work on what customers don't want to think about. The job is to make paying, converting, and withdrawing so frictionless that users stay focused on the thing they came to Lightyear to do: invest. When the infrastructure earns trust - fast, reliable, no ambiguous states - the product layer on top gets to be about investing. When it doesn't, every support ticket is about the platform, not the portfolio. That architecture of earned trust is the job.

I trade for my own account - BTC and altcoins on Binance, TradingView as primary charting layer, multi-currency accounts across seven years of international invoicing. I know the operational friction of moving money across currencies and platforms. The multi-currency account layer isn't a feature - it's the reason a European investor doesn't have to maintain four separate brokerage accounts the way they did five years ago. I understand why Lightyear's promise matters.

The work that maps most directly: four years embedded at NextCrew (2022-2024), a workforce management SaaS operating across US compliance jurisdictions where the platform layer - payroll processing, timesheet workflows, billing integrations - had to be reliable and invisible so the product surface could focus on experience. 2.5x sales growth. At Bidmii (2020-2022), marketplace payments ran across a two-sided platform where users had to trust the financial infrastructure completely even though the product was early-stage. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users.

The gap: no PM title. The same honest acknowledgment I'd make for any PM role. The systems thinking, stakeholder navigation, and outcome ownership are there from seven years of embedded design partnerships - the formal title isn't yet.

Two things I'd want to understand: how does the platform team manage the tension between moving quickly on new market launches and maintaining reliability on the infrastructure existing users depend on? And where does the biggest user friction currently sit in the payment and conversion flow - is it the currency conversion step, the settlement timing, or something else?

Looking forward to connecting.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

eAgronom (AgTech / ClimaTech · carbon reporting for farmers · EU carbon markets) EN
Senior Product Designer · Tallinn · Hybrid Remote
Ready to draft Fit 3/5 EE
Apply via MeetFrank → MeetFrank · Also: estonianstartupjobs.ee · 6+ years required (Igor: 7) · Verify listing still open - may be off market
Salary
Not stated. eAgronom Senior Designer estimate: €4,000-6,000/mo gross.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossSenior PD at funded climate startup - mid anchor
Why
  • Hybrid Tallinn - local context, in-person collaboration option
  • Complex data collection simplified for non-technical domain experts = same UX challenge as healthcare / compliance / reporting Igor has solved
  • Impact-driven product - carbon reporting for EU carbon markets - genuinely interesting mission
  • 7 years exceeds 6+ year requirement
Risks
  • No agtech, farming, or climate tech portfolio - domain gap is real
  • Listing may be off market per search results - verify before investing effort
  • Farmer user base is highly specialized - domain expertise expectation may be high
  • 6+ year seniority requirement + specialized domain = competitive field
Subject
Senior Product Designer - eAgronom - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Domain expert as user
Farmers trust their instincts for weather and soil. They don't want to trust software - they want software that does what it says and gets out of the way. The carbon data collection problem at the heart of eAgronom's mission is one I've worked on in different forms for seven years: design for a user who knows their domain better than any designer will, has real financial stakes attached to what they enter, and no patience for tools that make their work harder than it needs to be.
Hook 2 - High-stakes reporting UX
EU carbon credit reporting has real financial consequences. A farmer who enters data incorrectly doesn't just see a UX error - they lose credits. That changes the design standard for every input, every confirmation, every error state. I've designed under exactly this kind of accountability for seven years: payroll compliance at NextCrew, healthcare interfaces for TXM Hospitals, government exam system UX at the Estonian gymnasium level.
Hook 3 - Data collection for non-technical experts
The data collection problem is the same across every domain: the person entering data knows exactly what they mean, but the form doesn't know how to ask for it in their language. At eAgronom, the gap between agronomist knowledge and software interface is the entire design job. Bridging it without making the farmer feel like they're filling out a tax form is the challenge.
Hook 4 - Impact design
Most software design is about making existing behavior faster or cheaper. eAgronom's design is about changing behavior for a measurable climate outcome. The product has to be good enough to change how farms actually operate - not just record what they already do. That's a higher bar than most tools aim for, and a more interesting one.
Hook 5 - Estonian context
Tallinn-based, hybrid-ready, and familiar with the Estonian startup environment. Seven years of working alongside commercial clients in a small market where trust travels faster than advertising has shaped how I think about product positioning and user relationships. eAgronom's domestic roots matter in how farmers in this region receive and adopt new tools.
Letter

Hi eAgronom team,

Farmers trust their instincts for weather and soil. They don't want to trust software - they want software that does exactly what it says and gets out of the way. The carbon data collection problem at the heart of eAgronom's mission is one I've worked on in different forms for seven years: design for a user who knows their domain better than any designer ever will, has real financial stakes attached to what they enter, and no patience for tools that make their work harder than it needs to be.

The most direct parallel: four years at NextCrew (2022-2024), a workforce management SaaS where users were staffing coordinators managing compliance-heavy workflows with real payroll consequences. A confusing field or an ambiguous confirmation wasn't a UX issue - it was a financial error. I also did UX work on the Estonian gymnasium student exam system (via UX Estonia) - an interface where users were under stress with high-stakes outcomes attached to every interaction. Both required the same discipline as carbon reporting: make data entry manageable, confirmation clear, and error recovery obvious to someone who doesn't have time to figure out the software.

No agtech or farming case studies in my portfolio - I won't paper over that gap. The data collection challenge translates; the domain doesn't yet. The question is whether the transferable skill closes the domain distance within the first few months.

Two things I'd genuinely want to understand: where does the biggest friction sit for a farmer going through their first carbon data cycle - is it the terminology, the input structure, or the uncertainty about whether they got it right? And how does eAgronom handle the difference between a farm manager who's tech-comfortable and an older operator who's been running the farm for 30 years with minimal software in their workflow?

Looking forward to connecting.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Wrike (Work management SaaS · analytics platform) EN
Senior Product Manager for Analytics · Remote (Estonia residents only)
Applied Jul 8 Fit 2.5/5 EE Only
Apply via LinkedIn → LinkedIn · Estonia residents only (confirmed in JD) · +100 applicants
Salary
Not stated. Wrike EE Senior PM range estimate: €4,000-6,500/mo gross.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr gross
Why
  • Estonia-only remote = confirmed eligibility, less competition than fully global roles
  • Work management analytics = information hierarchy problem Igor has solved across 7 years of UX
  • AI-powered analytics in work management is an emerging product area - genuinely interesting
Risks
  • No PM title - same gap as all roles in this batch
  • 4+ yrs PM + analytics data depth required (SQL/BI tooling not in Igor's CV)
  • 100+ applicants (LinkedIn shows)
Subject
Senior PM for Analytics - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Relevance not availability
Work management platforms have an analytics paradox: the more data they generate, the less useful it becomes. When every project has a dashboard, the dashboard becomes the default, not the signal. The question Wrike's analytics PM needs to answer isn't "what do we measure?" - it's "what measurement actually changes how a team behaves next Monday?"
Hook 2 - Tools user who builds on top
I use work management tools in my own workflow - not as a passive user, but as someone who's built automation on top of them and watched where the reporting surfaces break down. The gap between what these tools promise on the reporting side and what a team lead actually needs to make a decision is real and consistent.
Hook 3 - Data viz as design problem
Data visualization is a design problem before it's a technical one. How you group, surface, and sequence data determines whether it gets used. I've spent seven years building information hierarchies that turn complex states into something a first-time user can read in under five seconds.
Hook 4 - Estonia-only signal
The "Estonia residents only" requirement is interesting: you're building a team that shares a timezone, a working culture, and potentially a physical co-working option while being formally remote. That's a specific team design choice and it suggests something about how this product team actually works.
Hook 5 - AI analytics wave
AI-powered analytics is the next wave in work management - Wrike is clearly building toward it. When AI surfaces insights rather than just visualizes data, the PM role shifts: less "what should we build in the reporting UI?" and more "what should the system be learning to notice on behalf of the user?" That's the more interesting brief.
Letter

Hi Wrike Analytics team,

Work management platforms have an analytics paradox: the more data they surface, the less any individual data point means. When every project has a dashboard, the dashboard stops being a signal and starts being the default. The question Wrike's analytics product needs to answer isn't "what should we measure?" - it's "what measurement actually changes how a team behaves next Monday?" That's the harder problem, and it's where I'd want to focus.

I use work management and reporting tools as someone who's built on top of them and watched where the surfaces break down. The gap between what these tools promise on the reporting side and what a team lead actually needs to make a decision is real and consistent - not because the data isn't there, but because visualization without prioritization just produces more noise. I've built automation layers on top of existing reporting tools specifically because the reporting UI wasn't answering the right question.

The core skill here is information architecture before it's UI work. Seven years building products for SaaS platforms, marketplaces, and technical startups means seven years of turning complex state into something a first-time user can read in under five seconds. How you group, surface, and sequence data determines whether it gets used. At Bidmii (2020-2022), the product complexity was multi-party financial state across homeowners, contractors, and platform. Making that legible without simplifying it into uselessness was the actual design problem. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users, +52% leads after the redesign.

The AI-powered analytics direction is the part of Wrike's roadmap that interests me most. When AI starts surfacing insights rather than just visualizing what's already there, the whole product shifts: less "what should we build in the reporting UI?" and more "what should the system be learning to notice on behalf of the team?" That's a different kind of brief - and a more interesting one.

Two things I'd want to understand: what does the team currently use as the signal that a reporting feature is actually changing how teams work, versus just being used? And how far along is the AI roadmap - are we talking about AI-generated summaries, or something closer to proactive anomaly detection?

Looking forward to connecting.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Evotym (crypto client) (Staffing agency · anonymous high-risk payments client) EN RU
Senior Product Manager (Crypto Platform) · Tallinn · Fully Remote · via Evotym staffing
Applied Jul 8 Fit 2/5 ⚠ Verify client - high-risk flag
⚠ Flag: Anonymous "high-risk transactions" client
The actual employer is unnamed. "High-risk" in payment processing includes gambling, crypto, adult, CBD, firearms. Crypto is likely but unconfirmed. The cover letter includes a direct ask for clarification. If the client processes payments for gambling businesses, auto-skip applies.
Apply via Evotym → Evotym staffing · Contact: Katarzyna Zalewska · No salary stated
Salary
Not stated. Staffing agency placement - negotiate after client confirmed.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossConfirm after client identity confirmed
Why
  • Personal crypto trading background (3Commas, Binance, TradingView) - genuine ecosystem context
  • AI trading platform design contribution
  • English + Russian - both languages explicitly required
Risks
  • Anonymous client - unclear if gambling-adjacent (auto-skip check required)
  • No PM title + no professional crypto PM experience
  • Staffing agency = extra layer, no direct client relationship initially
  • No salary stated - could be underpaid range
Subject
Senior PM (Crypto Platform) - Igor Šalagin - via Evotym
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Crypto from user side
I've had a 3Commas account, traded BTC and altcoins on Binance across multiple cycles, and contributed to the design of an AI trading platform. The product problems in crypto payments aren't theoretical for me - I know what bad crypto UX costs from the user side, which is the only honest place to start.
Hook 2 - Trust architecture
The trust architecture problem in crypto payment products is what separates the ones that scale from the ones that don't. Users don't trust transaction finality. They don't trust fee structures. They don't trust that their funds are actually moving. Every product decision in this space is a trust decision first.
Hook 3 - English + Russian signal
English and Russian in the same job requirements is a specific market signal: EEA operations with Russian-speaking user exposure. Native Russian, fluent English, based in Tallinn - that's not a checkbox, it's market context I've lived in.
Hook 4 - High-risk category insight
"High-risk transactions" as a product category is where the interesting payment infrastructure problems live - the edge cases that mainstream rails don't handle, the compliance complexity that requires actual product thinking rather than just API integration. That's more interesting than building on top of Stripe.
Hook 5 - Experience layer gap
The crypto ecosystem has matured enough that the product gap isn't rails - it's the experience layer. Exchanges exist. Wallets exist. What doesn't exist consistently is a payment product experience that a non-crypto-native can trust and use. That's the PM brief, and it's a design-first problem.
Letter

Hi Evotym team,

I've had a 3Commas account, traded BTC and altcoins through multiple cycles on Binance, and contributed to the design of an AI trading platform. The product problems in crypto payments aren't abstract to me - I know what bad crypto UX costs from the user side, which is the only honest place to start building for it.

"High-risk transactions" is where the interesting infrastructure problems live. The edge cases that mainstream payment rails don't handle, the compliance complexity that requires actual product thinking rather than just API integration, the trust deficit that every crypto product is either earning or losing with every interaction. That's more interesting than building on solved infrastructure. The experience layer is still largely unbuilt, and that's the gap worth working on.

My background is design, but the work I've actually done is definition, prioritization, and shipping. At NextCrew (2022-2024) I owned the full product design cycle at an AI staffing platform: discovery, scope definition, prototyping, handoff, iteration. 2.5x sales growth over the contract. At Bidmii (2020-2022) I did the same for a marketplace where financial trust between two parties was the core product question. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users, +52% leads after the redesign. The decision-making work was the same as any product role - the title said designer.

English and Russian in the same job requirements is a specific market signal: EEA operations with Russian-speaking user exposure. Native Russian, fluent English, based in Tallinn - that's not a checkbox, it's context I've lived in for thirty-plus years. The regulatory and cultural complexity of operating between these markets isn't something I'd need time to learn.

Two things I'd genuinely want to understand: where does the product currently see the highest drop-off in the payment flow, and is it trust-driven or clarity-driven? And how is the team thinking about the compliance layer as a product feature rather than a legal obligation - is there appetite to make that visible and reassuring to users, or is the preference to make it invisible?

Looking forward to the next steps.

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

INFUSE (B2B demand gen / content marketing agency · data visualization specialist · Tallinn-listed) EN
Graphic Designer · Data Visualization · Remote Contract · Tallinn-listed
Applied Jul 8 Fit 3.5/5
View + Apply at INFUSE → LinkedIn · Tallinn, Estonia-listed · remote contract · check infuse.com/careers for ATS direct link
Salary
Contract role - typically hourly or project rate. Check listing for rate range. B2B agency contract in Tallinn.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grosscontract graphic design role - rate likely lower than FTE senior PD. Confirm scope and hours
Why
  • Tallinn-listed role - local connection reduces risk for employer and increases the hire probability for an Estonia-based applicant
  • Data visualization specialist role - niche skill signal. Similarweb portfolio framing (analytics dashboards) and NextCrew reporting screens are the relevant cases
  • B2B demand gen agency - graphic design work produces assets that directly support sales pipelines. Commercial-outcome brief, not decorative
  • Contract = faster time to hire and income bridge while longer-term in-house roles develop
Requires
  • Graphic design with data visualization specialty - charts, infographics, reports, dashboards
  • B2B marketing design experience preferred
  • Contract engagement - may evolve to longer term
  • Source: LinkedIn job/4433872650 · Posted July 2026 · Tallinn, Estonia
Risks
  • Contract role - less stability than FTE; treat as bridge income while applying to senior in-house positions
  • Agency execution work may feel like a step backward from the strategic design Igor is targeting. Apply only if pipeline is slow
  • Data visualization is a specific niche - verify the portfolio has enough chart/graph/report work to credibly pitch this
Subject
Graphic Designer (Data Visualization) - Igor Šalagin (B2B design + visual data portfolio)
Best hook

I've done data visualization work inside B2B SaaS products - reporting screens at NextCrew, analytics dashboards for clients - and the problem I notice every time is the same: the person who knows what the data means designs it for themselves. The chart is accurate and technically impressive and useless to the executive who has 40 minutes to make a budget decision based on it. Translating data into decisions is a design problem, not a data problem, and I find it more interesting than decorative visualization work.

Letter

Hi INFUSE team,

I've done data visualization work inside B2B SaaS products - reporting screens at NextCrew, analytics dashboards for clients - and the problem I notice every time is the same: the person who built the visualization knows exactly what it means. The chart is accurate and impressive and useless to the CMO who has to make a budget decision based on it in the next 45 minutes. The gap between what the analyst cares about and what the executive can act on is widest in B2B demand generation content - and INFUSE is sitting directly in that gap. I find that translation problem genuinely interesting to design for.

The B2B graphic design portfolio is direct. Seven years, 120+ projects: brand systems, marketing assets, sales collateral for SaaS and service businesses. The Scalenic brand kit (for my own agency), client brand work across Solid Growth, ASET Expert, Hochdruckprofis, multiple SaaS companies. eBooks, case study designs, infographics, report layouts - I've produced all of these for clients who needed their complex B2B content to look credible to a sophisticated buyer audience. Tallinn-based, which your listing specifically mentions as the Eastern Europe remote variant - that's the right geography.

The data visualization specialty is real but comes from a product design context rather than pure data journalism or infographic work. Most of my data visualization has been inside software interfaces (dashboards, reporting, analytics screens), not standalone B2B content assets. If the role is primarily infographic-heavy and report layout design, the portfolio skews slightly differently than product-embedded data visualization. Worth confirming what the daily work actually looks like.

Contract format is fine - I've worked that way for years. The main practical question: what's the rate range and expected weekly hour commitment?

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Finom (European fintech · B2B banking + invoicing for SMBs · €115M Series C) EN
Senior Product Designer · Core Product · Remote EU
Ready to draft Fit 4/5
Apply via Lever → Lever · Posted Jul 2026 · ACTIVE verified Jul 9 · Estonia not explicitly listed - confirm eligibility before applying
Salary
Not stated. Series C European fintech Senior PD estimate: €5,500-7,000/mo gross. Candidates provide salary expectations on application.
Salary ask
€6,000/mo gross€72,000/yr grossSeries C fintech - equity discussion separately
Why
  • Igor's clients for 7 years have been exactly Finom's user - SMB founders managing invoicing, banking, cash flow. Genuine insider empathy, not persona fiction
  • B2B fintech trust UX = direct parallel to Bidmii (marketplace payments, $1M pre-seed) and NextCrew (payroll-adjacent multi-role workflows, 2.5x sales)
  • €115M Series C - validated, stable, not a pre-revenue gamble
  • AI Copilot feature work - Igor runs Claude daily in real workflow, high-stakes AI UX in bookkeeping context is a genuinely interesting problem
  • Work & Swim Cyprus perk - signals a team that actually cares about how people work
Risks
  • Estonia NOT explicitly listed as supported location (Berlin, Italy, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Cyprus stated) - verify before applying
  • Salary undisclosed - candidates provide expectations, no anchor. Risk of misalignment
  • JD prefers fintech/SaaS experience - Bidmii is the bridge but not a named fintech product
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Core Product - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - My clients are your users
My clients for seven years have been exactly the person Finom is building for - not as a persona exercise, as real founders I've worked with on real business problems. I know what they think about when they're reconciling accounts at 11pm wondering if the invoicing will sync. I know what makes them close a fintech tab without completing onboarding. That familiarity is either the most relevant thing I could bring to this role or completely beside the point. I think it's the former.
Hook 2 - Trust moment after the error
What I've noticed across seven years of designing for founders is that the moment they decide to trust a product with their money isn't when they sign up. It's the first time something goes slightly wrong and the product handles it well. The error message, the support flow, the recovery state. Finom is designing the relationship a small business owner has with their financial infrastructure. That trust design brief starts on day one and compounds for years.
Hook 3 - AI Copilot curiosity
The AI Copilot feature is what caught my attention in this listing - not because AI features are interesting in general, but because the stakes in a bookkeeping product are specifically high. If the AI suggests the wrong category and the founder doesn't catch it, they reconcile against bad numbers at year-end. Getting AI assistance right in that context is a harder UX problem than it sounds. I want to work on it.
Hook 4 - Series C timing
Finom raised €115M Series C, which means the product has been validated but the hard design work - scaling without losing the clarity that earned trust at small scale - is still ahead. That's the interesting moment to join: after the proof, before the plateau.
Hook 5 - Estonia question
Finom doesn't list Estonia as a supported location, which is either an oversight or something worth resolving early. I'm in Tallinn, CET+2, EU legal right to work, and I've spent seven years inside the same founder ecosystem that Finom's core users live in. If Estonia works, that's an advantage that's hard to manufacture from a distance.
Letter

Hi Finom team,

My clients for seven years have been small business owners - the same people Finom is building for. Not as a persona exercise. As actual founders I've worked with on real business problems. I know what they think about when they're staring at a new banking dashboard at 11pm wondering if the invoicing will sync. I know what makes them close the tab and what makes them stay.

At Bidmii - a SaaS marketplace where I was sole embedded designer for three years - I owned end-to-end product UX for a platform where trust was the core mechanic: homeowners putting real money into a marketplace with contractors they'd never met. $1M pre-seed raised post-rebrand, 5,700+ users onboarded, +52% leads, -33% bounce rate. That's the structural parallel to Finom: financial trust UX, multi-role platform complexity, full design ownership from research through design system and handoff.

At NextCrew - a Chicago-based staffing SaaS, four years as sole designer - I took the product through a full repositioning from SMB to enterprise. Multi-role compliance workflows, payroll-adjacent UX, operations where one wrong state means someone doesn't get paid. 2.5x sales growth across the contract.

The AI Copilot work specifically interests me. I run Claude in my daily workflow - design decisions, research synthesis, brief writing. I've been thinking about the specific UX patterns where AI assistance earns trust rather than erodes it. For a bookkeeping product the stakes are real: a wrong AI category suggestion and a founder reconciles against bad numbers at year-end. That's a trust-design problem I'd find genuinely engaging to own.

Three things I'd want to understand early: how does the Core Product team coordinate with platform and growth design work? What does AI Copilot feature ownership look like from a design perspective? And is Estonia a supported location for this role - it's not listed explicitly and I'd rather surface that now than two weeks into process.

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations from clients and employers: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin
Web & Brand Designer | Scalenic

PandaDoc (B2B SaaS · document automation · eSign · proposals) EN
Senior Product Designer · Core UX & Mobile · Remote EU (CET)
Ready to draft Fit 3.5/5
Found via: Greenhouse job board (job-boards.greenhouse.io/pandadoc) Apply via Greenhouse → Posted Jul 5 2026 · ACTIVE verified Jul 9 · 172 applicants · Must have EU legal right to work without visa sponsorship · ⚠️ Estonia not in location dropdown - select nearest EU office, specify Estonia in free-text country field
Salary
Not stated. PLN range visible in aggregators: PLN 222k-334k/yr (~€52k-78k/yr). Candidates asked to provide expectations.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossWell-established B2B SaaS - anchor high given PLN ceiling suggests budget flexibility
Why
  • Foundation UX work = designing patterns the whole product inherits, not individual features - highest-leverage design job in a mature SaaS
  • Multi-role platform (sender / signer / admin / template editor) maps directly to NextCrew's multi-role compliance UX
  • Remote EU CET - Tallinn is CET+2, direct fit
  • Well-known product used by 50k+ businesses - stable company, clear product surface, real users
Risks
  • "Mobile" in title - verify actual mobile/web split before applying. If primarily native mobile, portfolio skews web-first
  • 172 applicants - competitive. Needs a sharp hook
  • PLN salary range suggests Poland-origin comp curve, may be lower than Estonian market rate
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
10 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - PandaDoc as a sender
I've sent proposals through PandaDoc as a freelancer - which means I know the sender experience from the inside, not from a user research report. The specific friction is small and cumulative: nothing breaks, but certain transitions between steps require more mental re-engagement than they should. The fifteen seconds before a recipient clicks sign, on a contract for something that matters, is where every element of that experience adds up into either confidence or uncertainty. That trust design brief is where I've spent most of my career - PandaDoc's version of it is just more explicit.
Hook 2 - Multi-role parallel
I spent four years designing multi-role SaaS at NextCrew - workers, managers, admins, payroll operators, all with different information needs and different consequences when something goes wrong. The structural challenge in PandaDoc's core product is the same: sender, signer, admin, template editor - same platform, completely different contexts and stakes. I've mapped those divergent needs before, and the hardest part isn't the individual flows. It's making one design system carry all of them without feeling like a compromise.
Hook 3 - I use PandaDoc
I've sent proposals through PandaDoc as a client. I know exactly where the sender experience is slightly more complicated than it needs to be, and which parts actually feel good. I'd rather say that directly than pretend I'm approaching this from theory.
Hook 4 - Foundation work appeal
Foundation UX work appeals to me in a specific way: it's the difference between designing features and designing the system those features live inside. At Bidmii I built the design system from scratch while simultaneously redesigning the product that ran on it. Getting the foundational layer right - the patterns, states, components that everyone inherits - is the hardest design work there is. It also compounds the longest.
Hook 5 - Honest mobile question
The "Core UX & Mobile" framing raised a question I'd want to answer early: what's the actual split? If the role is primarily native mobile design, my portfolio skews web-first and that's a real gap. If mobile is one surface in a broader foundations mandate, I'm well-positioned. The honest conversation about scope is worth having before we're both two weeks into process.
Hook 6 - The recipient side UX
The signing experience in most document tools is treated as a passive endpoint - you receive, you review, you click. What PandaDoc could do differently is make the recipient side feel like a complete experience in itself. I'm curious whether foundation UX work at PandaDoc includes that side of the platform or focuses primarily on the sender and creator workflow - because the two require completely different design responses.
Hook 7 - AI-assisted drafting layer
PandaDoc has been moving toward AI-assisted document generation. The interesting UX problem that creates isn't the generation - it's what happens between "AI drafted this" and "I'm confident sending this to a client." The review, edit, and verification layer for AI-generated proposals is a new interaction pattern that doesn't have established best practices yet. That's exactly the kind of foundational design problem I'd want to work on.
Hook 8 - CRM embedded surface
PandaDoc lives inside Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive for a significant portion of its users. The embedded experience - when someone uses PandaDoc without ever leaving their CRM - has different design constraints than the native app. I'm curious how the foundation UX treats that surface: as a constrained extension of the same system, or as a separate design problem with its own patterns.
Hook 9 - Two-sided trust problem
Document signing involves two parties who usually don't know each other well. The sender needs confidence in the output. The recipient needs confidence in the document's legitimacy. Both trust problems happen in the same product surface but require completely different design responses. Foundation UX work at PandaDoc is interesting precisely because it has to serve those two trust models simultaneously - without making either feel like a compromise.
Hook 10 - eSign competitive differentiation
DocuSign owns the "just needs a signature" market. PandaDoc's positioning is explicitly different - document creation first, signature second. What that means for the UX is that PandaDoc has to be strong at both the authoring experience and the signing experience, which are completely different interaction models. Foundation UX work that serves both sides without making either feel like an afterthought is a genuinely difficult problem. It's the kind I find most interesting.
Letter

Hi PandaDoc team,

The interesting design problem in a document workflow isn't the document. It's the fifteen seconds before someone clicks sign - on a contract for a deal that matters, in a product that's either building their confidence or quietly eroding it. That's a trust and clarity brief, and it's where I've spent most of my career.

At NextCrew - a Chicago-based staffing SaaS where I was the sole designer for four years - I owned product UX for a multi-role platform: workers, managers, admins, payroll operators. Each user type had different information needs, different permissions, different stakes when something went wrong. Two full product design cycles end-to-end. 2.5x sales growth. The structural challenge in PandaDoc's core product is the same: sender, signer, admin, template editor - same platform, completely different contexts. I've mapped those divergent needs before.

At Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was sole embedded designer for three years - I built the design system from scratch while simultaneously redesigning the product running on it. Foundation work, in practice: patterns, states, components that the whole product inherited. That contributed to $1M pre-seed raise and 5,700+ users onboarded.

One honest question before going further: what's the actual mobile/web split in this role? If it's primarily native mobile design, my portfolio is web-first and that gap is real. If mobile is one surface within a broader foundations mandate, I'm well-positioned. Worth clarifying early.

Remote EU from Tallinn is a direct fit, CET+2.

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin
Web & Brand Designer | Scalenic

INFINNI (Creator economy · social media SaaS · remote-first startup) EN
Product Design Lead · Remote EU · Full-time
Applied Jul 9 (LinkedIn Easy Apply) Fit 3/5
Found via: LinkedIn job search (linkedin.com/jobs) Apply via LinkedIn → LinkedIn · Posted Jul 7 2026 · ACTIVE verified Jul 9 · 169 applicants · Referrals increase chances 2x per listing
Salary
Not stated. Described as "market-rate, around average and a bit above for the right person." Estimate: €4,500-6,000/mo gross. Treat as lower-ceiling until confirmed.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossLead role - anchor at market, confirm budget early
Why
  • Lead/ownership role - first formal design lead title opportunity; matches operational reality of Igor's 7yr embedded experience
  • Full product vertical ownership from concept to launch to iteration - exactly how Igor has always operated
  • AI tools explicitly valued (Claude mentioned) - Igor's authentic daily workflow, not a claimed skill
  • Remote EU, startup culture, flexible scheduling
Risks
  • Creator economy / social media niche - zero case studies in this space; portfolio is B2B SaaS + marketplace
  • 169 LinkedIn applicants - competitive
  • "Market rate" language typically signals below-market comp ceiling - confirm budget before investing full effort
  • Company funding / stability not disclosed - unknown risk factor
Subject
Product Design Lead - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Lead without the title
Product Design Lead is the role I've been doing without the title for most of my career. Sole designer at two companies over six-year embedded partnerships: own the research, the system, the stakeholder alignment, the developer quality handoff. The gap between that operational reality and a formal lead role is a title, not a capability jump. The honest question is whether INFINNI wants someone already operating at that level or someone with the org chart entry on their CV.
Hook 2 - AI tools authentically
INFINNI specifically mentions AI tools as part of the workflow. I'd bring that into the actual work, not the interview. Claude runs in my daily process - research synthesis, design decision documentation, brief writing. I'm not claiming AI as a capability. I'm treating it as infrastructure, which is how it actually becomes useful.
Hook 3 - Domain gap named directly
Creator economy and social media are honest gaps in my portfolio - my work is B2B SaaS, marketplace platforms, service businesses. If the product vertical I'd own maps specifically to that niche, it's worth naming early. If the domain is fluid, the process carries regardless: I've onboarded to new verticals seven times in seven years and the first three months are always the same pattern.
Hook 4 - What vertical ownership means
Owning a product vertical from concept to launch to iteration is the job I've always done - INFINNI just frames it with more explicit language than most companies use. What I'm curious about is what that vertical looks like at INFINNI specifically: an existing product with a roadmap, a new initiative from scratch, or something in between. That distinction changes what the first six months look like entirely.
Hook 5 - Outcomes not tasks
Seven years of freelance means I've owned outcomes, not tasks. When a project shipped, I wasn't one of ten people who contributed - I was the person who decided what good looked like and made it happen. That mindset maps directly into what INFINNI is describing, and it's genuinely harder to hire than the job description makes it sound.
Letter

Hi INFINNI team,

Product Design Lead is the role I've been doing without the title for most of my career. Sole designer at two companies over six-year embedded partnerships: own the research, the system, the stakeholder alignment, the developer quality handoff, the design decisions that don't have a clear right answer. The gap between that operational reality and a formal lead role is a title, not a capability jump.

At NextCrew (Chicago SaaS, 2022-2026) I owned all product design as the company repositioned from SMB to enterprise, led two full product cycles end-to-end, drove 2.5x sales growth alongside the team. At Bidmii (Canadian SaaS marketplace, 2019-2022) I took the product and brand from early-stage through $1M pre-seed raise and 5,700+ active users. In both cases, "lead" was the operational reality: research synthesis, stakeholder alignment, design system evolution, developer quality oversight. No one else was doing it.

The AI tools angle is something I'd bring into the actual work, not just claim in a cover letter. Claude runs in my daily process - research synthesis, decision documentation, brief writing. INFINNI's emphasis on AI productivity is an environment I already operate in.

Creator economy and social media are honest gaps in the portfolio - my work is B2B SaaS, marketplace platforms, and service businesses. If the product vertical maps specifically to that niche, it's worth naming early. If the domain is fluid, the process carries: I've onboarded to new verticals seven times in seven years.

What I'm curious about: what does the product vertical ownership look like concretely at INFINNI? Existing product with a roadmap, new initiative from scratch, or something in between? And what's the design team size I'd be leading?

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin
Web & Brand Designer | Scalenic

Kraken (Crypto exchange · Breakout prop trading sub-brand · open finance) EN
Web & Brand Designer · Breakout Project · Remote Full-time
Ready to draft Fit 4/5
Found via: LinkedIn job search · surfaced via 2nd-connection (Anastassia Nilova) Find on LinkedIn → Posted ~Jul 2 2026 (1 week) · 68 clicked apply · Contact: Anastassia Nilova (Tallinn School of Management alum) · ACTIVE · ⚠️ Verify direct apply link - current link is a search URL
Salary
Not stated. Kraken Senior Designer estimate: $120k-$160k USD / €6,500-8,500/mo gross equivalent. Remote with possible SF trips.
Salary ask
€7,000/mo gross€84,000/yr grossMajor crypto exchange - anchor high; USD comp likely
Why
  • Web + brand design = Igor's primary skill, not a stretch - this is the core job
  • Igor trades crypto on Kraken personally - genuine user, knows exactly where the trust friction is
  • Conversion-focused landing pages, email, social, ad creatives = Igor's full wheelhouse
  • Solo designer owning the full Breakout surface - exactly how Igor operates best
  • AI-first workflow (Claude Design, Figma AI) = authentic fit, not claimed
  • Hiring contact Anastassia Nilova is Tallinn School of Management alum - small world connection
  • 1 week old, only 68 applicants - very early application window
Risks
  • Crypto industry regulatory headwinds - verify company stability before accepting any offer
  • "Performance creative design" (paid ad iteration) listed as nice-to-have but signals it's actually core to the role
  • No salary stated - Kraken is US-based, comp structure may be USD-denominated
Subject
Web & Brand Designer - Breakout Project - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
10 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Trust before money
I've been a Kraken user long enough to have a genuine opinion about what the conversion funnel doesn't tell first-time depositors that it should. The opinion is this: you earn trust before you ask for money, not after. Breakout's design challenge is the same problem at higher stakes - someone evaluating whether to trust a prop trading program with their capital and their performance record under pressure needs a completely different kind of confidence-building than a standard SaaS onboarding.
Hook 2 - Curious about Breakout + "not here to manage"
I haven't been through the Breakout evaluation as a trader yet - and I find I actually want to. There's a trust design problem you can only partially map from the outside: what does it feel like to put your performance record into a structure a company controls before you've decided whether to trust that company? I'd go through the Breakout flow before writing a word of copy for it. Separately, "not here to manage designers" is a line most companies write and don't mean. In a brand this size, with a scope this concrete, I think it does.
Hook 3 - 90% profits / transparency brief
"90% of profits to traders" is the most honest positioning I've seen in a prop trading brand. Most firms lead with the opportunity and bury the math. Breakout leads with the math. I'm curious whether that originated as a deliberate trust strategy or a business model constraint - because the design conversation that follows is different depending on which. Transparency as a competitive necessity is one brief. Transparency as a brand value is another.
Hook 4 - Sub-brand architecture constraint
Breakout is a Kraken sub-brand, which means the brand architecture constraint is real: stand alone enough to have its own identity, connected enough that Kraken's trust transfers on first contact. That's harder than starting from zero - you can't ignore the parent brand without losing the trust dividend, and you can't lead with it too hard without killing the independent positioning. I've built brand systems where the parent-brand trust relationship was the central design constraint. It changes everything about what you lead with.
Hook 5 - AI tools + Nano Banana Pro
The tool stack in this listing - Claude Design, Figma AI, Nano Banana Pro - is specific enough to tell you something about how this team actually works. I run Claude in my daily design process for research synthesis, decision documentation, and brief writing. The Nano Banana Pro reference made me look it up. I like what I found. Teams that share their actual tool stack instead of "AI-friendly" language are usually the same teams that share honest product metrics instead of vanity ones.
Hook 6 - Conversion at financial stakes
Conversion-focused landing pages for a financial product are the most honest design brief there is: no visual polish substitutes for the right words in the right order earning the right amount of trust at exactly the right moment. At Bidmii, the full conversion surface contributed to +52% leads, -33% bounce, $1M pre-seed. At Forest Hotel, a booking-focused rebuild produced 25+ direct reservations per month. Breakout's conversion problem is the same model at higher emotional stakes - and higher emotional stakes requires more precise trust-building, not less.
Hook 7 - Evaluation UX is the first product
The Breakout evaluation process is the first thing a potential trader encounters. Before they've seen payout data, before they've read a testimonial, they've experienced the evaluation flow. Whether that experience makes them feel assessed fairly or processed impersonally is a trust design problem upstream of every marketing claim the brand makes. Getting the evaluation UX right isn't polish - it's the foundation the whole trader acquisition funnel stands on.
Hook 8 - Design system governance
The design system and brand toolkit governance angle specifically interests me. Building a system that a small team can operate consistently without a full-time designer watching every output is different from building one that requires one. I've built systems like that - components, documentation, usage rules - and the test is whether the brand stays on-brand when you're not in the room.
Hook 9 - Tallinn / small world
Anastassia Nilova's profile shows Tallinn School of Management. I've worked in Tallinn for seven years and know the Estonian startup and finance ecosystem well. Small enough network that I noticed the listing through the usual channels. Not the reason to apply - just the reason I noticed first.
Hook 10 - Full brand surface ownership
Website, landing pages, core conversion flows, email, social, ad creatives, design system, brand governance across all outputs. Seven years as sole embedded designer at two companies means I've owned surfaces exactly this wide before. Breakout's scope maps directly. The work gets better when one person has context across the full brand surface rather than multiple people handing off between lanes.
Letter

Hi Kraken / Breakout team,

I've been a Kraken user long enough to have a genuine opinion about what the conversion funnel doesn't tell first-time depositors that it should. The opinion is this: you earn trust before you ask for money, not after. Breakout's design challenge is the same problem at higher stakes - someone evaluating whether to trust a prop trading program with their capital and their performance record under real market pressure needs confidence-building that's different from a standard SaaS onboarding. That's a trust design brief, and it's where I've spent most of my career.

The role maps directly. Seven years, 120+ commercial projects: brand systems, conversion-focused web, and the funnel layer that turns traffic into leads. At Bidmii (Canadian marketplace SaaS, 3-year embedded engagement) - +52% leads, -33% bounce rate, $1M pre-seed raise, 5,700+ users. At NT Kaunas (real estate) - 40 qualified leads/month from a redesigned site. At Forest Hotel - 25+ direct bookings/month from a booking-focused site rebuild. The pattern: outcomes measured in conversions, not design awards.

I trade for my own account. Crypto on Kraken, altcoins on Binance, TradingView as my primary charting layer. I know what a potential Breakout trader is thinking when they're deciding whether to trust a new platform with their capital. That's not a persona exercise - it's the decision I've made myself.

The "not here to manage designers" line in the JD is something I notice. The best work I've done has been in environments where design ownership is real and solo. Breakout's full scope - website, conversion flows, ad creatives, email, social, design system, brand governance - is exactly the kind of brief where one person owning the full surface produces better output than five people handing off between lanes.

I run Claude in my daily design workflow. The Nano Banana Pro reference in the tool stack made me look it up. I like what I found - and I appreciate the specificity of the tool list over generic "AI-friendly" language.

One small thing: Anastassia Nilova's profile shows Tallinn School of Management. I've worked in Tallinn for seven years and know the Estonian startup ecosystem well. Small world.

What does the Breakout conversion funnel currently look like in terms of where the biggest drop-off is - top of funnel (awareness), mid-funnel (evaluation), or the evaluation step itself?

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Scaled Agile / piPlanning.io (Enterprise SaaS · PI Planning software · SAFe methodology · contract) EN
UI/UX Designer Contractor · Remote (London-listed) · 1 month old - verify open
Ready to draft Fit 3/5
Find on LinkedIn → LinkedIn Easy Apply · 1 month old · 100+ applicants · ⚠️ Verify listing still active before applying
Salary
Not stated. Contract rate estimate: £400-600/day or €5,500-7,500/mo equivalent depending on engagement model.
Salary ask
€6,000/mo gross€72,000/yr grossContract - daily rate equivalent; confirm engagement model
Why
  • B2B SaaS web app design = direct match to NextCrew (4yr, multi-role enterprise) and Bidmii (3yr, complex workflows)
  • Small, highly accountable team with end-to-end ownership = Igor's default operating mode
  • AI capabilities (smart suggestions, insight generation) - genuinely interesting UX design problem in a planning context
  • Contractor format fits Igor's flexible engagement model
Risks
  • 1 month old listing with 100+ applicants - may already be filled; verify before investing full effort
  • Whiteboard/canvas UX is specialized - not Igor's primary portfolio area
  • Enterprise SAFe methodology knowledge expected - not in Igor's background
Subject
UI/UX Designer Contractor - piPlanning.io - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
10 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - PI Planning as ceremony
PI Planning is a ceremony - a specific room-based ritual where 50-150 engineers align on what ships in the next quarter. Translating that ritual into software without losing what makes it work (the real-time negotiation, the spatial thinking, the wall of dependencies everyone can see at once) is one of the more interesting enterprise UX problems I've come across.
Hook 2 - SMB to enterprise parallel
I was the sole designer at NextCrew during a four-year repositioning from SMB to enterprise. I know what it means to design for the buying patterns and approval cycles of large organizations without making the product feel enterprise-bloated for the people who actually use it every day. That tension is the core design problem in any tool that has to serve both buyers and users.
Hook 3 - Small accountable team
Small, highly accountable product team with end-to-end ownership sounds like a description of how I've operated for seven years. The freelance model means I've never been one of ten designers touching a project - I've been the person who decided what good looked like and made it happen, from research brief through development handoff.
Hook 4 - Canvas UX observation
Whiteboard and canvas experiences are one of the harder UX problems in software - infinite space, concurrent users, object models that have to feel both flexible and structured. I've been thinking about this from the outside as a daily Miro and FigJam user. The opportunity to think about it from the inside is interesting.
Hook 5 - AI in planning context
AI in a planning tool needs to feel like a colleague who's read all the tickets, not an autocomplete that suggests the wrong sprint goal. That specific tone - assistive without authoritative - is the design problem in every AI feature. I use Claude in my own planning workflow and I've been thinking about what good AI suggestion UX actually looks like when the stakes are a quarterly engineering roadmap.
Hook 6 - Contractor clarity
Contractor engagement suits how I work. Outcome-focused, scoped to the work, clear ownership and deliverables. The hourly isn't the point; the shipped design that the team can build from is.
Hook 7 - Expert user design
piPlanning.io is purpose-built for SAFe practitioners - users who have a shared vocabulary and a shared set of rituals before they open the product. Designing for expert users who speak the same language as the product they're using is one of the less common opportunities in SaaS. You don't have to explain what a Program Increment is. You have to make the program increment feel right in software.
Hook 8 - B2B web app match
The requirement for proven B2B SaaS web app experience maps directly. Four years at NextCrew (workforce management, multi-role, compliance-heavy). Three years at Bidmii (marketplace, two-sided, trust-dependent payments). Both web-first B2B products where a wrong state in the UX had real operational or financial consequences. That's the standard I've been designing to.
Hook 9 - Ritual to digital translation
piPlanning.io's job is to take a physical room ceremony and make it work in software. That translation is always harder than it looks - the ritual carries information through the room (visible dependencies, body language, real-time negotiation) that digital can't replicate by default. The design challenge is figuring out which parts of the ritual need to survive and which parts the software can improve on.
Hook 10 - Go-to-market complexity
SAFe is used across 400+ partner companies and a global community of 2M trained practitioners. That means the product has to work for people who know SAFe deeply and people who've just been told the company is adopting it. Designing for that range without alienating either end is a nuanced information architecture problem, and it's the kind of challenge I find more interesting than designing for a single user type.
Letter

Hi Scaled Agile / piPlanning.io team,

PI Planning is a ceremony - a specific room-based ritual where 50-150 engineers align on what ships in the next quarter. Translating that ritual into software without losing what makes it work (the real-time negotiation, the spatial thinking, the wall of dependencies everyone can see at once) is one of the more interesting enterprise UX problems I've come across.

The work maps directly. At NextCrew (Chicago SaaS, 4-year embedded engagement) I was sole designer through a full repositioning from SMB to enterprise - multi-role platform (workers, managers, admins, payroll operators), two full product cycles end-to-end, 2.5x sales growth. At Bidmii (Canadian marketplace, 3 years) - full design stack from research through design system, $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users. Both B2B web products where a wrong state in the UX had real operational consequences. That's the standard I've been designing to.

The AI capabilities angle specifically interests me. Getting AI assistance right in a planning context requires a precise tone: helpful enough to change the workflow, invisible enough not to break the ritual. A smart suggestion that feels authoritative lands differently than one that feels advisory. I use Claude in my own planning workflow and I've been thinking about what good AI suggestion UX actually looks like when the stakes are a quarterly engineering roadmap.

Small, highly accountable team with end-to-end ownership is the environment I've operated in consistently. Contractor format suits how I work - outcome-focused, scoped to the deliverable.

Based in Tallinn, Estonia - CET+2, EU right to work, no timezone friction for European collaboration.

What's the core design challenge at piPlanning right now - is this primarily the canvas/whiteboard interactions, the AI feature layer, or something in the collaboration model?

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Unitary (AI startup · Virtual Agents for complex operations · $15M Series A · Plural + Creandum) EN
Senior Product Manager · Remote / London · 2 months old - verify open
Ready to draft Fit 2.5/5
Find on LinkedIn → LinkedIn · 2 months old · 100+ applicants · Application via Workable · ⚠️ Old listing - but Workable form was confirmed open Jul 9
Salary
Not stated. "Competitive salary, commission and equity package." Series A London AI startup estimate: £80k-120k + equity.
Salary ask
€7,000/mo gross€84,000/yr grossLondon market - anchor at senior PM rate; confirm currency (GBP likely)
Workable questions

Why are you a great fit for this role?

Seven years building B2B products alongside founders means I own outcomes, not tasks. The closest structural parallel: four years as sole designer at NextCrew, a workforce management SaaS repositioning from SMB to enterprise under real operational pressure - multi-role complex workflows, payroll-adjacent operations where a wrong state has real financial consequences, 2.5x sales growth. I understand the product discipline required when errors aren't just UX issues; they break customer trust at the contract level. I run Claude and other AI tools in my daily workflow and have thought specifically about human-in-the-loop design - where AI automation hands back to a human at the wrong moment is exactly where most AI products fail quietly. I'm not a PM by title. What I have is seven years of product decisions, stakeholder alignment, and outcome ownership at founder-adjacent scale.

What do you imagine are the biggest challenges Unitary faces in the next 12 months?

First: enterprise trust at scale. The "pay only for delivered value" model removes the adoption barrier but sets quality at an unforgiving standard - one bad batch in commercial insurance processing is a trust event, not a bug. Second: focus vs. expansion. Commercial insurance, marketplaces, and healthcare are three completely different process models. The tension between winning deeply in one versus skimming three is a real strategic call the Series A hasn't forced yet. Third: human-in-the-loop calibration. The right AI-to-human handoff point differs per customer, per use case, per error threshold - building that into the product without creating a configuration nightmare is the hardest PM problem in this category. Fourth: quality SLA maintenance as process complexity grows. Simple repetitive tasks are easy to guarantee. The next tier of enterprise demand is structurally harder - the quality promise gets more expensive to keep just as the sales motion depends on it most.

Why
  • AI automation product at Series A = the interesting moment (validated, but scale ahead)
  • Virtual Agents for complex manual processes - maps to NextCrew's compliance workflow discipline
  • Igor uses AI agents daily in real workflow - authentic not claimed
  • Form was confirmed open Jul 9 despite 2-month age
Risks
  • No PM title - same gap as all PM roles in this batch. Significant for a Series A "Senior PM" hire
  • 2 months old, 100+ applicants - strong chance already in late-stage with other candidates
  • London/remote but GBP comp likely - currency risk from Tallinn
Subject
Senior Product Manager - Unitary - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
10 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Software workers framing
"Software workers with AI reasoning that complete complex workflows end-to-end" is the clearest description of practical AI automation I've read in a product brief. Most AI companies describe the technology. Unitary describes what the customer gets and what they pay for when they get it. That distinction is a product philosophy, and it tells you everything about what the PM job actually is.
Hook 2 - Pay for value model
"Customers pay only for delivered value" removes the biggest objection in enterprise AI adoption in one sentence. It also means quality is set at contract time, not demo time. That's a PM and product challenge most AI companies haven't figured out - because it means you can't ship until you're sure.
Hook 3 - Wrong state consequences
I've shipped products where a wrong workflow state meant someone didn't get paid or a compliance record was wrong. NextCrew's payroll-adjacent operations ran under exactly that standard. I understand the design and PM discipline required when errors have real operational consequences rather than just UX friction.
Hook 4 - AI daily user
I've been using AI agents in my actual daily workflow for 18+ months - not just as a user of generic chat AI, but as someone who has integrated LLM-based tools into design research, decision documentation, and client brief synthesis. I understand the trust curve from the inside: when the AI is right, you stop checking. When it's wrong in a subtle way, you're in trouble.
Hook 5 - The human-in-the-loop problem
The human-in-the-loop calibration question is where most AI automation products fail quietly. Too much friction at the handoff and no one adopts. Too little and the first significant error breaks the entire trust relationship. Getting that calibration right - per customer, per use case, per error threshold - is the hardest PM problem in Unitary's product surface right now.
Hook 6 - No tech integration promise
Unitary's "no tech integration required" promise is the product innovation that makes the enterprise sales motion work. The PM job is partly to make sure that promise stays true as the product scales to more complex process types. That's a harder constraint to hold than it sounds when engineering wants to add one small API call for a big customer.
Hook 7 - Substack + Sony client list observation
The Substack + Trustpilot + Depop + Sony client list is eclectic. What unites them isn't an industry - it's that all of them have complex manual processes generating backlogs their teams can't clear at scale. That's a sharper positioning than "AI for enterprise" and it tells you something about how Unitary actually wins deals.
Hook 8 - PM title gap named
The PM title gap is real and I'd rather name it than paper over it. Seven years of product decisions alongside founders doesn't make me a PM by title. What it gives me is outcome ownership, stakeholder alignment, and the ability to hold technical constraints and business requirements in one frame at the same time. Whether that's enough for a Senior PM role at Series A is the first honest conversation I'd want to have.
Hook 9 - Focus vs. expansion
Commercial insurance, marketplaces, and healthcare are three completely different process models in one product. The tension between winning deeply in one vertical versus proving breadth across three is a real strategic call - one that the $15M Series A validates but doesn't resolve. I'm curious how Unitary is thinking about that tradeoff right now.
Hook 10 - Series A timing
Senior PM at $15M Series A, with ownership over a core part of the Virtual Agents product, is the role where the next 12 months of the company's trajectory get decided. That's different from PM at a company where the roadmap is already written and the job is execution. I find that distinction worth naming.
Letter

Hi Unitary team,

"Software workers with AI reasoning that complete complex workflows end-to-end" is the clearest description of practical AI automation I've read in a product brief. Most AI companies describe the technology. Unitary describes what the customer gets and what they pay for when they get it. That's a product philosophy, and it tells you everything about what the PM job actually is.

I want to address the gap directly: seven years of product decisions alongside founders, not a PM title on a CV. At NextCrew (Chicago staffing SaaS, 2022-2026) I owned all design through a repositioning from SMB to enterprise, ran two full product cycles, and contributed to 2.5x sales growth working directly with the founding team and VP-level stakeholders. At Bidmii (Canadian marketplace SaaS, 2019-2022) I took the product from prototype to $1M pre-seed and 5,700+ users as the sole embedded designer. In both cases the work was product decisions, stakeholder alignment, and outcome ownership - not execution under someone else's roadmap.

I've shipped products where a wrong workflow state meant someone didn't get paid or a compliance record was wrong. NextCrew's payroll-adjacent operations ran under exactly that standard. I understand what it means to design and manage systems where errors have real operational consequences rather than just UX friction.

I run AI tools daily and have been thinking specifically about the human-in-the-loop calibration problem - where AI automation hands back to a human at the wrong moment is exactly where most AI products fail quietly. That's the most interesting PM problem in Unitary's product surface right now, and it's different per customer, per use case, per error threshold.

Two things I'd want to understand: how does Unitary think about the focus vs. expansion tradeoff across commercial insurance, marketplaces, and healthcare? And how do you handle the cases where the Virtual Agent produces an output the customer disputes - product problem, model problem, or process problem?

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

ClarenAI / WilsonAI (AI legaltech · "Cursor for lawyers" · $1.7M pre-seed · 2-10 people) EN
Founding Designer · London on-site · ⚠️ 5 months old + on-site London = likely expired / location mismatch
Ready to draft Fit 2.5/5
Message Alex Wang on LinkedIn → LinkedIn Easy Apply (may be closed) · 5 months old · 100+ applicants · ⚠️ Almost certainly expired - verify before writing full letter · On-site London = Tallinn mismatch
Salary
Not stated. Pre-seed legaltech London estimate: £60k-90k + significant equity. Equity more important than salary at this stage.
Salary ask
€6,000/mo gross€72,000/yr grossPre-seed - salary secondary to equity; only worth this if remote possible
Why
  • "Cursor for lawyers" = clearest positioning frame in legal AI; signals founders think clearly about product
  • Founding designer = fingerprints on everything, real ownership from day one
  • AI-native interface design for complex document workflows = genuinely novel brief
  • Alex Wang (co-founder) is the hiring contact - direct founder access
Risks
  • 5 months old - very likely already filled; confirm before investing time
  • On-site London required - Igor is in Tallinn. Hard blocker unless remote hybrid possible
  • React/TypeScript required - Igor has some but not at design engineer level; real gap
  • $1.7M pre-seed = very early stage, high failure risk, salary likely below market
Subject
Founding Designer - ClarenAI - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
10 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - Cursor for lawyers clarity
"Cursor for lawyers" made me immediately understand what WilsonAI is building. That clarity of positioning is rare in legal tech - most legal AI products describe what they can do (review, summarize, flag) rather than what the lawyer gets (speed and accuracy without losing control). The framing tells me the founders think in terms of the user's mental model, not the technology's capabilities.
Hook 2 - Contract review hate
Contract review is the task most lawyers hate most because it requires full attention for the least amount of billable thinking. The AI assistance isn't replacing judgment - it's handling the reading so the lawyer can focus on the decision. That's a fundamentally different interaction model than most document AI, and it requires a different interface paradigm than search or summarization.
Hook 3 - London location direct
I want to be direct about the location before anything else: I'm in Tallinn, Estonia, and the role says on-site London. That's a real constraint. If there's any hybrid flexibility - even majority remote with regular London visits - I'd want to understand it early. If it's genuinely full-time on-site with no flexibility, that ends the conversation before it starts.
Hook 4 - Founding designer weight
The founding designer role is the one where your decisions become the product's design language for the next three years. Everything after you ships faster or slower based on how well you got the foundational system right. I've operated at that layer before - built design systems from scratch at Bidmii and NextCrew that the entire product ran on. The weight of it is familiar.
Hook 5 - High-stakes information dense
Information-dense interfaces where clarity is a professional or legal liability (sometimes literally both) require the same design discipline as air traffic control dashboards. I've designed for high-stakes, complex-information environments - compliance workflows at NextCrew, multi-party marketplace transactions at Bidmii. The domain is new; the design discipline is not.
Hook 6 - React gap named
React/TypeScript is in my toolkit but not my primary skill. Design-to-implementation in Figma and Framer, with full handoff documentation and component specs, is where I'm strongest. The gap between "some code" and "design engineer" is real and I'd name it rather than claim capability I don't have. Worth understanding what "strong frontend engineering skills" means in practice for this role.
Hook 7 - Fingerprints everywhere
"Fingerprints everywhere" is one of the honest things about this JD. Most companies promise ownership and deliver approval chains. When a 2-10 person team says your fingerprints will be everywhere, they mean it - and they also mean you're responsible when it's wrong. I've worked in that environment and I know the difference between accountability as a promise and accountability as a daily operating reality.
Hook 8 - Pre-seed timing
$1.7M pre-seed from Nomad Ventures and Autopilot means the product has been validated enough to fund, not enough to scale. The founding designer joining now is genuinely ground-floor. That's also genuinely risky in ways the JD doesn't spell out. I'm not pretending otherwise - but it's the kind of risk I find interesting rather than disqualifying.
Hook 9 - AI native legaltech novelty
AI-native legal interface design is the most novel brief in my current applicant stack. Complex information, professional users with strong existing workflows, high-stakes decisions, AI suggestions that have to be exactly right or very clearly marked as uncertain. Getting that balance wrong costs the lawyer a client or a case. The design problem is genuinely hard. That's the point.
Hook 10 - Working with domain expert founder
Alex Wang's background - co-founder of Claren.law - means the person I'd be working closest to understands the legal user at a depth most product teams never achieve. Designing alongside a founder who is literally the target user is a different kind of collaboration than designing from user research alone. You get to skip the empathy-building exercise and go straight to the hard product decisions.
Letter

Hi Alex and ClarenAI team,

"Cursor for lawyers" made me immediately understand what WilsonAI is building. That clarity of positioning is rare in legal tech - most products describe what they can do rather than what the lawyer gets. The framing tells me the founders think in terms of the user's mental model, not the technology's capabilities.

I want to be direct about two things before going further.

First: I'm in Tallinn, Estonia. The role says on-site London. That's a real constraint. If there's hybrid flexibility - even majority remote with regular London visits - I'd want to understand it early. If it's genuinely full-time on-site, that changes the conversation.

Second: React/TypeScript is in my toolkit but not my primary skill. Figma to Framer, with full design system documentation and developer handoff, is where I'm strongest. If the role requires daily engineering work at design-engineer level, that gap is real. Worth clarifying what "strong frontend engineering skills" means in practice here.

What I'd bring: seven years of end-to-end product design for B2B SaaS and complex-workflow products. At Bidmii (Canadian marketplace, 3 years as sole designer) - $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users, +52% leads, design system built from scratch. At NextCrew (Chicago staffing SaaS, 4 years) - two full product design cycles through SMB-to-enterprise repositioning, multi-role compliance workflows, 2.5x sales growth. Both information-dense, high-stakes environments where a wrong state in the UX had real consequences.

The founding designer role specifically: the decisions made in the first six months become the product's design language for the next three years. I've operated at that layer before. The weight of it is familiar.

What does the primary interaction model look like in WilsonAI right now - is the main surface a document viewer with AI overlays, a side-by-side comparison, or something else entirely?

Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Mindrift (AI training platform · Toloka AI · design evaluation & reference creation · freelance gig) EN
Brand / Web Designer AI Trainer · Remote Worldwide · Flexible hours · Apply via mindrift.ai
Ready to draft Fit 3/5
Found via: mindrift.ai (Toloka AI platform) · direct listing Apply via Mindrift → 4 active roles: Brand, Web, Graphic, Presentation Designer · Portfolio + assessment process · ACTIVE
Salary
Up to $50/hr. $2,000/mo at 10hr/wk, up to $7,000/mo at 35hr/wk. Paid twice monthly via Toloka AI. Rates shown before accepting any task.
Salary ask
$50/hr rate$2k-$7k/mo depending on hoursGig platform - no negotiation; rate is fixed per task type
Why
  • Evaluating design quality is literally what Igor does all day already - articulating why one solution works better than another is the core skill
  • Brand Designer + Web Designer = both are Igor's primary disciplines, exact match for their open roles
  • $50/hr matches current Upwork rate - parallel income stream alongside client work, no ceiling conflicts
  • Fully flexible, no minimum hours - can run alongside active client projects without commitment pressure
  • Uses Figma, AI tools daily already - the platform's tool requirements are his existing stack
  • 120+ projects = developed a strong critical eye for what works and what doesn't in commercial design
Risks
  • Gig work, not career-building - doesn't contribute to Scalenic positioning or premium client pipeline
  • Time spent evaluating AI output is time not spent on $5k-25k project work - opportunity cost at scale
  • Platform dependency risk (Toloka/Mindrift controls task availability)
  • $50/hr cap vs. project pricing target of $5k-25k per project
Subject
Brand & Web Designer Application - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
10 options - pick one
Hook 1 (Best) - My specific AI failure catalogue
I use Midjourney, Claude, and Figma AI in my daily workflow. I've developed a very specific mental catalogue of where AI-generated design goes wrong - compositions that are technically balanced but feel static, type pairings that pass the rules but fail the read, layouts with correct hierarchy but wrong visual weight. What I don't know is whether those are the exact gaps Mindrift's evaluation tasks are trying to close, or whether the models have moved past them. I'd start that conversation on day one.
Hook 2 - The articulation gap
The hardest part of evaluating AI design output isn't the judgment - it's the explanation. I can tell in two seconds when a composition is wrong. Writing the specific, transferable rationale for why - in terms a training system can actually learn from - takes ten minutes. Seven years of writing design rationales for clients has made that gap smaller. It's still a real skill. I want to test how specific I can get.
Hook 3 - Toloka backing changes the nature of the gig
Mindrift is a Toloka AI product - which tells me the evaluation infrastructure isn't a side project. Toloka's background in structured data labeling means the task design is probably more rigorous than a typical annotation gig. I'm curious what that looks like in practice: is there a rubric that evolves over time, and do evaluators ever see whether their feedback changed what the next model generates?
Hook 4 - The meta loop
There's something genuinely interesting about being paid to evaluate AI doing a version of my own job. Not uncomfortable - interesting. I can tell exactly where AI-generated design is working from grammar it doesn't fully understand. The places where it looks right but feels wrong are specific and learnable. Whether my structured evaluation of those gaps produces a measurably better next model is the experiment I'd want to run.
Hook 5 - Commercial context vs. aesthetic judgment
My evaluations of design quality are grounded in commercial context. A layout isn't just strong or weak - it moves a specific user toward a decision in a specific context, or it doesn't. What I'd want to understand is whether Mindrift's tasks give that context, or whether the evaluation is deliberately context-free. The two produce very different feedback signals, and I'd calibrate differently for each.
Hook 6 - Domain expert vs. general rater
Most AI training platforms use general raters to evaluate general output. Mindrift is specifically recruiting domain experts for domain-specific AI work. That's a different labor model - and it either produces dramatically better training signal or it doesn't. The model succeeds or fails depending on whether an experienced designer's judgment is more consistent and more transferable than a generalist's. I'm curious what the internal data shows.
Hook 7 - Parallel income, not fallback
I'm building Scalenic as a studio right now. Between client projects, there's variable time that's either genuinely available or genuinely not. Mindrift's async, no-minimum model is one of the few gig structures that actually fits that pattern - I can engage seriously when I have the hours, reduce when I don't, without burning a client relationship. That's not a fallback. It's a secondary income stream I can actually commit to.
Hook 8 - Two qualifying roles
Mindrift has four active designer roles. I qualify directly for Brand Designer and Web Designer without capability stretch - these are the two strongest verticals across 120+ projects. I'd apply for both with a focused subset of the portfolio for each. I'm curious whether Mindrift accepts concurrent applications to multiple roles or prefers one primary.
Hook 9 - Written rationale as existing deliverable
Design rationale writing isn't something I'd do differently for Mindrift - it's already a deliverable in every client engagement. Proposals, revision responses, positioning documents: explaining in specific terms why a design decision serves or undermines a brief is something I do commercially. For Mindrift's training feedback loop, that's the most transferable thing I'd bring.
Hook 10 - Curious about task structure
What does the first evaluation task actually look like? I'm curious about the structure - is it always a direct comparison between two options, or does it include single-output quality ratings? The two formats produce different feedback. A direct comparison forces a relative judgment; a single-output rating forces an absolute standard. I'd want to know which is more common before I know how to calibrate.
Letter / Application note

Hi Mindrift team,

Evaluating design quality and explaining why one solution works better than another is what I do inside every client project, every brief, every revision round. It's not a skill I'd develop for this platform - it's the thing I've been doing commercially for seven years across 120+ projects. Mindrift is the first opportunity where that specific capability is the product, not the byproduct.

My background: brand and web design, 7 years, 120+ commercial projects globally. Multi-year embedded design partnerships with North American SaaS companies (Bidmii, NextCrew), plus freelance work across hospitality, real estate, fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce. The range matters here because my quality judgments are cross-vertical - I know what good composition looks like in a SaaS dashboard, a luxury e-commerce product page, a B2B landing page, and a hospitality booking flow. They are different standards.

I work in Figma daily and have used Midjourney, Claude, and Figma AI in my actual design process for over a year. I know the specific failure modes of AI-generated design - the compositions that are technically balanced but visually inert, the type pairings that are defensible but wrong, the layouts that have correct hierarchy but poor visual weight. These are patterns I catch in my own work and in AI-generated output.

The written articulation requirement is something I'd treat as the core of the role, not a secondary task. I write design rationales, positioning documents, and strategic briefs as part of every client engagement. Explaining in specific, learnable terms why a design decision serves or undermines a brief is already a deliverable I produce.

Applying for Brand Designer and Web Designer roles - both are direct matches to my primary portfolio. Portfolio: behance.net/igor_salagin
Recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

Applied23 sent
Tickmill (Fintech · CFD trading platform) EN
Senior Product Designer · Applied Jul 6 · Tallinn on-site
Applied Jul 6 Fit 3.5/5
Apply at Tickmill → tickmill.bamboohr.com · Tallinn on-site · Attach CV before sending
Salary
Not stated. Regulated fintech in Tallinn typically pays above Estonian market average - verify via application or Glassdoor.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossRegulated fintech in EE - push above local market; negotiate if they counter below €5k
Industry
FintechCFD / FX trading platformRegulated financial product
Why
  • Igor trades CFDs and crypto for his own account - direct domain knowledge, real user empathy
  • CFD platform UI is precision work: ambiguous confirmation states, misread fields, unclear order status = real financial risk for users
  • Regulated fintech in Tallinn - strong salary potential, stable employer
  • Tallinn on-site - good fit for someone already based here
  • Design systems and UI craft are core requirements - Igor's Bidmii design system work maps directly
Requires
  • Senior product design experience (5+ years likely)
  • Complex information-dense UI experience (trading dashboards, data-heavy screens)
  • Design systems, Figma, dev collaboration
  • Fintech or trading domain preferred but not required
Risks
  • No direct fintech portfolio case studies - Bidmii is the closest structural match
  • On-site commitment - less schedule flexibility vs. remote roles
  • Regulated fintech compliance culture may mean slower-moving design process
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (portfolio + Behance)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (current)
A CFD trading platform is one of the few product types where the UI has direct fiduciary weight. An ambiguous confirmation state, a field that reads one way when the user intends another, unclear order status under market movement - these aren't usability problems in the usual sense. They're risk events. I've been trading my own account long enough to know exactly where that friction is.
Hook 2
Tickmill's spread-from-0.0 model is a transparency play - it says we don't hide costs in the price. That kind of platform has to hold the same standard in its interface: every number means what the user thinks it means, every action does what the user expects. That's not a design preference. It's a product promise.
Hook 3
The information architecture of a trading platform has to serve two completely different users: someone browsing positions casually and someone actively managing an open trade under time pressure. Both are using the same screen. Getting that hierarchy right for both modes is a design challenge that hasn't been fully solved by any platform I've traded on.
Hook 4
I trade CFDs and crypto for my own account. I've spent enough time inside platforms that don't respect your attention when a position is moving to know exactly what I'd fix first on a trading UI. Tallinn, on-site, building something where the UI outcome has real financial consequences - that's a different kind of design brief than most.
Hook 5
Most retail trading platforms were designed by people who understood markets but not UX, or understood UX but not markets. Tickmill's product sits at that intersection. I've been on both sides of it - as a designer and as a trader - which is not a combination most applicants can offer.
Letter

Hi Tickmill team,

I trade CFDs and crypto for my own account. Which means I have first-hand experience of exactly what bad trading interface design costs in real time - ambiguous confirmation states, order status that reads one way when the market is calm and another way when it isn't, fields that look identical but behave differently under pressure. A CFD platform is one of the few products where the UI has direct fiduciary weight. I know this from both sides of the screen.

Seven years of product design, with multi-year embedded partnerships at NextCrew (workforce management SaaS, 2.5x sales growth over four years) and Bidmii (marketplace SaaS, $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users). The design discipline in both cases was the same: multi-role platforms where errors had real consequences, state management that couldn't be ambiguous, workflows where the user had to get the right answer - not just a reasonable approximation of it. That transfers directly to trading UI.

Tallinn on-site works well - I am based here and available for the kind of daily collaboration that builds better products faster than async ever does.

Three things I am curious about: what is the primary platform - MetaTrader, a proprietary terminal, or both - and does the designer own the full UI stack or work within an existing system? Where does the biggest UX debt sit right now - is it the execution layer, the account management surface, or something in the onboarding flow? And how does the design team collaborate with compliance on interface changes - is that a blocker or a built-in constraint that the design process has adapted to?

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

LucidLink (Cloud-native file system for creative teams · B2B SaaS · remote) EN
Senior Product Designer · Applied Jul 6 · Remote EU/NA
Applied Jul 6 Fit 4/5
Apply on Ashby → jobs.ashbyhq.com/lucidlink · Remote: NA, Europe, AUS/NZ · Confirmed open
Salary
~£75,000 / yr (~€7,300/mo gross) stated £75,000/yr · + stock options · source: remotive.com listing Apr 2026
Industry
Cloud storage / file systemCreative media + post-productionB2B SaaS · desktop-first
Why
  • AI-enabled features angle - matching the new AI design title focus
  • Desktop-first B2B SaaS design - technically complex product, high craft bar
  • Clients include Paramount, Warner Bros, Netflix, Spotify, Epic Games - real scale
  • Remote across Europe, NA, AUS - fully eligible from Tallinn
  • Salary above preferred floor at £75K/yr (~€88K/yr)
Requires
  • Strong product thinking - simplify complex problems
  • Research + validation across multiple platforms
  • Desktop-first design background preferred
  • B2B/SaaS experience strongly preferred
  • AI-enabled features or workflows - a plus
Risks
  • Creative media/post-production is a new domain - no portfolio work in this vertical
  • Desktop-first design preference - Igor's portfolio is more web-focused
  • Salary is in GBP - currency fluctuation vs EUR goals
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (AI + B2B SaaS · behance.net/igor_salagin)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1
I've worked in distributed B2B tools for seven years, and the friction that consistently breaks creative teams isn't the software - it's the invisible mental overhead of tracking where files actually are and whether the version is right. I've been watching LucidLink from the outside because you're one of the few products treating that overhead as the core problem, not a footnote.
Hook 2
I've had the Paramount/Netflix tier of client on the other side of projects - teams where a missed version or a broken handoff has real production cost attached. When I look at who uses LucidLink, I recognize those stakes. These aren't users who file a polite support ticket. They need the tool to be invisible, not impressive.
Hook 3
Every time I've collaborated on large assets - even with tools that claim to handle it - there's a moment where someone asks "wait, which version is in the folder right now?" I find that question fascinating as a design failure: a billion-dollar infrastructure problem that still produces a five-word confusion. LucidLink's entire purpose is making that question unnecessary.
Hook 4
I've been watching AI work into creative tools from the practitioner side - using Midjourney for client work, Claude Code in my dev workflow. The infrastructure question of where files live becomes more important, not less, as AI integrates deeper into production. I want to be working on that problem from the inside while it's still unsettled.
Hook 5
I spent four years as the sole designer at a staffing SaaS where the same underlying data had to serve IT managers, workers, shift supervisors, and payroll integrations simultaneously. LucidLink has the same structural challenge: one file system, four completely different mental models of what "the files" mean. I've designed through that kind of split before.
Finom (B2B all-in-one finance SaaS · banking + accounting + invoicing · Series C) EN
Senior Product Designer · Applied Jul 6 · EU remote
Applied Jul 6 Fit 4.5/5
Apply at Finom → Lever EU · remote from within EU · also listed on LinkedIn
Salary
Not stated. Series C company - check Lever listing or Glassdoor. EU remote suggests competitive comp.
Industry
B2B Fintech / NeobankBanking + accounting + invoicing SaaSSeries C · EU remote
Salary ask
€7,000/mo gross€84,000/yr grossSeries C funded, EU remote - push above median
Why
  • B2B fintech building the full stack - banking, accounting, invoicing in one platform - exactly the kind of complex, multi-workflow product Igor's NextCrew and Bidmii experience maps to
  • Series C funding means serious runway; design team investment is real, not a cost-center afterthought
  • Core Product designer role - owns the most consequential UX surface, not a satellite feature team
  • Remote EU - works within Tallinn timezone without the remote-US time-zone friction
  • "Work and Swim" perk in Cyprus, stock options - signals company actually cares about team quality of life
  • 4+ years required - Igor's 7+ years freelance product design (Bidmii, NextCrew, NT Kaunas) clearly clears the bar
Requires
  • 4+ years product design experience (Igor: 7+)
  • Strong portfolio showing shipped complex B2B workflows
  • Cross-functional team collaboration (designers, PMs, engineers)
  • Source: Lever EU (jobs.eu.lever.co/pnlfin) · Designproject.io · LinkedIn
Risks
  • No banking/invoicing SaaS portfolio case - closest match is NextCrew (enterprise workflow redesign) + Bidmii (marketplace complexity). Not a disqualifier but will need clear framing in the letter
  • Salary not disclosed - negotiate from strength given Series C status
  • Could be competitive: role is "Core Product" which typically attracts high applicant volume
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (B2B SaaS + fintech workflow portfolio)
Best hook

Most fintech products solve a vertical problem - banking OR accounting OR invoicing - and then acquire their way into the others. The seams show. Finom is making the harder bet: that all three surfaces can feel like one product designed by one team. I find that specific design challenge more interesting than any of the three verticals alone - and I've spent four years solving the same structural problem at different scale.

Letter

Hi Finom team,

Most fintech products solve a vertical problem - banking OR accounting OR invoicing - and then acquire their way into the others. The integration feels like integration because it was. Finom is making the harder bet: that all three surfaces can feel like one product designed by one team, with one coherent mental model for the user who is simultaneously a business owner, an accountant, and the person reconciling transactions at 9pm. That's a more interesting design challenge than any of the three verticals alone.

I've designed for users where workflow complexity isn't optional. At NextCrew - a staffing compliance SaaS where I was the embedded designer for four years - the users were managing multi-role scheduling with payroll consequences attached. A mistake in the workflow wasn't a UX friction point; it was a missed payroll. At Bidmii I owned the full design cycle for a two-sided marketplace with financial transactions running through every interaction. $1M pre-seed raised while I was there, 5,700+ users onboarded. Both projects required the same skill Finom needs: making systems that are genuinely complex feel like a sensible sequence of obvious next steps.

EU remote, Series C, core product - this is one of the better-structured roles I've seen recently. The fit is strong enough that I'd want to move quickly if the conversation goes well.

Three questions before diving in: does Finom treat banking, accounting, and invoicing as shared components under a unified design system, or has product growth created real divergence between the surfaces? What does onboarding look like for a new solo founder who has never used accounting software? And where does the biggest UX debt sit in the core product right now?

Selected project outcomes and case studies: behance.net/igor_salagin
Client and employer recommendations: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Igor Šalagin

DuckDuckGo (Privacy-first search engine · consumer product) EN
Senior Product Designer · Applied July 6 · fully remote
Applied Jul 6 Fit 3.5/5
Applied July 6, 2026 · via DuckDuckGo careers page
Role
Senior Product Designer · privacy-first consumer search and browser product · fully remote
Why it fit
  • Privacy-first product design: values-driven product brief, unusual in consumer software
  • Consumer product with strong brand conviction - design quality is a brand differentiator here
  • Fully remote, US-based company with EU eligibility
Status
Applied. Awaiting response.
Hostinger (Web hosting & builder) EN
Product Designer · Remote Europe · web hosting platform
Fit 4/5
Applied
Apply at Hostinger → careers.hostinger.com · Verify listing still open (~1 mo old)
Salary
~€3,348 / mo net
stated €54,000/year = €4,500/mo gross · Estonia 25.6% tax
Why
  • Hostinger is one of the largest web hosting platforms globally
  • Igor's entire career is in web: he's designed sites for clients who use Hostinger, Webflow, Framer, and WordPress
  • He knows the user - not from a persona, but from 7 years of conversations with founders and small-business owners who need to get online without becoming developers
  • Salary is confirmed (€54K/year from UIUXJobsBoard)
  • 1 month old - verify it's still open before drafting
Requires
  • Likely: product design experience, onboarding/conversion focus, Figma, engineering collaboration
  • Check careers.hostinger.com for full spec
  • Source: uiuxjobsboard.com/design-jobs/remote-europe · Full Time, Remote Europe, €54K
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 4/5: Igor's entire client base for 7 years has been Hostinger's user - founders and small business owners who need to get online fast and don't want to become developers. He has 7 years of real empathy for this specific user, not theoretical. The role designs Hostinger's core growth surface (onboarding, website builder UX, first-session experience). High intrinsic fit. 1 point off: Hostinger likely prefers someone with PLG/SaaS-at-scale product experience. Listing is ~1 month old - verify open.
  • 🔴 Salary €54,000/year gross (€3,348/mo net) - significantly below expected rate for 7 years experience; lowest confirmed salary in this batch
  • Lithuanian company (Kaunas HQ) - different market norms and potential salary ceiling
  • Listing is ~1 month old - high priority to verify it's still open before investing time in a full letter
Subject
Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (portfolio + Behance)
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossCEE company - monthly standard
Best hook

My clients for seven years have been Hostinger's users: founders and small business owners who needed to get online without becoming developers. I know their frustrations in detail - not from a persona document but from real client conversations. The hardest thing about designing for this user isn't simplicity (every builder says simple). It's confidence. There's a real difference between a UI that's technically simple and one that makes a non-technical founder feel capable. The first time that feeling clicks is usually whether someone stays for three years or publishes once and never comes back. That first-session confidence moment is the design problem I'd want to work on.

Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Seven years with Hostinger's user
My clients for seven years have been Hostinger's users: founders and small business owners who need to get online without becoming developers. I know the friction from the outside - not from a persona, but from real conversations. The hardest thing about designing for this user isn't simplicity (every team says simple). It's confidence. There's a difference between a UI that's technically simple and one that makes a non-technical founder feel capable. Hostinger's product is often the first time these people experience "I can actually do this." That first session sets whether they stay for three years.
Hook 2 · The product is the sales pitch
At the price point Hostinger operates at, the product itself is the sales pitch. There's no enterprise account team to smooth over friction. The onboarding, the builder, the support flow - they either convert and retain, or they don't. Seven years designing products where the interface does all the selling taught me how high that bar actually is.
Hook 3 · One job, constant pressure on complexity
The user Hostinger is designing for has exactly one job: get their business online, looking professional, as fast as possible. They're not interested in what's technically possible; they're interested in what's achievable. That's a different brief than 'feature-rich platform' - it requires constant pressure on complexity.
Hook 4 · First experience = retention
Hostinger is in the business of making the first experience of having a website good enough that users stay. Retention in hosting is a design problem as much as a pricing one: if the product feels clunky, users feel trapped. If it feels fast and clear, they refer people. Seven years with small business founders gave me a close read on what 'feels right' means to them.
Letter

Hi Hostinger team,

My clients for seven years - over 100 projects for commercial clients - have been Hostinger's users: founders and small business owners who need to get online without becoming developers. I know the friction from the outside - not from a persona, but from real conversations. The hardest thing about designing for this user isn't simplicity (every team says simple). It's confidence. The difference between a UI that's technically simple and one that makes a non-technical founder feel capable is where most products miss. Hostinger's product is often the first time these people experience "I can actually do this." That first session sets whether they stay for three years.

At Bidmii - a SaaS marketplace where I was the sole embedded designer for three years - I owned onboarding UX for a platform where the first fifteen minutes determined whether a user would stay for three years. +52% lift in leads, design system built from scratch, $1M pre-seed raise, 5,700+ users onboarded. Bidmii case study on Behance.

One question: Hostinger serves two user modes that feel like they're in tension - the person who publishes once and never comes back, and the person who keeps iterating and wants to go deeper. When a product decision has to favour one over the other, where does the team currently land? And is that a settled conviction or still an active debate?

Project case studies and outcomes: behance.net/igor_salagin

Igor Šalagin

Apply
  • Verify listing still open (1 month old)
  • Source: uiuxjobsboard.com/design-jobs/remote-europe · Apply at: careers.hostinger.com
Cases
2 · Bidmii · Impact Land Services
01
Bidmii - SaaS Marketplace, Canada
Onboarding UX for non-technical users. First session = 3-year retention. +52% leads, $1M raise.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
03
Impact Land Services - Local Business Redesign
+70% local inquiries, -40% time-to-contact. Small business owner as user - same as Hostinger's audience.
behance.net/igor_salagin ↗
RallyFeed (Rally motorsport timing) EN
UI/UX Designer · Tallinn, hybrid
Fit 4/5
Applied
Email kris@rallyfeed.com → rallyfeed.com → LinkedIn → Email Kris directly · site may be in pre-launch phase
Salary
~€2,230 - €3,350 / mo net
stated €3,000 - €4,500 brutto · Estonia 25.6% tax
Why
  • After years of freelance, the part I like least is the ending - you finish a project, everything works, and that's the last you see of it
  • What I actually want is to stay inside a product long enough to see what changes when you keep improving it over time, and to work with a real team rather than solo with a founder
  • A small team working on something this specific feels like the right context for that
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 4.5/5: Small team of 3, Igor operates best as sole designer with full scope ownership - this is exactly that environment. The product design brief (live event timing, feed hierarchy, real-time state) maps directly to his systems thinking. Remote fits. Half-point off: pre-public product, revenue model unproven, company size means no design mentorship or process infrastructure.
  • Stated salary €3,000-€4,500 brutto (€2,230-€3,350 net) - below expected rate for 7 years experience
  • Sports/rally niche with no matching portfolio cases
  • Team of 3 - limited design mentorship or infrastructure. ~July 15 deadline is an estimate - verify the listing is still open before drafting
Subject
UX/UI Designer - Igor Šalagin (Tallinn-based, portfolio + Behance included)
Salary ask
€4,500/mo gross€54,000/yr grosstheir stated top - anchor there · ET form: monthly
Best hook
Hook 4 · Serious fans + spectator logic - You're building for people who already know what a stage split means. The live data follows spectator logic, not data-engineer logic - the argument most teams quietly lose. The fact that you won it is why I applied.
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Timing philosophy
Kris - a live event feed that follows the timing of a rally, not the algorithm, is one of those product decisions that sounds obvious in hindsight and is actually very hard to commit to. Most sports apps optimise for retention loops; RallyFeed optimises for the sport. That tells me something about the team behind it. I'd love to help build what comes next.
Hook 2 · UX behind the data
The data problem for rally timing was solved for broadcast fifteen years ago. The problem you're actually solving is different: making that same information feel immediate to someone checking between stages on a wet phone. That's a UX problem, not an infrastructure problem, and it requires a designer who can hold both the structure and the feeling at once.
Hook 3 · Specificity advantage
Three people building specifically for rally fans, not for "motorsport fans in general" - that decision doesn't get made by accident. Products built for deeply-caring audiences are a fundamentally different brief: specificity is the feature. I find that constraint produces sharper design thinking than open-ended briefs, and it demands a different kind of attentiveness to get right.
Hook 4 · Serious fans + spectator logic
You're building for people who already know what a stage split means and care about the number. Most sports apps lose them by designing for casual readers. But the deeper choice is more specific: the live data structure follows how a spectator follows a rally weekend, not how a data engineer would organise it. Choosing spectator logic over data logic is the argument most teams quietly lose. The fact that you won it is why I applied. Getting the depth right without making it impenetrable for someone new to rallying - that's the harder brief, and the more interesting one.
Letter

Hi Kris and the RallyFeed team,

Kris - a live event feed that follows the timing of a rally, not the algorithm, is one of those product decisions that sounds obvious in hindsight and is actually very hard to commit to. Most sports apps optimise for retention loops; RallyFeed optimises for the sport. That tells me something about the team behind it. I’d love to help build what comes next.

I've spent most of my career as the sole embedded designer inside startups - seven years and over 100 projects finished and launched for commercial clients - which means I know what it looks like when a small team makes a deliberate product decision and sticks to it. The closest parallel in my own work is Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole designer for three years, building the full product and design system from scratch, from before the first user through a $1M pre-seed raise and 5,700+ users onboarded. Across seven years I've finished and launched over 100 projects for commercial clients. Full case study on Behance.

With a team of three, you don't need someone who waits for a detailed brief or stops at wireframes. You need someone who can own the scope end-to-end - from early product decisions through production-ready components - and move fast when things are still in flux. That's the environment I've worked in for most of my career.

What actually draws me here: a product built for people who care deeply about a specific thing. That's a different design brief from a general sports app - it rewards specificity, respects the user's expertise, and punishes anything that feels generic or undercooked. Products built for deeply-caring audiences require a kind of attentiveness that I find genuinely more interesting than designing for the mass market. I want to work somewhere that holds that standard as the baseline, not the ambition.

Resume is attached. Verified contract history and recommendations on my LinkedIn profile.

One question I keep coming back to: as RallyFeed grows, where does the spectator layer sit relative to the timing core? I'm curious whether the product direction is to deepen coverage of the current stages - more data, more detail for the committed fan - or to widen toward a broader motorsport audience. That answer changes what the design needs to do quite a lot.

I'd be glad to show you my process work - not just the finished cases but the rounds of thinking that got there. If a test brief is a useful way to see how I work, I'm genuinely happy with that too.

Cases
2 · Bidmii · Forest Hotel
01
Bidmii - SaaS Platform, Canada
Sole designer on a 3-person team - full product + design system from scratch. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users.
behance.net/gallery/219195593
02
Forest Hotel - Experience-led Product, Lithuania
Event product for a passionate audience - 20-25 direct reservations/month from emotional, booking-focused design.
behance.net/gallery/183997947
Fasset (Crypto access & DeFi · Ibrahim Hasani, Head of Product) EN
Senior Product Designer · Remote, Estonia-eligible · crypto / DeFi platform
No PD role - listing closed Fit 3.5/5
Apply at Fasset (Himalayas) → himalayas.app · fasset.com/careers returns 403 · Remote, Estonia-eligible · Deadline: Aug 25, 2026
Salary
Not stated. Check himalayas.app or fasset.com/careers for details.
Why
  • Fasset is a digital asset / crypto platform
  • Igor trades crypto personally and helped a friend build an AI-based crypto trading platform (BTC, ETH, altcoins)
  • He knows the UX problem: user making real financial decisions under time pressure, too many options on screen, products that don't get out of the way lose retention
  • Same domain insight used in the Trade Nation letter
  • Posted today - apply early. "Senior" bar is real, same caveat as Photoroom
Requires
  • Likely: Senior product design experience, fintech or crypto domain preferred, user research, complex interface design, Figma
  • Source: himalayas.app/jobs/countries/estonia/ui-ux-design · 2 hours old when scraped
  • Check himalayas.app for full spec
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 3.5/5: Igor trades crypto personally and spent a year helping build an AI trading platform - real domain knowledge, not surface-level familiarity. The product design challenge (trust UX for first-time financial users in emerging markets) is genuinely interesting and within his skill set. Half-point off: no case studies from fintech or emerging market audiences. Dubai-based company - non-EU employment structure is a risk factor.
  • 🔴 Crypto/DeFi industry: regulatory uncertainty, potential company stability risk - verify before accepting
  • Dubai-based (UAE) - non-EU jurisdiction, different employment structure and legal protections
  • Salary undisclosed
  • No direct crypto product design portfolio (AI trading platform contribution was informal and project-level)
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (portfolio + Behance)
Salary ask
€6,500/mo gross€78,000/yr grossDubai/remote - use annual
Best hook
Hook 3 · The trader who also builds for traders - Bitcoin and altcoins on Binance + other exchanges, TradingView as primary charting layer. Clear list of what breaks: indicator noise, filtering for power users only, onboarding that doesn't read intent. Also helping a crypto founder redesign their platform. Fasset's problem is first-time trust - same root failure.
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Designing for first-time trust
Fasset is trying to make crypto accessible to people in markets where the existing financial system doesn't work well for them. That's a meaningfully different brief than most crypto products - you're not designing for someone who already has a brokerage account and wants yield. You're designing for first-time trust. That changes what every screen has to do.
Hook 2 · Re-earning every convention
The hardest thing about designing for financial inclusion in emerging markets is that your users have often been burned by something that looked professional and trustworthy before. Every pattern a Western fintech team treats as 'obvious' has to be re-earned with this audience. That constraint produces better design - you can't hide behind convention.
Hook 3 · The trader who also builds for traders
I trade crypto for my own account - Bitcoin and altcoins, across Binance and other exchanges, with TradingView as my primary charting layer. That time has built a clear list of what I'd fix: indicator UI creates visual noise that makes decisions harder under pressure; filtering is built for power users and loses everyone else; onboarding rarely distinguishes between someone who wants to start small and someone who's ready to go now. I'm also currently helping a crypto founder redesign their platform. Fasset's problem is specifically about trust and first access - a different brief - but the underlying failure is the same: the product doesn't meet the user where they actually are.
Hook 4 · Trust built at the component level
The gap Fasset is closing - between people who want exposure to crypto assets and the products that actually serve them - is as much a trust problem as a technology problem. Design is where trust gets built or broken at scale. Seven years building products where the UI was the only thing between the user and their confidence is direct preparation for that.
Hook 5 · High mobile fluency, low friction tolerance
Working for the Gulf and Southeast Asian markets means designing for users with high mobile fluency, limited tolerance for unnecessary friction, and very direct expectations of financial products. That profile rewards simplicity over feature depth and clarity over brand expression. The design has to earn attention fast, because the alternative is just switching.
Letter

Hi Ibrahim and the Fasset team,

I trade crypto for my own account - Bitcoin and altcoins, across Binance and other exchanges, with TradingView as my primary charting layer. I've also spent time helping a friend design and build an AI (AI)-based trading platform from scratch. So I know the real friction in this space: not "can I place this trade" but "am I making the right call, at the right moment, with the right information on screen." Most crypto platforms are built for users who are already confident. Fasset is trying to make that confidence accessible to people who aren't there yet. That's a harder problem and a more meaningful one. I want to help solve it.

My design background covers seven years and over 100 projects for commercial clients, including complex platforms. At Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole designer for three years - I owned the full UX stack from research through design system and development handoff, across a product that went from prototype to $1M pre-seed raise and 5,700+ active users. Case study on Behance. +52% leads, -33% bounce rate - and the same design system covered the full product and public site. These aren't crypto projects, but the discipline maps: simplify without losing fidelity, design for users with real stakes.

One thing I'd genuinely be curious to hear: what has research with Fasset's actual users told you that surprised the team? My assumption is that users in emerging markets have been burned by financial products that looked legitimate before - which means the usual fintech trust signals don't land the same way. But I'm curious where the data has actually challenged those assumptions.

This posting is fresh - I'm applying early on purpose.

Project case studies and outcomes: behance.net/igor_salagin

Igor Šalagin

Apply
  • Very fresh (posted today)
  • Source: himalayas.app · Apply at: fasset.com/careers or via Himalayas listing
Cases
3 · AI Crypto Trading Platform (contributed) · Bidmii · NT Kaunas
01
AI Crypto Trading Platform (contributed)
Helped design an AI-based platform for BTC/ETH/altcoins. User insight from personal crypto trading.
02
Bidmii - SaaS Marketplace, Canada
Full UX stack, complex state flows, design system. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
03
NT Kaunas - Complex B2B Platform
Multi-role flows, data-driven redesign. Complex interface thinking under real constraints.
behance.net/gallery/193196975 ↗
Maze (User research SaaS · George O'Brien, CPO) EN
Product Designer · Remote Europe · user research SaaS
No design role open Fit 4.5/5 Prioritize
Apply at Maze → maze.co/careers · Remote Europe
Salary
Not stated. Check maze.co/careers before applying.
Why
  • Maze is a product research and testing platform - the user is a designer or researcher designing for their own users
  • That person has opinions, notices broken flows, and compares every decision against how they'd build it
  • Igor has run user research as the starting methodology for seven years and over 100 projects for commercial clients: interviews, heatmaps, usability tests, A/B testing
  • He'd be designing a tool he's actually used, not one he's read about
  • Highest fit score in the remote Europe batch
Requires
  • Likely: Figma, user research methods, SaaS product thinking, developer/researcher-facing product context
  • Check maze.co/careers for full spec
  • Source: uiuxjobsboard.com/design-jobs/remote-europe · Full Time, Remote Europe
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 4.5/5: Research tool for product teams - Igor runs user research embedded in every project, which means he is literally a daily-use target user of the product he'd be designing. Remote Europe, Senior PD scope, 5+ year match against 7. The closest thing to "designing something you understand from the inside" in this batch. Half-point off: Maze had public layoffs in 2023, company stability is a real question before accepting any offer.
  • Salary not disclosed - verify at maze.co/careers before drafting
  • Research SaaS may expect heavier quantitative methods background (statistical analysis, survey design) beyond standard UX practice
  • Listing is 17 days old - verify it's still accepting applications
Subject
Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (portfolio + Behance)
Salary ask
€6,500/mo gross€78,000/yr grossremote SaaS - use annual
Best hook
Hook 5 · Seven years on the research side - Seven years running user research as a practicing designer - not as a researcher, but as the person who commissions, runs, and acts on it. The time between "we should test this" and "the test is live" should feel like picking up a pen. Maze is built to close that distance. I want to work on it from the inside.
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Speed is the product philosophy
Maze is trying to close the gap between research that influences decisions and research that gets filed away. That's a product philosophy built around making research fast enough to actually be used - which is a harder problem than making it thorough. Designing for it means working against the clock on behalf of the user's users.
Hook 2 · Expert audience raises the bar
Designing for researchers who are themselves experts in user behaviour is one of the most specific briefs I can imagine. Your users will notice everything that's wrong, and they'll know exactly why. It's the kind of audience that demands you get the design right - not just useful - and that tension produces better work.
Hook 3 · High existing standard
The most interesting thing about Maze's design challenge: your users already know how to do research. You're helping them do it faster and with more rigour. Every feature has to meet a high existing standard before it earns its place. I've spent seven years and over 100 projects for commercial clients - in environments where the user often knew more about their domain than I did, and that constraint sharpens design thinking.
Hook 4 · Infrastructure for speed
User research only changes decisions if it lands fast enough to be acted on. Maze is building the infrastructure for that speed - and the design of the research tool itself has to embody what the product promises. I find that recursive quality interesting: the interface has to be proof of concept.
Hook 5 · Seven years on the research side
I've run user research for seven years as a practicing designer (over 100 projects for commercial clients) - not as a researcher, but as the person who commissions, runs, and acts on it. I know the moments where a tool gets in the way, and the moments where the setup just disappears and the data flows. What draws me to Maze specifically: the time between "we should test this" and "the test is live" should feel like picking up a pen. Most research tools don't get there. Maze is built to close that distance. I want to work on that from the inside.
Letter

Hi George and the Maze team,

I've been running user research for seven years - interviews, usability tests, A/B testing - and the gap between "research that influences decisions" and "research that gets filed away" usually comes down to how fast you can produce it. Maze is trying to close that gap. That's a product philosophy I believe in, and a harder design problem than it looks: you're designing for researchers who are themselves experts in user behaviour. I'd love to help solve that from the inside.

My background here is direct: seven years of product design and over 100 projects launched for commercial clients, built around user research as the starting point, not the validation step. At Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole designer for three years - I ran qualitative user interviews, analysed drop-off patterns, and used heatmaps and session recordings alongside structured usability tests to identify where the product broke down. The design followed the research, not the other way around. The product went from early prototype to $1M pre-seed raise with 5,700+ active users. Bidmii case study on Behance.

Working at Maze would put me on the tool side of a practice I've lived in for seven years. I'd bring a user who genuinely runs research, not just someone who's heard of it.

One thing I'd want to understand better: the speed philosophy is clear as a direction, but where does Maze draw the line internally between "fast enough to act on" and "so fast the signal quality suffers"? That tension must show up somewhere in product decisions. I'm curious how the team navigates it.

Project case studies and outcomes: behance.net/igor_salagin

Igor Šalagin

Apply
Source: uiuxjobsboard.com/design-jobs/remote-europe · Apply at: maze.co/careers · Ashby board returned empty - listing may be closed. Verify before applying.
Cases
3 · Bidmii · NT Kaunas · UX Estonia
01
Bidmii - SaaS Marketplace, Canada
User research as methodology: interviews, heatmaps, usability tests. +52% leads, $1M pre-seed.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
02
NT Kaunas - Real Estate Platform
Data-driven UX: analytics, usability testing, conversion tracking. ~40 leads/month.
behance.net/gallery/193196975 ↗
03
UX Estonia - 3-year teaching partnership
Taught user research methods to 25+ students: qualitative, quantitative, A/B testing, business analytics.
uxestonia.ee ↗
3Commas (Crypto · AI (AI) trading automation) EN
Senior Product Designer · Tallinn / remote · crypto trading bots, QuantPilot AI (AI)
Applied July 1 Call Jul 14 · 11:30am EEST Fit 3/5
Apply at 3Commas → jobs.ashbyhq.com/3commas · Verify listing is still active before applying
Salary
Not stated. Check Ashby listing or Glassdoor for 3Commas Tallinn design salaries.
Why
  • Igor trades crypto personally and spent a year helping build an AI (AI)-based crypto trading platform - direct user + builder empathy
  • QuantPilot introduces AI (AI) explainability UX - how to show an algorithm's decisions to users trusting it with real capital is an unsolved design problem
  • Dashboard UX for trading automation - complex multi-state interfaces, power user vs. beginner balance
  • Tallinn-based - local company, on-site or hybrid likely available
Requires
  • Senior product design (5+ years) - met
  • Complex dashboard or data-heavy UI experience
  • Fintech or crypto domain familiarity - Igor's personal trading + AI platform project is a real differentiator
  • User research, design systems, Figma
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 3/5: Personal crypto trading + AI trading platform work gives Igor real insider empathy for 3Commas' user. QuantPilot's explainability UX is a genuinely unsolved design problem he's thought about. But no formal fintech product portfolio, listing is ~1 month old (may be filled), and crypto industry regulatory risk is real. 3 not lower because the domain interest and empathy are authentic.
  • Listing is ~1 month old - verify still open before spending time on the letter
  • Crypto industry: regulatory headwinds, company stability - verify before accepting any offer
  • No formal fintech/crypto product portfolio - personal trading + AI platform contribution is informal
Subject
Senior Product Designer - Igor Šalagin (crypto + AI (AI) platform background)
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossTallinn - monthly standard
Best hook
Hook 1 · Two sides of the same decision - Automated trading tools live and die on the user's confidence that the bot is doing what they think. Alert design, position display, override flow - those are trust decisions. QuantPilot adds explainability on top. That's the problem I want to work on.
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Two sides of the same decision
Automated trading tools live and die on the user's confidence that the bot is doing what they think it's doing - and their confidence to let it keep running when a position goes sideways. Most of that confidence is designed into the UX, not the algorithm. The alert design, the position display, the manual override flow - those are trust decisions. QuantPilot adds the explainability layer on top of that. That's the problem I want to work on.
Hook 2 · Two sides of the same user
I trade crypto for my own account and spent a year helping build an AI (AI)-based crypto trading platform from scratch. So I understand 3Commas' user from both sides - the person who wants the automation to work, and the person who panic-overrides a working strategy at the worst moment because the interface didn't give them enough confidence to hold. That's a UX failure, not an algorithm failure.
Hook 3 · Trust is a design layer
QuantPilot is trying to make AI (AI)-assisted trading feel transparent rather than opaque. The trust gets built at the design layer - how positions are surfaced, how AI (AI) recommendations are framed, what the user sees when something goes wrong. If the interface doesn't communicate confidence, the algorithm doesn't matter. That's the gap 3Commas needs to close, and it's a design problem.
Hook 4 · Set-and-forget vs five-exchange power user
Dashboard UX for trading automation is uniquely hard: your users range from people who want to set-and-forget to power users watching live exposure across five exchanges. Both are using the same product. Designing for that range without overwhelming the beginner or patronizing the expert is what keeps this problem interesting. It's also what makes it hard to get right.
Hook 5 · Tallinn + crypto AI = my territory
3Commas is Tallinn. I'm in Tallinn. Crypto trading automation with an AI (AI) layer on top - QuantPilot - is the most technically interesting product I've seen in the local market. The UX problem of making automated financial decisions legible to a retail user is not yet solved by anyone. I'd like to take a run at it.
Letter

Hi 3Commas team,

I trade crypto for my own account and spent a year helping build an AI (AI)-based trading platform from scratch. So I understand 3Commas' core UX problem from the inside: automated trading tools live and die on confidence - the user's confidence that the bot is doing what they think it's doing, and their willingness to let it keep running when a position goes sideways. Most of that confidence is designed into the UX, not the algorithm. The alert design, the position display, the manual override flow - those are trust decisions. QuantPilot adds an explainability layer on top of all that. That's the problem I want to work on.

My design background covers seven years and over 100 projects for commercial clients, including complex platforms where information density had to coexist with usability under pressure. At Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole designer for three years - I owned the full UX stack from research to design system through a $1M pre-seed raise and 5,700+ active users. Case study on Behance. The pattern is the same: multi-role, state-heavy product, where the UX either builds trust fast or loses it.

Dashboard UX for trading automation is uniquely hard - your users range from set-and-forget to power users watching live exposure across five exchanges. That range doesn't simplify. It has to be designed for.

One question on QuantPilot specifically: how much of the AI's reasoning does the team currently think should be surfaced to the user? The design direction could go toward full transparency - showing the why behind every signal - or toward confidence without complexity, where the AI just acts and you trust it. That's a genuinely unsolved question, and I'd like to understand where 3Commas sits on it.

Note: this listing appears to be approximately one month old - applying with the assumption it's still open. Please disregard if the position has been filled.

Resume is attached. Case studies and client recommendations: behance.net/igor_salagin · LinkedIn

Application Qs
Trading tools experience - answer

Q: Do you have experience designing trading tools? Please elaborate if yes.

Yes. I trade crypto for my own account - Bitcoin and altcoins, across Binance and other exchanges, using TradingView as my primary charting and signal layer. I used 3Commas personally about five years ago, specifically for automating stop-loss and take-profit settings across positions. I know the product from the inside.

Beyond personal use, I contributed to designing an AI-based crypto trading platform from scratch over the past year - including position display, signal feeds, and the manual override flow. The core design challenge was the same one 3Commas faces: helping a user trust an automated system enough to let it run, while giving them enough visibility that they don't feel compelled to constantly intervene.

The UX failures I've observed consistently in trading tools: alert formats that drain confidence rather than build it, position displays that require too much cognitive assembly under pressure, and override flows that punish the user for taking manual control. I've thought about these from both sides - as a user and as the designer.

Canonical (Linux & open-source infra) EN
Visual UI Designer · Remote Europe · Ubuntu / Linux / developer tools
Ready to draft Fit 3.5/5 Prioritize
Apply at Canonical → canonical.com/careers · Remote
Salary
Not stated. Canonical publishes salary bands on application. Global company, likely competitive.
Salary ask
€5,500/mo gross€66,000/yr grossCanonical uses local-market pay; EE rate is their published band for Estonia - confirm with their calculator
Why
  • Canonical makes Ubuntu - the default Linux OS for developers and cloud servers globally
  • A Visual UI Designer here works on OS interfaces, documentation systems, and developer tools
  • The user has opted in to a philosophy: clarity, precision, consistency over novelty
  • That matches Igor's aesthetic - JetBrains Mono is a professional default in his own brand kit, his web system is minimal monospace, his best work is restrained
  • Fit is 3.5/5 because "Visual UI" may be narrower than Igor's full scope (no product strategy layer), but the company and domain are prestigious
Requires
  • Likely: strong visual design craft, icon systems, UI component design, web/documentation design, Figma, remote collaboration
  • Check canonical.com/careers for full spec
  • Source: uiuxjobsboard.com/design-jobs/remote-europe · Full Time, Remote Europe, 12 days ago
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 3.5/5: Igor runs Linux in his dev environment - he is the user, not a generic applicant pretending to understand the product. That specific authenticity matters in the cover letter. But Canonical's product surface (desktop OS, IoT, enterprise tooling) is entirely outside his portfolio, and open-source culture operates differently from startup/agency environments. 3.5: personal fit and user empathy are strong; portfolio evidence and culture fit are uncertain.
  • Visual UI Designer scope is narrower than full product design - less strategy layer, more execution focus
  • Salary not disclosed - Canonical publishes bands only after application stage
  • Fully distributed async culture is a specific working style - different from freelance flexibility in subtle ways
Subject
Visual UI Designer - Igor Šalagin (portfolio + Behance)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1
I run Linux in my development environment by choice, not necessity - JetBrains Mono is the default in my own brand kit, my terminal is the center of my workflow, and I've been that kind of user for years. I know what it feels like when a Linux product treats you as an intelligent person who made a deliberate choice. I also know what it feels like when it doesn't.
Hook 2
I use Ubuntu in my own dev environment, so when I look at Canonical's UI design work, I notice things a generic applicant wouldn't. The places where the interface is doing something subtle and right. The places where it's almost right and then isn't. That kind of specificity is hard to fake in a cover letter, and I don't have to.
Hook 3
I've been using open-source tools in my daily workflow for years - not as a statement, just as the practical choice for the work I do. What I find interesting about designing for Canonical's product surface is that the users have strong opinions and they're usually right. Designing for someone who knows the alternatives and chose yours is a different brief than designing for a captive audience.
Hook 4
I run Linux in my development environment by choice, not necessity - JetBrains Mono is the default font in my own brand kit, and the tools I use every day are built on open-source stacks. I'd be designing for a user whose preferences align closely with my own, which means I bring genuine intuition about what 'feels right' in that ecosystem.
Hook 5
My own brand design system uses JetBrains Mono as the primary typeface, minimal spacing, precision over decoration. When I look at Canonical's visual language, I recognize the intent behind it - I made the same choices for my own work. That's not a portfolio match claim; it's aesthetic alignment, which is a different and arguably more important kind of fit for a visual UI role.
Best hook

I run Linux in my development environment by choice - JetBrains Mono is the default in my own brand kit, my terminal is the center of my workflow, and I've been that kind of user for years. I know what it feels like when a Linux product respects the user who chose it deliberately. I also know when it doesn't. I'd be designing for someone whose preferences I share, which is a different starting point from a portfolio that just happens to look technical.

Letter

Hi Canonical team,

I run Linux in my development environment - not because it's easier, but because it's right for the work. That's the Ubuntu user in a sentence: someone who made a deliberate choice and expects the product to respect it. Designing for that user is different from designing for a captive audience. They'll leave if you get in their way, and they'll be remarkably loyal if you treat them as intelligent. That's a design constraint I find genuinely motivating.

My design work leans toward precision: minimal typography stacks (JetBrains Mono is a professional default in my own brand kit), tight spacing hierarchies, and system-thinking where every element earns its place. I've designed for developer-facing and technically sophisticated products - Bidmii, AtlasLeap, ArcPilot, Deeplify - where the interface has to be trustworthy before it's beautiful. Bidmii case study on Behance.

I've worked fully remotely since 2018 - all client delivery, coordination, and handoff. Time zone: CET+1 (Tallinn, Estonia), squarely in Canonical's European footprint.

Project case studies and outcomes: behance.net/igor_salagin

Igor Šalagin

Apply
Source: uiuxjobsboard.com/design-jobs/remote-europe · Apply at: canonical.com/careers
Cases
3 · Bidmii · ArcPilot / Deeplify · Scalenic Design System (own brand)
01
Bidmii - SaaS Marketplace (developer-adjacent)
Clean system-level UI, design system from scratch, dev handoff. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
02
ArcPilot / Deeplify - Technical SaaS Products
Visual UI for AI and developer-adjacent tools where clarity and precision are the baseline.
behance.net/igor_salagin ↗
03
Scalenic Design System (own brand)
Monospace-first, minimal, precise: JetBrains Mono + restrained palette. The visual language Canonical is after.
Bolt - DriverX (Product · Driver app) EN
Senior Product Designer · Tallinn, hybrid · driver-side platform
Ready to draft Fit 4/5 ~Jul 14 · Posted 4 days ago
Apply at Bolt → bolt.eu careers · Tallinn hybrid · Note: also applied Bolt Public Web June 23
Salary
Not stated. Bolt Tallinn senior designer range typically €3,500-€5,500/mo gross based on market data.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossTop of Bolt EE senior band - don't anchor lower
Why
  • DriverX is where the whole service gets made - driver side of a 45-country ride-hailing + food + scooter platform
  • Multi-vertical offer types (rides, food, groceries) converging on one driver home screen - systems design problem, not just visual
  • Igor lives in Tallinn, uses Bolt constantly - real product awareness from day one
  • Bolt has 13+ senior PD postings open simultaneously (also: Identity, SafePass, DineOut, Incentives) - hiring push; DriverX is the strongest portfolio match
  • Fresh posting (4 days) - apply this week to be in the early review window
Requires
  • 5+ years product design (met - 7 years)
  • Experience with complex, state-heavy product flows (Bidmii: bid states, multi-role, dispatch flows - direct match)
  • Figma, design systems, cross-functional with engineering
  • Experience with high-scale consumer products preferred
Risks
  • Large company structure vs. Igor's solo/small-team background - different operating mode
  • Applying to 2 Bolt roles simultaneously - note this in the letter; present DriverX as primary interest
  • No direct driver-side or mobility product portfolio - Bidmii is the closest structural match
Subject
Senior Product Designer, DriverX - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Two sides of the same decision
Bolt added food, groceries, and scooters to DriverX - which means a driver's home screen now has to handle multiple offer types with completely different pickup and delivery flows. Cohering that into one mental model, without a redesign every time a new vertical launches, is a systems design problem. That's the side of the platform I'd want to work on.
Hook 2
DriverX is the part of the Bolt product that the rider never sees - but it's where the service actually gets made. Designing for a driver whose attention is split between the app and the road, across 15+ distinct trip states, is harder than most consumer UX. It's also more interesting.
Hook 3
I live in Tallinn, use Bolt three or four times a week, and notice the DriverX side more than the rider side. The offer-type switching, the dispatch timing, the multi-stop logic - I can tell from the rider's experience where the driver-side flow is working and where it isn't. That's the product I'd want to be inside of.
Hook 4
The driver-side of a ride-hailing marketplace is a finite-state machine problem wearing UX clothes. Idle, dispatched, arriving, in-trip, completing - each state has different information needs, different available actions, and a user operating under real cognitive constraint. Designing that system is the kind of work I've been doing at product scale for seven years.
Hook 5
Most teams optimise for the rider because that's where the revenue conversion is visible. The driver experience is where the service actually gets delivered. Designing DriverX well means designing for the person whose attention, route choices, and acceptance rates determine whether the platform works - not just whether the app works.
Letter

Hi Bolt team,

Bolt added food, groceries, and scooters to DriverX - which means a driver's home screen now has to handle multiple offer types with completely different pickup and delivery flows. Cohering that into one mental model, without a redesign every time a new vertical launches, is a systems design problem. DriverX is where the whole service gets made. It's the side of the platform I'd want to work on.

I've spent most of my career as the sole embedded designer inside startups - seven years and over 100 projects finished and launched for commercial clients - which means I know what it looks like to own a product surface end-to-end without a team behind you. The closest parallel is Bidmii, a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole designer for three years, building a multi-role product from scratch: bid flows, project states, notifications, customer and provider views, all state-dependent. We shipped from zero to a $1M pre-seed raise and 5,700+ active users. Full case study on Behance.

The DriverX problem is structurally the same: a finite set of states (idle, dispatched, arriving, in-trip, completing, multi-offer) that each require different information hierarchies, with a user whose attention is under real constraint. That's not a visual problem - it's a systems and information architecture problem. I've been doing that kind of work at product scale.

I live in Tallinn, use Bolt regularly, and notice the driver side more than the rider side. That alone tells me where my attention would go if I joined this team.

Note: I applied separately for the Product Designer, Web role at Bolt (June 23). DriverX is the role I'm more drawn to.

Resume is attached. Case studies and client recommendations: behance.net/igor_salagin · LinkedIn

ESTO AS (Buy-now-pay-later / fintech) EN
Product Designer (UI/UX) · Tallinn, hybrid · fintech / buy-now-pay-later
Ready to draft Fit 4/5 TODAY - Review
Apply via MeetFrank → meetfrank.com/jobs/esto-as/product-designer-uiux
Salary
~€2,230 - €3,720 / mo net
stated €3,000 - €5,000 brutto/mo · Estonia 25.6% tax
Why
  • ESTO is a fintech company operating in Baltic + Nordic buy-now-pay-later markets
  • Product designer role covers user research, data analysis, prototyping, and maintaining design language - full-stack UX ownership, not just visual execution
  • Hybrid Tallinn with 2+ office days/week
  • The salary range is confirmed (€3-5k gross from MeetFrank)
  • Fintech domain is learnable; the systems thinking is already there
Requires
  • User research · Data analysis · Prototyping · Design language consistency · Collaboration
  • Minimum 2 office days/week in Tallinn
  • People-first culture, 28 paid leave days
  • Apply via MeetFrank: meetfrank.com/jobs/esto-as/product-designer-uiux
Risks
  • Salary €3,000-€5,000 brutto (€2,230-€3,720 net) - on the lower end for 7 years, especially with a mandatory 2+ days/week office requirement
  • Fintech/BNPL domain gap - no direct credit product UX portfolio
  • Finnish parent company (Finora Bank) may have strong influence on product direction from outside Estonia
Subject
Product Designer (UI/UX) - Igor Šalagin (portfolio included)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Two sides of the same decision
ESTO built a BNPL product around one uncommon bet: design for understanding at the point of decision, not just conversion. Every other BNPL product optimises for making commitment feel small - friction down, clarity optional. ESTO went the other way. That's a harder product to build and a more interesting one to work on.
Hook 2
BNPL has a reputation problem that most players solve with nicer UX and better copy. ESTO is trying to solve it structurally - transparency built into the product, not bolted onto the marketing. That distinction matters at the design level: it changes what every screen has to do.
Hook 3
Your NPS scores as proof of concept is a genuinely different kind of confidence. Most fintech companies show growth metrics; you're showing that users actually like the experience enough to recommend it. For a designer, that's a brief that says: protect something that's already working, not just ship features.
Hook 4
A BNPL product where the design philosophy is 'help people make good decisions' rather than 'minimise drop-off at the commitment step' - that's an unusual brief. Every friction point has to be evaluated differently: some friction is the product. I've spent seven years and over 100 projects finished and launched for commercial clients, working with founders for whom clarity and trust were the conversion lever, not speed.
Hook 5
Baltic + Nordic markets for a BNPL product means your users have high trust expectations and low tolerance for opacity. Estonia specifically has set a high bar for what digital financial products are expected to be. I'd be bringing that as cultural context, not just design skills.
Letter

Hi ESTO AS team,

BNPL products usually win by making commitment feel small - friction down, clarity optional. ESTO made the opposite bet: design for understanding at the point of decision. That philosophy has to live at the interface level, or it's just copy on a landing page. It caught my attention because it's genuinely harder to build, and more interesting to work on. I want to help make sure that conviction shows up in every screen.

My background is in complex B2B platforms and conversion-focused product design. At Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole embedded designer for three years - the work covered user research, multi-role state flows, prototyping, design system ownership, and handoff specs that developers used without back-and-forth. The product assisted the founding team through a $1M pre-seed raise with 5,700+ users onboarded. See the Bidmii case study on Behance.

On the data side: I've used quantitative analytics (drop-off rates, session heatmaps, A/B test results) alongside user interviews and usability testing to identify where interfaces break down. At Impact Land Services, identifying that 60% of visitors were leaving at the third page - a services page with no contact path - led to a redirect that produced a 70% lift in local inquiries. The research came first; the redesign was the consequence.

The fintech domain is one I'm stepping into, not one I've lived in. The gap is honest. But the design discipline that makes financial products clear, trustworthy, and usable is the same discipline I've been applying across seven years of client work - over 100 projects finished and launched for commercial clients.

Resume attached. Contract history and recommendations on my LinkedIn profile.

Happy to show you process work - the thinking behind the numbers, not just the finished screens.

Igor Šalagin

Apply
Cases
2 · Bidmii · NT Kaunas
01
Bidmii - SaaS Marketplace, Canada
Full UX stack: research, prototyping, design system, handoff. +52% leads, $1M pre-seed.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
02
NT Kaunas - Real Estate Platform, Lithuania
Multi-role B2B flows, user research, data-driven redesign. ~40 qualified leads/month.
behance.net/gallery/193196975 ↗
Bolt - Visual Experience (Ride-hailing & mobility) EN
Senior Product Designer, Visual Experience · Tallinn, hybrid
Not pursuing · Role not visible Fit 3.5/5
Apply at Bolt → bolt.eu/en/careers/positions/8408224002 · Tallinn, hybrid
Salary
Not stated in listing. Use Bolt PW market range as reference.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossSame Bolt EE senior band - align across all three Bolt roles
Why
  • The visual experience role is about making the brand coherent across contexts that are almost opposite - ride-hailing UI vs food delivery vs scooter unlock
  • That's a systems problem, not a style guide problem
  • Adjacent to my strongest work (brand systems, visual identity across touchpoints) and it's in Tallinn - zero relocation overhead, genuine local user context
Risks
  • Salary not disclosed - senior-level at Bolt Estonia typically €4,000-€6,000 brutto
  • Motion design is explicitly relevant to VE team work - acknowledged gap in the letter
  • Large company (3,000+): multi-layer approval, slower decisions. "Visual Experience" scope may mean narrower creative ownership vs. full product design
Subject
Senior Product Designer, Visual Experience - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Two sides of the same decision
Bolt's visual language works coherently across taxi, food, and scooters - three product surfaces that have almost nothing in common. Most super-apps fragment. Yours mostly doesn't, and keeping it that way at 200 million riders is a harder design problem than building the original brand. That's the job I want to work on.
Hook 2
I've been a Bolt user in Tallinn long enough that I stopped noticing the design - which means it's working. But when I started looking at it specifically as a designer, something clicked: the visual grammar holds across taxi, food, and scooters in a way most super-apps don't manage. I can tell you exactly where it holds and where it starts to fragment. That's the perspective this role needs from someone working on it from the inside.
Hook 3
200 million riders across 45 countries means the brand is under constant pressure to fragment. You've kept it mostly coherent - and that doesn't happen on its own. Someone is making the calls that hold the visual language together across taxi, food, scooters, and market. I want to be the one making those calls.
Hook 4
You mention the Urban Fund in places where most companies would drop a headline metric instead. That's a deliberate editorial choice - it signals institutional character rather than just scale. Carrying that nuance through visual design, without it becoming corporate wallpaper, is harder than it looks. It's the kind of design problem I find genuinely interesting.
Hook 5
I live in Tallinn and I remember when Bolt was just a taxi app. Watching it expand to 45 countries from the same city where it started is an interesting observation point - I've seen the brand change from inside the market where it began. The visual experience role is about making sure the brand still feels like one coherent thing at 200 million riders. That's a different problem than building the original brand, and it's the harder one.
Letter

Hi Bolt team,

Bolt's visual language works coherently across taxi, food, and scooters - three product surfaces that have almost nothing in common. Most super-apps fragment. Yours mostly doesn't, and keeping it that way at 200 million riders is a harder design problem than building the original brand. That's the job I want to work on.

Most of my portfolio is on the product and conversion side, but the skill underneath it is the same: building visual languages that communicate clearly under constraint and scale into reusable components. Seven years of client work, over 100 projects for commercial clients. Levendi is the closest example - a luxury jewelry brand founded in 1967 where the challenge was modernising the visual system without erasing the heritage weight. See the Levendi case study on Behance. On the storytelling side, Forest Hotel in Lithuania had to hold visually across booking flow, campaign imagery, and editorial content simultaneously - different formats, one coherent feel.

Tallinn is home since the early Bolt days. I've been using the product across most of its surfaces since then - ride-hailing, food, scooters, market. As a designer who pays close attention to visual systems, I can tell you exactly where the experience holds and where it starts to fragment. That's the perspective this role needs from someone working on it from the inside, not evaluating it from outside.

One honest gap: I don't have a heavy motion design background and won't claim one. What I'm strong on is visual systems thinking, brand consistency across digital touchpoints, and in-product assets that feel native to the experience rather than imported from a marketing toolkit.

Resume is attached. Contract history and recommendations on my LinkedIn profile.

If you're seeing what I'm seeing here, let's talk.

Igor Šalagin

Cases
3 · Levendi · Forest Hotel · Bidmii
01
Levendi - Luxury Jewelry Brand, Australia
Visual system modernisation for a brand est. 1967. Heritage weight vs. modern presentation.
behance.net/gallery/221035263 ↗
02
Forest Hotel - Boutique Hotel, Lithuania
Visual coherence across booking flow, campaign imagery, and editorial. One brand feel, multiple formats.
behance.net/gallery/183997947 ↗
03
Bidmii - SaaS Platform, Canada
Full design system from scratch covering product + public web. Visual language built to scale across a dev team.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
IT Koolitus / koolitus.ee (IT training & certification) ET
UX/UI koolitaja · koolitus.ee · proaktiivne kandidatuur
Ready to send Fit 4/5 Deadline: Rolling / Open
Open in Gmail → info@koolitus.ee · koolitus.ee · Attach CV before sending
Contact
info@koolitus.ee · +372 618 1727 · koolitus.ee
Subject
UX/UI koolitaja kandidatuur - Igor Šalagin (UX Estonia partnerluse kogemusega)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (current)
Teie UX/UI koolitusel on mentorprogramm - see on täpselt see formaat, mis minu meelest töötab kõige paremini. Olen viimased 3 aastat UX Estonia programmi raames õpetanud täpselt nii: individuaalne tagasiside, reaalsed projektid, konkreetsed tulemused.
Hook 2
IT koolitusel on üks selge eesmärk: tudeng lahkub oskustega, mida ta saab järgmisel päeval kasutada. Selleks peab õpetaja olema ka aktiivne praktik. 7 aastaga olen lõpetanud ja käivitanud üle 100 projekti kommertsklientidele - seda on see, mida toon klassiruumi, mitte ainult teooria.
Hook 3
UX/UI ja veebidisaini koolitus töötab siis, kui õpilane saab kohe proovida - mitte vaadata, vaid teha. Olen seda lähenemist kasutanud UX Estonia programmi raames ja tulemus on see, et paljud tudengid leiavad töö. See on üks olulisemaid mõõdikuid.
Hook 4
Teie koolitusel on eelis, mida paljud programmid ei suuda pakkuda: väike grupp ja isiklik tagasiside. Olen 35 inimest mentoreerinud individuaalselt ja tean, et just see erinevus - üks-ühele suhtlus vs. loeng - on see, mis tulemuseni viib.
Hook 5
IT valdkond muutub kiiremini kui ükski õppekava jõuab järele. Seetõttu pean oluliseks õpetada mõtlemist, mitte ainult tööriistu - kuidas lahendada probleeme, kuidas lugeda kasutajate käitumist, kuidas teha otsuseid ebakindluses. disainitarkvara (Figma) saab õppida nädalaga; see ei tähenda veel, et oskad disainida.
Letter

Tere IT Koolitus meeskond,

Teie UX/UI koolitusel on mentorprogramm - see on täpselt see formaat, milles olen viimased 4 aastat töötanud, ja formaat, milles olen näinud, et inimesed päriselt õpivad.

UX Estonia programmi raames olen juhendanud 35 inimest - algajaid ja suunamuutjaid - koostöös Eesti Töötukassaga. Paljud on pärast programmi leidnud töö Eesti idufirmades ja välismaal, alustanud vabakutselisena või sulgenud esimesed kliendiprojektid. Õpetasin UX- ja veebidisaini, disainitarkvara (Figma) tööriistu, kasutajauuringut, brändistrateegiat, ärianalüüsi, A/B testimist ja tehisintellekti (AI) kasutamist disainiprotsessis.

Paralleelselt olen 7 aastat aktiivne praktik. Mõned näited, mida klassiruumi sisse toon:

KV24.ee kinnisvaraportaali ümberdisain - suure kasutajabaasiega Eesti toote kasutajakogemuse kaasajastamine reaalse ärisurvega.

Eesti kooliõpilaste eksamisüsteemi UX-ümberdisain ja kasutatavuse testimine koostöös UX Estoniaga - kasutajatestid, kus lõppkasutaja on eksamistressiga kooliõpilane.

Rahvusvahelised projektid, kus disain pidi toetama ärilist tulemust: Bidmii (Kanada idufirma, kaasas $1 miljonit investeeringut, 5700+ kasutajat) ja NT Kaunas (Leedu kinnisvarafirma, ~40 uut päringut kuus veebilehelt).

CV on lisatud manuses.

Projektide juhtumiuuringud ja portfoolio: behance.net/igor_salagin

Klientide ja tööandjate soovitused: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Millised teemad või kursuse mahud teile praegu kõige paremini sobivad? Olen paindlik nii formaadi, mahu kui aja osas.

Tänan.

Teie vastust soojalt ootama jäädes,

Igor Šalagin

Bolt - Public Web (Ride-hailing web presence) EN
Senior Product Designer, Public Web · Tallinn, hybrid (2d/wk)
Applied June 23 Fit 4/5
Salary
Not stated in job listing.
Salary ask
€5,000/mo gross€60,000/yr grossSame Bolt EE senior band - consistent ask across all Bolt applications
Why
  • Bolt operates at a scale where a 2% lift in acquisition flow conversion is a measurable business number
  • On freelance projects you hand off the site and see the first month's numbers if you're lucky
  • At Bolt, the data comes back in days
  • The feedback loop I actually want is inside a company, not at the project boundary
Subject
Senior Product Designer, Public Web - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 hooks (sent)
Hook 1 (sent)
I've been a Bolt user in Tallinn long enough to have watched the product evolve from a local taxi app to a mobility ecosystem covering scooters, food delivery, and car rentals across 45 countries. What I notice - because I do this for a living - is that a company's public web rarely catches up with how much the product has grown. Bolt's is better than most. I think there's a sharper version.
Hook 2
The courier copy on Bolt's homepage says "You decide when and how often you deliver - weekdays, evenings, weekends, or just the occasional hour - it's up to you." Most gig economy platforms would never write that sentence. Someone made a deliberate decision to write it that way. I want to be the person making decisions like that for the public web.
Hook 3
Bolt's homepage leads with mission rather than metrics: replace the private car, not just compete with taxis. Getting that across in acquisition flows, campaign pages, and feature showcases, for 45 different markets simultaneously, is the design problem that makes this role interesting.
Hook 4
200 million riders sounds like a headline number. The more interesting one is 45 countries - because designing public web acquisition flows that convert in Bulgaria and Kenya and Estonia simultaneously, without becoming so generic they speak to nobody, is genuinely hard.
Hook 5
Bolt built its Bolt 7 scooter "together with city authorities and shaped by what riders struggle with day to day." A company that thinks like that about its hardware deserves a public web that reflects the same level of intentionality.
Letter

Hi Bolt team,

I've been a Bolt user in Tallinn long enough to have watched the product evolve from a local taxi app to a mobility ecosystem covering scooters, food delivery, and car rentals across 45 countries. What I notice - because I do this for a living - is that a company's public web rarely catches up with how much the product has grown. Bolt's is better than most. I think there's a sharper version.

The Senior Product Designer, Public Web role is exactly that problem: keeping the acquisition surface effective, data-informed, and coherent as the product keeps expanding. My portfolio is built around precisely this. At Bidmii - a Canadian SaaS marketplace where I was the sole embedded designer for three years - a website redesign drove a 52% lift in leads and a 33% drop in bounce rate. Not through visual polish, but through getting the flow right: the right message in the right hierarchy for where the user was in the funnel. I assisted the founding team through a $1M pre-seed raise with web presence and supporting materials. See the Bidmii case study on Behance.

The design systems side matters here too. Keeping acquisition pages, campaign surfaces, and feature showcases consistent when a brand is moving fast is a systems problem as much as a design one. I've built design systems from scratch and documented them well enough that engineers don't need to guess during handoff.

Honest about the freelance-to-in-house shift: what I actually want is the feedback loop. On a freelance project, you hand off the site and see the first month's numbers if you're lucky. At Bolt's scale, the data comes back in days. I want to be the person still in the building when it does.

Resume is attached. Verified contract history and recommendations on my LinkedIn profile.

Happy to jump on a call.

Igor Šalagin

Cases
3 · Bidmii · Impact Land Services · Forest Hotel
01
Bidmii - SaaS Platform, Canada
+52% leads, -33% bounce. Assisted founding team through $1M pre-seed raise.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
02
Impact Land Services - Local Trade
+70% local inquiries, -40% time-to-contact. Conversion-focused redesign, same acquisition funnel principles.
behance.net/igor_salagin ↗
03
Forest Hotel - Boutique Hotel, Lithuania
Booking-focused redesign, 20-25 direct reservations/month. Acquisition flow thinking in a different vertical.
behance.net/gallery/183997947 ↗
Tallinna Kunstigümnaasium (Art school / design teaching) ET
Valikkursuste ja huvitundide õpetaja · ICT / media / design track
Ready to send Fit 4/5 Deadline: July 12, 2026
Open Gmail draft → Draft saved in inbox · kool@kunst.edu.ee · +372 661 6891
Deadline: July 18, 2026 · Attach CV before sending
Salary
Not stated. Confirm with school before sending.
Why
  • Tallinna Kunstigümnaasium is a creative arts school - the context is design-adjacent by nature
  • They explicitly list ICT, programming, robotics, communication, media, and philosophy as elective tracks they're hiring for
  • Igor's 7 years in web, brand, and digital design is directly teachable content
  • Start August 2026
  • The teaching credential gap (Master's or in process) needs to be addressed honestly
Requires
  • Master's degree or qualification (can be in process) · C1 Estonian · computer literacy · openness to educational innovation · positive attitude
  • Gap: formal teaching credential
  • Counter: real-world expertise + portfolio of delivered projects is the ICT/media track's actual need
Contact
kool@kunst.edu.ee · +372 661 6891 · Apply with CV + qualification docs
Risks
  • State school salary fixed by government decree - likely below €2,000/mo even for senior practitioners
  • Formal teaching credential gap (MA in Communication, not Education) - needs honest disclosure
  • No prior formal classroom experience (1:1 mentoring is different from teaching 20+ students simultaneously)
  • August 2026 start is only 6 weeks away - very tight timeline for onboarding
Subject
Valikkursuste õpetaja kandidatuur - Igor Šalagin (veebi- ja digidisaini kogemus)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 - Curiosity angle
Uurides Kunstigümnaasium veebilehte, jäi mulle silma detail, mida harvades koolides näeb: ICT, programmeerimine, robootika, kommunikatsioon, meedia ja filosoofia ühes loovkunstide koolis. See pole juhuslik valikute kogum - see on mõtlemine, mis tahab seostada tehnilist käsitööd ja loomingulist väljendust. See on täpselt see kontekst, kus digidisain on päriselt huvitav aine, mitte arvutiõpetuse lisa.
Hook 2 - Relevance angle
7 aastat praktikat rahvusvahelistele klientidele - Kanadast Austraaliani - tähendab, et saan tuua ICT-valikainesse asju, mida õpikust ei saa: miks üks veebileht müüb ja teine mitte, kuidas brändi visuaalne identiteet töötab päriselus, mis teeb kasutajaliidese intuitiivseks. See ei ole teoreetiline kursus - see on valikaine, kus 7 aastakäigu klienditöö saab õpetamismaterjaliks.
Hook 3 - Complement angle
Märkan, et Kunstigümnaasium toetab alustavaid õpetajaid institutsioonina - "Alustavat õpetajat toetav kool" pole müügisõna, see on konkreetne lubadus. Minu taust on vastupidine: pikk praktikakogemus, aga esimene kord formaalses õpetaja rollis. See kombinatsioon töötab mõlemas suunas - toon reaalse praktika kogemusega ICT-valikainesse, teie institutsioon toetab minu kasvamist õpetajana.
Hook 4 - Curiosity + complement
Leidsin teie kooli Erasmus+ ja rahvusvahelise hariduse kontekstis - ja olin huvitatud: milline digidisaini tund näeb välja koolis, kus klassiruum on mitmekultuuriline ja kooli filosoofia väärtustab loovust tõsiselt? See on teistsugune küsimus kui "kuidas Figmat kasutada." See on küsimus, mida tahaksin koos õpilastega uurida.
Hook 5 - Direct relevance
UX Estonia programmi raames olen 3 aastat juhendanud algajaid ja keskastme disainereid - ja olen näinud, et kõige kiiremini kasvavad need, kes saavad töötada reaalse eesmärgiga projekti kallal, mitte harjutusülesandega. Kunstigümnaasiumis istuvad õpilased, kellele meedia, kommunikatsioon ja visuaalne väljendus on juba loomulik kontekst. See on parim lähtekoht ICT-ainele, mida olen näinud.
Letter

Tere Kunstigümnaasiumi meeskond,

Just nägin, et teie mentorprogramm võitis Tallinna Haridusameti parima personaliprojekti tiitli 2020. aastal. Kool, mis investeerib uue töötaja sisseelamisse struktureeritult, usaldab ka uut töötajat struktureeritult. Minu teekond on natuke vastupidine: pikk praktikakogemus, esimene kord formaalses klassiruumis. See kombinatsioon minu arust võiks töötada just seal, kus institutsioon teab, kuidas toetada.

Teie praktikapartnerite seas on kommunikatsiooni, psühholoogia ja kunstiteraapia tudengeid - mitte ainult hariduse eriala üliõpilasi. Minu taust - 7 aastat disainipraktikat, 3 aastat UX Estonia's juhendamist - on täpselt see liik erinevat tausta, millele teie kool näib avatud olevat.

UX Estonia programmi raames olen 3 aastat juhendanud algajaid ja keskastme disainereid - kokku 35 inimest, koostöös Eesti Töötukassaga. Tudengid on leidnud töökoha idufirmades Eestis ja välismaal, alustanud vabakutselist tööd või sulgenud päris kliendiprojekte. Õpetasin disainialust, brändistrateegiat, UX- ja veebidisaini, kasutajauuringut, A/B testimist, ärianalüüsi ja tehisintellekti (AI) kasutamist disainiprotsessis.

Üks koostöö UX Estoniaga läks teile päris lähedale: osalesin Eesti kooliõpilaste eksamisüsteemi UX-ümberdisainis ja kasutatavuse testimises. See projekt tõi kokku disainimõtlemise ja avaliku teenuse - ning mäletan selgelt, kui palju tõi välja see, et lõppkasutaja on kooliõpilane, kellel on eksamipäeval niigi palju pinget.

Lisaks juhendamisele olen 7 aastaga lõpetanud ja käivitanud üle 100 projekti kommertsklientidele, sealhulgas KV24.ee kinnisvaraportaali ümberdisain.

Formaalset pedagoogilist kõrgharidust mul ei ole - seda kindlasti ei varjaks. Aga saaksin pakkuda palju reaalse turu kogemust õpilastele, samuti mulle lihtsalt meeldib uusi teadmisi inimesele jagada.

CV on lisatud manuses.

Projektide juhtumiuuringud ja portfoolio: behance.net/igor_salagin

Klientide ja tööandjate soovitused: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Kas saaksite rääkida, milline on teie praktika- ja koolitustundide täpne formaat ja alguskuupäev?

Tänan.

Teie vastust soojalt ootama jäädes,

Igor Šalagin

Cases
3 · UX Estonia · KV24.ee · Bidmii
01
UX Estonia - 35 tudengit, 3 aastat
Aktiivne juhendamine: brändi, veebi, UX, kasutajauuring, ärianalüüs. Tudengid on leidnud töö ja sulgenud kliendiprojekte.
uxestonia.ee ↗
02
KV24.ee - Eesti kinnisvaraportaal
UX/UI ümberdisain - uus disain on live. Suurim avalik eesti keel projekt portfellis.
kv24.ee ↗KV24 uuenduse artikkel ↗
03
Bidmii - veebiplatvorm, Kanada
Täismahus toote disain, disainisüsteem, $1M eelrahastus. Näitab rahvusvahelise ulatusega digitaalse töö sügavust.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
Telia Eesti AS (Telecoms & connected services) ET+EN
Tootedisainer (Product Designer) · Tallinn, hybrid · interneti- ja küberturbetooted
Sent June 29 Fit 4.5/5 Deadline passed
Apply via Workday → CV.ee listing · Contact: Merilin Matsik · +372 528 6917
Submit via Workday (not email) · Deadline TODAY June 29
Salary
Not stated in listing. See palgal.ee for Telia salary benchmarks. + performance bonuses.
Salary ask
€4,500/mo gross€54,000/yr grossTelia EE corp rate - bonuses may add 10-15%; negotiate base firmly and treat bonus as upside
Why
  • Telia Eesti is one of the most recognisable brands in the Estonian market - this is not a startup, it's a company whose products Igor has used
  • Product designer role covers internet and cybersecurity products: real UX with research, prototyping, and dev collaboration
  • Fluent Estonian is required - that's an advantage, not a gate
  • Hybrid Tallinn
  • Deadline is in 4 days - highest priority in the dashboard right now
Requires
  • 4+ years UX/product design with portfolio · Bachelor's degree or higher · Quantitative + qualitative research methods · Figma, Lookback, AI tools · Agile (Jira, Confluence) · Fluent Estonian + English (spoken and written) · Apply via Workday (not email)
  • Contact: Merilin Matsik · +3725286917 · [Confirm: have you used Lookback specifically, or only similar research recording tools?]
Risks
  • Salary not disclosed - Telia Estonia pays product designers approx. €2,500-€3,500 brutto at mid-senior level; verify before accepting
  • Large telecom (1,500+ EE employees): longer hiring process, more approval layers
  • Must apply via Workday only - no direct email option
  • Role may lean toward iterative feature work on mature products rather than 0-1 design
Subject
Tootedisaineri kandidatuur - Igor Šalagin (portfoolio + Behance lisatud)
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (current)
Märkan Telia tootevalikus midagi huvitavat: küberturbe ja internetiteenuste müümine inimestele, kellele need teemad pole igapäevased, on mitte ainult müügi- vaid ka disainiprobleem. Kasutaja, kes ei mõista, mida ta ostab, ei usalda, mida ta saab. Tootedisaineril on selles kontekstis konkreetne ülesanne: teha keeruline asi selgeks enne, kui kasutaja loobub.
Hook 2
Kasutasin Telia teenuseid aastaid enne, kui see mõte mulle kohale jõudis: see on bränd, kelle iga tootelehe UX kannab midagi rohkemat kui "funktionaalsust". Seal, kus usaldus on tootesse sisse ehitatud, on kehv kasutajakogemus kallim kui madal konversioon - see on usalduse kaotamine.
Hook 3
Olen ise küberturbetoote ostja olnud, kes ei teadnud täpselt, mida ostab. Ja just see hetk - kui ei mõista, mida klõpsad "osta" - on disainiprobleem, mitte müügiprobleem. Internetiteenuste ja küberturbe puhul on see lõhe alati kohal. Seda hoida nähtamatuna kasutajale on täpselt see töö, mis mind huvitab.
Hook 4
Märkasin, et Telia on nimetatud Top Employer 2025 sertifikaadiga - seda ei saa lihtsalt osta. Minu jaoks tähendab see, et tootetiimis on inimesed, kellele kvaliteet on sisemiselt oluline, mitte ainult brändistrateegias.
Hook 5
Rääkisin hiljuti sõbraga, kes lõpuks ostis küberturbetoote - mitte sellepärast, et mõistis, mida ta ostab, vaid sellepärast, et ekraan tundus piisavalt usaldusväärne. See on täpselt see moment, kus tootedisain võidab vaikimisi - ilma et kasutaja teaks, miks ta usaldab. Telia sellel turul on tootel, mis seda hetke kujundab.
Letter

Tere Merilin ja Telia meeskond,

Märkasin, et Telia on nimetatud Top Employer 2025 sertifikaadiga - seda ei saa lihtsalt osta. Minu jaoks tähendab see, et tootetiimis on inimesed, kellele kvaliteet on sisemiselt oluline, mitte ainult brändistrateegias.

Olen ise küberturbetoote ostja olnud, kes ei teadnud täpselt, mida ostab. Ja just see hetk - kui ei mõista, mida klõpsad "osta" - on disainiprobleem, mitte müügiprobleem. Internetiteenuste ja küberturbe puhul on see lõhe alati kohal. Seda hoida nähtamatuna kasutajale on täpselt see töö, mis mind huvitab.

Olen 7 aastat töötanud vabakutselise UX/UI ja tootedisainerina - KV24.ee kinnisvaraportaali ümberdisainimisest Kanada SaaS-i idufirmani, kus olin ainsaks disaineriks kolm aastat ning kus aidanud asutajate meeskonnal koguda 1 miljon dollarit idufirma rahastust. Kõikidel projektidel on olnud ühine joon: kasutajauuring annab suuna, disain on selle elluviimine, äritulemus on mõõt. Siin on sellekohane juhtumiuuring Behance'is.

Lisaks kliendiprojektidele olen 3 aastat juhendanud UX Estonia programmi raames - kokku 35 inimest. Mitmed neist on leidnud töökoha idufirmades Eestis ja välismaal. Ka see on UX töö: selgitada keerulisi otsuseid nii, et need saavad arusaadavaks. Telia tootedisainer vajab sama oskust - ainult et sihtrühmaks on kasutaja, mitte tudeng.

Emakeel on vene keel; eesti keel on kõrgtasemel igapäevane töökeel, inglise keel samuti. Figma, Lookback, kasutajaintervjuud, kvantitatiivsed ja kvalitatiivsed meetodid - kõik kasutuses olnud.

CV on lisatud. Projektide juhtumiuuringud ja tulemused: behance.net/igor_salagin

Näitan teile hea meelega oma disainiprotsessi ja olen valmis panustama oma energia teie meeskonna protsesside muutmisesse - sujuvamaks ja produktiivsemaks.

Igor Šalagin

Apply
  • Apply via Workday - not by email
  • CV.ee listing: cv.ee/vacancy/1598712 · Contact: Merilin Matsik · +3725286917
Cases
3 · KV24.ee · Bidmii · NT Kaunas
01
KV24.ee - Estonian Property Portal
UX/UI redesign for one of Estonia's main property portals - live and running. Strongest local, publicly verifiable credential.
kv24.ee ↗KV24 redesign article (kinnisvara24.ee) ↗
02
Bidmii - SaaS Platform, Canada
7 years product design across user research, prototyping, design system, dev handoff. +52% leads, $1M pre-seed raise.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
03
NT Kaunas - B2B Real Estate, Lithuania
Multi-role platform, complex state flows, user research + analytics. ~40 qualified leads/month.
behance.net/gallery/193196975 ↗
💬In Discussion3 responses
Eesti Disainikeskus (Design culture & promotion) ET+EN
Disainimentor / koolitaja · disainikeskus.ee · proaktiivne
Meeting Jul 7, 14:00 Fit 4/5
💬 Replied Jul 1 · Kirke Leinatamm, Managing Director - UNREAD, needs your confirmation
Building a youth program and wants to discuss. Proposed: Teisipäev 7. juuli kl 14:00, kohvik Nihe. Kirke's last message (Jul 2) is unread - she confirmed the time, you haven't replied yet. Action: confirm attendance now.
Contact
info@disainikeskus.ee · disainikeskus.ee/koolitused
Subject
Disainimentori / koolitaja kandidatuur - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 (current)
Eesti Disainikeskus toob koolitustesse praktikuid - see on täpselt see mudel, mis minu meelest töötab kõige paremini. 4 aastat UX Estonia mentorina ja 7 aastat rahvusvahelise praktikuna - olen selle aja jooksul lõpetanud ja käivitanud üle 100 projekti kommertsklientidele - on andnud mulle nii teoreetilise kui praktilise aluse, millega tudeng saab midagi peale hakata.
Hook 2
Teie meistriklassid toovad kokku erinevad vaatepunktid - praktik, institutsioon, tudeng. See formaat nõuab, et koolitaja teab nii, mida turg tahab, kui ka, mida inimesed ei oska küsida. Olen viimased aastad täpselt sellel piiril töötanud.
Hook 3
Eesti disainivaldkond on piisavalt väike, et koolitaja nimi ja töö on omavahel seotud - seda, mida õpetan, saab kontrollida minu portfoolios. See on vastutus, millesse usun: rahvusvahelise ulatusega UX/UI töö on avalikult nähtav behance.net/igor_salagin.
Hook 4
Disainikeskuse programm on eriline, sest see ei ole ainult tehniline koolitus - see on kultuuriline. Disainimõtlemine kui mõtteviis, mitte ainult tööriist. Seda aspekti olen rõhutanud ka UX Estonia raames ja see on see, mis annab tudengitele pikemaajalise kasu.
Hook 5
2026. aasta programmide kontekstis oleks minu suurim panus tõenäoliselt AI kasutamine disainiprotsessis - see valdkond areneb nii kiiresti, et vanemad materjalid on juba aegunud. Olen AI tööriistu aktiivselt integreerinud oma töövooga ja saan õpetada asju, mis on praegu päriselt kasutatavad.
Letter

Tere Eesti Disainikeskuse meeskond,

Eesti Disainikeskus toob koolitustesse ja meistriklassidesse praktikuid - seda mudelit mõistan hästi, sest see on ainuke viis, mis töötab. Kirjutan, et küsida, kas teie 2026. aasta programmidesse on ruumi veel ühele koolitajale.

Viimased 4 aastat olen juhendanud disainereid UX Estonia programmi raames - kokku 35 inimest, koostöös Eesti Töötukassaga. Paljud leiavad pärast programmi töö - see on mõõdik, mis loeb. Õpetasin brändi, veebidisaini, kasutajauuringut, ärianalüüsi, A/B testimist ja tehisintellekti (AI) kasutamist disainiprotsessis.

Paralleelselt olen 7 aastat töötanud aktiivse rahvusvahelise praktikuna:

KV24.ee kinnisvaraportaali ümberdisain - Eesti üks külastatumaid portaale, kasutajakogemuse kaasajastamine.

Eesti kooliõpilaste eksamisüsteemi UX-ümberdisain ja kasutatavuse testimine koostöös UX Estoniaga.

Rahvusvahelised UX/UI projektid: Bidmii (Kanada idufirma, kaasas $1 miljonit investeeringut) ja NT Kaunas (Leedu kinnisvarafirma, ~40 uut päringut kuus veebilehelt).

2026. aastal oleks minu suurim lisaväärtus tõenäoliselt tehisintellekti (AI) kasutamine disainiprotsessis - see valdkond areneb nii kiiresti, et eelmise aasta materjal on juba aegunud. Olen seda aktiivselt integreerinud nii oma töövooga kui ka juhendamises.

CV on lisatud manuses.

Projektide juhtumiuuringud ja portfoolio: behance.net/igor_salagin

Klientide ja tööandjate soovitused: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Millised teemad teie 2026. aasta programmidesse kõige paremini sobiksid? Võin soovi korral saata ka lühikese teemaettekande.

Tänan.

Teie vastust soojalt ootama jäädes,

Igor Šalagin

Kodality (Healthcare software / FHIR · Vassili Jakovlev, Co-founder & CTO) ET
UX/UI Designer · Enterprise / Government systems
Fit 3.5/5
Holding - positive
💬 Replied Jul 2 · Elina Post-Pronkin, People Operations Manager
Confirmed receipt. "Võtame jooksvalt ühendust." Answered FHIR question: both integration modes are possible per project. No action needed - wait for their follow-up.
Salary
Not stated. Confirm with recruiter before sending.
Why
  • Olen töötanud pikalt vabakutselisena ja jõudnud järeldusele, et mulle ei meeldi projektide lõpp - kõik on valmis, töötab hästi, ja siis ongi kõik
  • Tahan töötada toote kallal kauem - näha, kuidas see areneb ja paraneb, ning töötada päris meeskonnaga
  • Kodality selline töökeskkond tundub täpselt see, mida otsin
Risks
  • Fit rating: Fit 3.5/5: On-site Tallinn, Estonian-language application, meaningful B2B government/healthcare work. Igor speaks Estonian at a high professional level - immediate advantage over non-local applicants. But the listed requirement (2+ years) makes him significantly overqualified, which usually signals lower salary ceiling and scope mismatch. No healthcare portfolio. Gets 3.5 because the Estonia-specific context is a strong personal fit even if the portfolio match is soft.
  • Salary not disclosed - Estonian startup, likely below €3,500 brutto; confirm before committing
  • Healthcare software UX domain gap (no clinical/medical UX portfolio)
  • Government contract dependency - slower budget cycles and decisions than commercial SaaS
Subject
UX/UI disaineri kandidatuur - Igor Šalagin (portfoolio + Behance lisatud)
Salary ask
€4,500/mo gross€54,000/yr grossEstonian market - monthly standard
Best hook
Hook 2 · Eksamisüsteem + tervishoid + eesti keel - Eksamisüsteemi ümberdisain andis kogemuse riikliku taristu UX-iga, kus vead on päris tagajärgedega. Seda kinnitab ka praegune MedSynaptic projekt. Eesti keele oskus võimaldab töötada arstidega otse.
Hooks
5 options - pick one
Hook 1 · Päris tagajärgedega UX
Vaadates Kodality tootevaliku kirjeldust, märkan kohe erinevuse tüüpilisest IT-firmast: tervishoiu infosüsteemid, e-retseptid, FHIR-põhine infrastruktuur - tarkvara, millest sõltuvad arstid, ametnikud ja patsiendid igapäevaselt. Seal pole ruumi mitmetimõistetavale UX-ile - segadus pole pelgalt kasutatavuse probleem, see on päris tagajärgedega asi.
Hook 2 · Eksamisüsteem + tervishoid + eesti keel
Töötasin Eesti kooliõpilaste eksamisüsteemi ümberdisainiga - riiklik taristu, kus UX viga pole pelgalt frustratsioon, vaid päris tagajärgedega asi. See on täpselt see mõtteviis, mida Kodality vajab: süsteemid, millest sõltuvad arstid päriselt, vajavad sama täpsustaseme disaini. Paralleelselt lõpetan praegu MedSynaptic - meditsiinilise platvormi - veebisaidi ümberdisainimist, mis kinnitab, et minu huvi tervishoiuvaldkonna vastu pole teoreetiline. Räägin eesti keelt kõrgtasemel, mis tähendab, et saan töötada arstide ja ametnikega otse - ilma terminoloogia tõlkimiseta.
Hook 3 · FHIR ≠ hea UX
FHIR standard ei garanteeri head kasutajakogemust - see garanteerib ainult andmete ühilduvuse. Tervishoiu tarkvara, kus UX on nõrk, jätab arstidele arvestamata aega, mida neil pole, ja tekitab vigu, mis mõjutavad patsiente päriselt. Ma puutusin selle loogikaga kokku juba Eesti eksamisüsteemi töö juures. Kodality tervishoiuprojektid tunduvad sama kaaluga.
Letter

Tere Vassili ja Kodality meeskond,

Vaadates Kodality tootevaliku kirjeldust, märkan kohe erinevuse tüüpilisest IT-firmast: tervishoiu infosüsteemid, e-retseptid, FHIR-põhine infrastruktuur - tarkvara, millest sõltuvad arstid, ametnikud ja patsiendid igapäevaselt. Seal pole ruumi mitmetimõistetavale UX-ile - segadus pole pelgalt kasutatavuse probleem, see on päris tagajärgedega asi. See vastutuse tase on täpselt see, mida otsin.

Tervishoiu projekte minu portfellis ei ole - aga toon kogemust keerukate B2B platvormide disainiga, kus kasutajateekond ei ole sirgjooneline: mitme rolliga kasutajad, pikad töövood, äriloogika, mis peab disainis täpselt kajastuma. Erand on avaliku sektori töö: Eesti kooliõpilaste eksamisüsteemi ümberdisain - riiklik taristu, kus UX ebaõnnestumine pole pelgalt kasutajate frustratsioon, vaid päris tagajärgedega probleem. Paralleelselt lõpetan praegu MedSynaptic - meditsiinilise platvormi - veebisaidi ümberdisainimist, mis kinnitab, et minu huvi tervishoiuvaldkonna vastu pole teoreetiline. See on sama mõtteviis, mida Kodality vajab tervishoiusüsteemide juures. NT Kaunase kinnisvaraplatvormil lõime UX-strateegia ja kogu disaini nullist - tulemus oli 40+ kvalifitseeritud päringut kuus. Siin on sellekohane juhtumiuuring Behance'is. Sektori saab õppida; platvormi keerukuse mõistmist mitte.

Emakeel on vene keel; eesti keel on kõrgtasemel töökeel - kasutan seda igapäevaselt nii kirjalikus kui suulises kontekstis. Inglise keel on samuti igapäevane töökeel. Olen harjunud töötama arendajatega varakult - mitte ainult lõplikke disaine üle andma, vaid osalema otsustes, mis mõjutavad teostust.

Kandideerin, sest tahan töötada toote kallal pikaajaliselt - aga mitte ainult sel põhjusel. Kodality ehitab süsteeme, millest sõltuvad arstid päriselt. See ei ole startup-eksperiment, kus UX on järelmõte - siin on halb kasutajaliidesega lahendus päris hinnaga. See vastutuse tase muudab ka disaineri töö teistsuguseks: täpsemaks, läbimõeldumaks, ja ausalt öeldes huvitavamaks.

Üks küsimus, mis tekkis töökuulutust lugedes: FHIR-põhiste süsteemide UX-i puhul - kas Kodality disain töötab paralleelselt olemasolevate tervishoiusüsteemidega, mida kasutajad juba tunnevad, või on eesmärk need täielikult asendada? See mõjutab oluliselt disainiotsuste lähtekohta ja seda, mida kasutaja peab iga ekraani peal veel valdama.

CV on kirjale lisatud. Vaata minu LinkedIn profiili kinnitatud soovituste ja pikaajaliste lepingute ülevaate jaoks.

Näitan hea meelega oma protsessitööd - mitte ainult valmis disaine, vaid ka mõtlemist, mis nendeni viis. Kui on kasulik vaadata konkreetset ülesannet, olen selleks valmis.

Igor Šalagin

Cases
3 · NT Kaunas · Bidmii · TXM Hospitals
01
NT Kaunas - Real Estate Platform, Lithuania
Complex B2B platform, multi-role user flow, UX strategy from scratch. ~40 qualified leads/month.
behance.net/gallery/193196975 ↗
02
Bidmii - SaaS Marketplace, Canada
Multi-role platform, complex state flows, design system from scratch. $1M pre-seed, 5,700+ users.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
03
TXM Hospitals - Healthcare
Healthcare sector - new patient inquiries. Vertical overlap for a healthcare software pitch.
behance.net/igor_salagin ↗
Tallinna Rahvaülikool (Adult continuing education) ET
IT & digiskillide koolitaja · kultuur.ee · proaktiivne kandidatuur
Course proposal needed Fit 4/5
💬 Replied Jul 2 · Sigre Suurvarik (on summer vacation, back Aug 10)
Interested in two topics: AI tools in daily work (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini for beginners) and AI-generated visuals. Can only schedule training for Spring 2027. Needs: course title, target audience, learning outcomes, hours, max participants, prerequisites, hourly rate. Action: prepare and send course proposal - no rush before Aug 10.
Salary
Not stated - instructors set own rates in negotiation with the school.
Why
  • Tallinna Rahvaülikool is actively recruiting IT & digital skills instructors - it's on their "Tule koolitajaks" page as an open need
  • They teach adults, flexible scheduling (evenings/weekends possible), and instructors negotiate their own course volume
  • Igor could run disainitarkvara (Figma) workshops, web design intro courses, AI tools for non-designers, or brand design basics
  • Low barrier to entry - proactive intro email to rahvaylikool@kultuur.ee
Contact
rahvaylikool@kultuur.ee · See also: kultuur.ee/tule-koolitajaks/
Subject
Koolitaja kandidatuur - IT ja digidisain - Igor Šalagin
Hooks
3 opening hooks - pick one
Hook 1 (current)
Rahvaülikool otsib IT ja digiskillide koolitajaid - see on täpselt see valdkond, kus olen 7 aastaga lõpetanud ja käivitanud üle 100 projekti kommertsklientidele. Soovin pakkuda kursust, mis õpetaks täiskasvanutele konkreetseid digitaalse disaini ja veebi tööriistu - disainitarkvara (Figma), AI visuaalid, brändipõhimõtted, veebilehe ülesehitus - praktiliselt ja ilma žargoonita.
Hook 2
Enamik IT-koolitusi seletab tööriistu. Mina soovin õpetada mõtlemist - kuidas lahendada visuaalse kommunikatsiooni probleeme, mitte ainult klõpsata nuppu. See on erinevus, mis teeb kursusel osalejast inimese, kes suudab iseseisvalt edasi töötada.
Hook 3
Olen töötanud klientidega üle maailma - Kanadast Austraaliani, Leedust UAE-ni - ning iga projekti algus oli sama: selgita inimesele, miks miski nii näeb välja nagu näeb, ja mida muuta, et see töötaks paremini. See oskus - selgitada keerulisi visuaalseid otsuseid lihtsalt - on täpselt see, mis teeb hea koolitaja.
Hook 4
UX Estonias olen 4 aastat mentorina töötanud inimestega, kellel pole disaini tausta - nad tulevad teistest valdkondadest ja tahavad ümber õppida. Kõige kiiremini kasvasid need, kes said töötada reaalse eesmärgiga projekti kallal. Rahvaülikool on koht, kus saaks sama lähenemist täiskasvanud õppijatele pakkuda.
Hook 5
Digiskillide koolitus töötab siis, kui õpetaja teab, millist tööd tudeng tegelikult tahab teha - mitte ainult, millist tööriista ta õpib. Olen 7 aastat teinud disaini päriselt klientidele, mitte koolihinnete jaoks. See vahe on kursusel tunda.
Letter

Tere Tallinna Rahvaülikooli meeskond,

Teie "Tule koolitajaks" lehekülg tabab täpselt seda, mida otsin: täiskasvanud õppijad, paindlik formaat, teemad, mida saan ise sügavalt. Kirjutan, et küsida, kas IT ja digiskillide koolitajana oleks minul koht teie programmides.

Viimased 4 aastat olen juhendanud disainereid UX Estonia programmi raames - kokku 35 inimest, koostöös Eesti Töötukassaga. Paljud on pärast programmi leidnud töökoha Eesti idufirmades ja välismaal, alustanud vabakutselist tööd või sulgenud esimesed kliendiprojektid. Õpetasin UX- ja veebidisaini, disainitarkvara (Figma) tööriistu, kasutajauuringut, brändistrateegiat, A/B testimist ja tehisintellekti (AI) kasutamist disainis.

Paralleelselt olen 7 aastat töötanud aktiivse praktikuna. Mõned näited, mis annavad aimu, millest räägin:

KV24.ee kinnisvaraportaali ümberdisain - Eesti üks külastatumaid portaale, kasutajakogemuse kaasajastamine reaalse ärisurvega.

Eesti kooliõpilaste eksamisüsteemi UX-ümberdisain ja kasutatavuse testimine koostöös UX Estoniaga - lõppkasutaja on kooliõpilane, kellel on eksamipäeval niigi palju pinget.

Rahvusvahelised projektid: Bidmii (Kanada idufirma, kaasas $1 miljonit investeeringut, 5700+ kasutajat) ja NT Kaunas (Leedu kinnisvarafirma, ~40 uut päringut kuus veebilehelt).

Saan pakkuda koolitust sellistes teemades nagu: disainitarkvara (Figma) põhitõed ja edasijõudnud kasutus, veebilehe ülesehituse loogika, kasutajakogemuse disain algajatele, brändi visuaalide loomine, AI visuaalid töös ning veebidisaini alused mittetehnilistele töötajatele.

CV on lisatud manuses.

Projektide juhtumiuuringud ja tööde galerii: behance.net/igor_salagin

Klientide ja tööandjate soovitused: linkedin.com/in/igor-salagin

Millised teemad või formaadid teie programmides praegu kõige rohkem vajadust on? Olen paindlik nii mahu, aja kui koolituse formaadi osas.

Tänan.

Teie vastust soojalt ootama jäädes,

Igor Šalagin

Cases
3 · Bidmii · Beautista · Full portfolio
01
Bidmii - veebiplatvorm, Canada
7 years of professional practice across product, brand, and web. Real-world breadth = teachable material.
behance.net/gallery/219195593 ↗
02
Beautista - Consumer Platform, NYC
UX redesign, 60,000+ weekly users. +55% engagement. Consumer-facing UX thinking is highly teachable.
behance.net/igor_salagin ↗
03
Full portfolio - Behance
Range of work showing what's teachable: disainitarkvara (Figma), web, brand, AI-assisted design, conversion design.
behance.net/igor_salagin ↗
🚫 Rejected4 rejections
Cover Letter Rules + Inspiration click to expand · Do/Don't · 8 full examples →
Do
Open with something you noticed about them - a product decision, a specific project, a copy choice. Name the actual thing.
Show observation, not just admiration. Articulate WHY the thing you noticed was interesting - that's the proof of taste.
Explain why you're drawn to what they do - not just what you've done. The motivation is the human connection.
Name your gap before they do. Own it in one sentence, pivot to the transferable skill that's actually relevant.
Use specific numbers where you have them. "47%" beats "significantly improved" every time.
Offer something proactive - a test task, process work, a specific analysis. Takes the risk off their side.
Write the close as a pull, not a push. Give them a reason to reply, not a plea to consider you.
Don't
Open with "I am a designer with X years of experience applying for..." - zero signal, instant skip.
List skills as adjectives: "creative, detail-oriented, collaborative." Show through evidence, don't claim through labels.
Write "I'm excited / thrilled / passionate about this opportunity" - filler that signals a template draft.
Summarize your resume. The letter should add context, not repeat what they can already read.
Close with "I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience" - passive, formulaic, forgettable.
Fake enthusiasm for a company you haven't actually researched. They can always tell.
Write three paragraphs about yourself before getting to what you've actually done. Front-load the substance.
Search scope & sources Where these positions come from · updated each session
💼 Position titles searched
Senior Product Designer Senior Product Designer (UX) Senior UX/UI Designer Senior UX Designer Product Designer Senior Growth Product Designer Staff Product Designer Principal Product Designer Senior Visual Designer Design Systems Designer / Lead Senior UX Designer, B2B SaaS Product Designer, Marketplace Marketing Designer Graphic Designer Marketing Designer Mentor Designer Mentor AI Operator AI Manager Product Manager
🏷️ Search filters
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💰 Salary€2,000+ gross/mo minimum; €4,000+ preferred. Lower acceptable if: lesser workload, strong domain fit, or other compensating factors. US remote: $120K+ only.
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Run each session on request. Not automated - manually triggered per conversation. Last run: 9 Jul 2026.