Ivan Vasilev

Product director
London, UK 20+ years in product, design, and growth
20+ years shipping in fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce. Currently driving product-led growth at a private medical centre in London. Ex-Alfa-Bank, Scentbird (YC), Goldman Sachs, Yandex.

Experience

2024—presentLondon, UK

VisitHealth

Product Director
Marketing & Growth

Doubled YoY revenue of a private medical centre in London — ownership of product, marketing, and data.

Product vision: Built online booking system from zero — end-to-end patient flow, integrations, pricing logic, and analytics powering acquisition growth

Market research and go to market: Ran a series of experiments (A/B forms, landing pages, ad restructuring) — +40% leads, +20–30% conversion lift, flat budget

Product roadmap ownership: Prioritised across marketing, clinical ops, and tech. Aligned doctors, admin team, and engineering around shared goals

Product development & launch: Shipped MVP → v1 booking system; built attribution pipeline (4–5 datasets, ~80% accuracy on new customer tracking)

Built BI infrastructure — attribution tracking, funnel analytics, offline conversion measurement

End-to-end CX: Launched new service formats bridging digital and in-clinic experience — positioning, provider partnerships, full-body scan packages, integrated patient flows

AI-driven prototyping (current): Rapidly prototyping and shipping digital medical tools — scan data visualisation for patients, clinical tools for doctors, and AI integrations into care workflows

2021—2023London, UK

Presentum

Product Director
Founder

Built an ML-first hiring prep platform for product designers from ideation to validation — 1,000+ users, bootstrapped. Designed the entire product around vetting users, video processing and machine learning pipelines, pre-LLM era.

Product strategy: Identified underserved market (designers struggling with interview prep), validated with 240+ application reviews from 16 hiring managers at Intercom, Revolut, Miro, Arrival, etc.

Data-driven decision making: Core product challenge — developed peer-matching algorithm achieving 80%+ bilateral attendance rates through iterative testing; this led to consistent show-ups on a platform and consistent automated interviews

Product development & launch: Designed end-to-end CX around ML capabilities — video processing and guided interview preparation

AI/ML implementation: Built candidate search using computer vision, speech-to-text, and vector embeddings

User research: Trained ML model predicting application success with 75% accuracy, informing product features

2020—2021London, UK

Independent consultant

Product & Design Consultant

Advised startups and banks on design team scaling, design systems, and integrating design into product development.

Advised startups and banks on hiring top-tier designers and building design teams

Consulted on design system development and integrating design into product processes

2021London, UK
Moved to London— Global Talent Visa
2018—2020New York, USA

Scentbird

Sr Product Manager, Retention

Managed two product teams at a YC-alumni fragrance subscription to improve retention through ML recommendations, mobile app launch, and information architecture overhaul.

User research & data-driven decision making: Conducted on-site user interviews, card sorting, and A/B tests to validate navigation redesign. Improved task success rate by 20%

UX/UI & onboarding: Redesigned modular main page—sections automatically rearranged based on user goals. Added upcoming shipments section (reduced churn by ~1,600 users/month), reduced shipping address issues by 38%

Cross-functional collaboration: Partnered with data science team on ML-based fragrance recommender. Prepared data for model training, designed recommendation UI. Increased engagement by 50%

Customer research: Interviewed power users to understand fragrance selection behaviour. Designed large product cards showing notes, reviews, and descriptions—50% increase in products added to queue

Product roadmap ownership: Prioritised retention initiatives across recommender system, mobile app, and web experience—balancing user needs with business impact

Product development & launch: Led native iOS app from concept to launch, defining user stories and coordinating designers and engineers

View case study
2018New York, USA
Moved to New York— Exceptional Talent Visa
2012—2018Moscow, Russia

Alfa-Bank

VP Digital Product Design
E-channels manager

Led the design team during digital transformation at a top-5 Russian bank (15M+ retail customers), helping migrate banking from branches to online channels.

Product strategy: Created and open-sourced the first industrial-grade design system in Russian fintech, setting technical and UX standards across the bank

Product development & launch: Led the team that redesigned retail and corporate online/mobile banking (payments, transfers, account management)

Cross-functional collaboration: Aligned design, engineering, and business stakeholders across retail and corporate divisions during multi-year digital transformation

People management: Built and scaled product design department from 0 to 30+ professionals, recognised as Top 5 in the Russian design community. Optimised hiring process, reducing time-to-hire from 30 to 8 days

2016—2017New York, USA

Goldman Sachs

Lead Product Designer

Designed internal mobile security platform for enterprise deployment.

Designed internal mobile security platform for enterprise deployment at the Goldman Sachs / Synchronoss joint venture. Six-month engagement covering design system strategy, UX research, and UI delivery for iOS and Android. Prepared research presentations and collaborated closely with engineering — recognised for strong cross-functional partnership.

2015Moscow, Russia

Yandex

Lead Product Designer

Designed information architecture for Yandex.Disk mobile app.

2002—2012St Petersburg, Russia

Rockbee → Molinos

Production Director
Founder

Founded and grew a design studio to 9 employees; acquired by Molinos advertising agency in 2010.

Tech stack

Methods

User interviewsUsability testingA/B testingJobs-to-be-doneJourney mappingFunnel analysisAgile / Scrum

Languages

PythonJavaScriptHTML/SCSSSQL

Frameworks

ReactNext.jsDjango, DRFpandasscikit-learnREST APIs

Tools

Figma, Jira, MiroVS CodeCLI, LinuxMixpanelGoogle AdsClaude CodeAffinity, AdobeCapture OneDavinci Resolve

What I do

01

Customer Research

User interviews, usability testing, survey design, and jobs-to-be-done analysis.

02

AI-native Prototyping

Rapid iteration from concept to production code, shipping with AI tools.

03

Product Design

Design systems, information architecture, and end-to-end product development from concept to launch.

04

Product Strategy

Market positioning, roadmapping, pricing, and go-to-market planning.

05

Customer Experience

Journey mapping, service design, and touchpoint optimization across digital and physical channels.

06

Data Analytics

Experimentation frameworks, A/B testing, funnel analytics, and BI infrastructure.

07

Team Growth

Scaling product and design teams, establishing processes, mentorship, and building cultures of craft.

Projects

2019New York, USA

Scientific Hiring

Research

Researched what makes a successful job application by gathering 243 real designer applications and enlisting 16 hiring managers from Intercom, Revolut, Miro, and others. Trained an ML model that predicted application success with 75% accuracy.

243 applications
1,700 reviews
16 hiring managers
Read more
2017Moscow, Russia

Product Design Course

Education

Created the Digital Product Design curriculum at British Higher School of Art and Design, covering Agile processes, web/mobile development, design systems, and user testing. Achieved 93% approval rating — well above the 80% average.

93% approval by students
2021London, UK

Colorize

Tools, API

Python library for generating layered color palettes using logarithmic lightness scales. Supports light/dark modes and generates CSS variables. Eliminates the need for opacity adjustments in design systems.

View demo
2020—PresentOngoing

Career Consulting

Mentoring

Pro-bono office hours helping designers with job search, career paths, and burnout. Received 100+ registrations in two weeks; conducted individual sessions with 80+ designers.

80+ designers helped
Free sessions
2013St Petersburg, Russia

Trademark Practice

Book

Published book on trademark creation and registration from a designer's perspective (Mann, Ivanov & Ferber). Later made available free online, now averaging 11 minutes time-on-page with 40,000 annual visitors.

40k yearly visitors
11 min avg. read time

Education

2019

Data Science & Machine Learning

NYC Data Science Academy

New York, USA
2016

Modern JavaScript

Moscow Coding School

Moscow, Russia
2013

UX Research

Nielsen Norman Group

London, UK
2005

Marketing & Advertising

Saint Petersburg State University of Technologies

St Petersburg, Russia
2000

Visual Arts

State Hermitage Museum

St Petersburg, Russia

Events

April 2022
Online from London, England
HeyGrowth Summit 2022 ↗

Scientific hiring

Online conference about product growth and design. I shared findings from the research about hiring product designers at a scale. Fun fact: this was the most upvoted talk in the product design section.

November 2020
Online from London, England

Design Line Boost—2

Preparing for a product design interview

900+ online attendees. Educational event held by Design Line, Sergei Krasotin and Alexander Kovalsky.

April 2018
Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Design Prosmotr: Season 10 ↗

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method

~500 attendees. One of the most popular regular design conferences in Russia.

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method — Saint-Petersburg, Russia
March 2018
Novosibirsk, Russia
Codefest 2018 ↗

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method

2042 attendees. The biggest tech conference in Siberia, Russia.

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method — Novosibirsk, Russia
March 2018
Perm, Russia
Design Weekend Perm 2018 ↗

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method

~300 attendees. Fundraising, lecture on product design.

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method — Perm, Russia
October 2017
Sochi, Russia
The 19th World Festival of Youth And Students ↗

Designer 2022

20 000 people from 180 countries. This is an international festival with top speakers. I prepared a special speech on the future of the design profession (hence 2022).

September 2017
Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
Design Weekend NN 2017 ↗

Common Mistakes in Digital Product Design

~1500 attendees. Fundraising for an event and a lecture on digital product design.

September 2017
Moscow, Russia
UX-Sreda ↗

Design Systems

~120 attendees. The regular event hosted by Mail.Ru, usually focused on one specific design topic (this one was on Design Systems).

June 2017
Moscow, Russia
Dribbble Meet-Up 2017 ↗

Design Systems

The Moscow chapter of Dribbble meetup took place for the 6th time in June 2017. The event is hosted in the headquarters of Mail.Ru, one of the top 5 internet companies in Russia, and brings together the Russian Design community. 1000+ attendees and 10000 online viewers.

Design Systems — Moscow, Russia
May 2017
Kazan, Russia
Design Weekend Kazan 2017 ↗

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles

~1000+ attendees. Fundraising, lecture on product design.

May 2017
Skolkovo, Russia
RIT++ ↗

Habrahabr Open Studio

One of the biggest tech conferences in Russia, accompanied by a special online feed organized by Habr, the biggest tech community in Russia. Habr invited me for an interview and as a moderator. At the peak moment, there were a whopping 10000 online viewers.

Habrahabr Open Studio — Skolkovo, Russia
April 2017
Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia

Strelka Lektorij

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles — Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
April 2017
Novosibirsk, Russia
Codefest 2017 ↗

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles

1782 attendees. The biggest tech conference in Siberia, Russia

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles — Novosibirsk, Russia
October 1997
Hamburg, Germany

Kunsthalle

German culture in Saint Petersburg

This is my first public speech. My first speech in English and abroad. The story behind this picture: I used to study the History of Arts in St. Petersburg State Hermitage. I took part in a student exchange program between the Hermitage and Kunsthalle (Hamburg). As a part of this program, a dozen selected students who participated in scientific work were invited to talk about it in Germany. Luckily, someone (I believe, Nikita Kanukov) took a picture of me talking in public in 1997.

German culture in Saint Petersburg — Hamburg, Germany