# Juanita Lee > Lead Product Designer @ Jaris | Fintech 🤑 Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/juanita ⛰️ Career Journey: Design ➡️ FE ➡️ FE & Design ➡️ Design 🥷 Full-stack designer w/ PM and QA hat-wearin' experience 💥 Repeat founding/solo designer + small design teams 🥳 10+ yrs designing & building 🚀 9+ yrs in B2B startups: seed, early, growth, late 🏦 7+ yrs in fintech: payments, accounting, underwriting, lending, banking, fixed income investment / trading 🧄 I love garlic! ## Work Experience ### Lead Product Designer @ Jaris Jan 2025 – Present | Burlingame, CA 💪 Leading a small design team and end-to-end product design for merchant and partner experiences in the blended world of payments and banking. 🚀 Our mission is to provide personalized, accessible financial services to small businesses at every stage of growth.  💸 From merchant onboarding and managed settlements to embedded financial products, Jaris helps payment and software companies become financial partners to better serve small businesses—the backbone of our economy. With a single integration, our partners can launch a suite of financial products: business loans, instant payouts, and banking. ### Product Design Consultant @ Jaris Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | Burlingame, CA Projects I led and launched (B2B2B): ➼ [0 to 1] New Merchant Dashboard: white-labeled, mobile-responsive experience for partners to give to their merchants to view and manage payments activity and financial products. ➼ [0.5 to 1] Jaris Dashboard > Managed Settlements: allow partners to setup and manage funding instructions, reserves, and fee instructions for their merchants. ➼ [0 to 1] Merchant Dashboard > Banking: multi-balance bank account experience to [1] track money movement from funding instructions, [2] view partner fee, refund, and reserve transactions, [3] payouts activity, and [4] transparent bank statements. ### Senior Product Designer @ Kojo Jan 2024 – Jan 2024 ℹ️ Fintech (B2B): Accounts payable for construction materials procurement 💁‍♀️ From product design and product management to implementation planning and QA, I led end-to-end product development for AP (invoicing & payments). ➼ Collaborated cross-functionally and launched a bill pay solution to [1] expand fintech offering, [2] add new revenue stream opportunity for the business, [3] allow customers to send payments to vendors, and [4] digitize the final step of the material management workflow to create a complete end-to-end workflow on a single platform. ➼ Additional payments-related initiatives (MVP) launched: virtual cards, vendor management and invite flow, and payment terms management. ➼ Redesigned and streamlined the invoicing experience resulting in improved product usability and engagement. In addition: defined scope and requirements, reviewed PRs, led QA, collaborated with internal stakeholders for training and customer awareness, and planned/led the phased rollout. [Impact] New internal team processes, better sales demo, improved customer onboarding, resolved support/bug tickets, elimination of legacy code for better management and scalability. ➼ Led, defined, and documented the foundational work for an internal design system, and worked with FE to implement design tokens and reusable components. ### Senior Product Designer @ Finix Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco, California, United States ℹ️ Fintech (B2B): APIs to power payment processing + payments dashboard to manage ops 💁‍♀️ Joined as the first full-time designer and founding member of the design team. Led end-to-end product design for [1] the Underwriting product area (KYB / KYC for customers and merchants etc.) and [2] initiatives to enable self-serve workflows for prospects and customers. 🏆 London Design Awards (2023), UX Design Awards (2024), Indigo Design Awards (2024) ➼ Collaborated with contract designers to complete a massive UX overhaul of the payments dashboard. Led design QA and worked closely with FE: provided CSS solutions, approved design system updates, and reviewed PRs. [Impact] Streamlined multiple internal/external workflows, improved Customer NPS, improved demo experience for prospects, and increased engineering and design velocity. ➼ Led the design and product work for the first (and largest) cross-functional project and collaborated with Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Marketing, Business Development, Payment Operations, and more to expand ICPs and successfully launch the ability for prospects to sign up for a sandbox/test account and apply for payment processing services (previously not self-serve). ➼ Built strong engineering relationships and worked closely with [1] BE to understand existing and new APIs to define and drive alignment on project scope and feasible solutions, and [2] with FE to ensure successful implementation and delivery of projects by going beyond my role to also provide product and QA support. ➼ Additional projects I led and launched: streamlined and automated customer underwriting (previously manual), merchant underwriting redesign (cut underwriting time by at least 50%), merchant onboarding forms redesign (better UX and better validation = better data and quicker approvals), MVP underwriting product for PayFac customers (new revenue stream), and Canada underwriting (international expansion). ### Lead Product Designer @ InspereX Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco, California, United States ℹ️ Fintech (B2B): BondNav is a real-time fixed income web platform for buying, selling, and managing bonds 💁‍♀️ Led product design as the founding designer (and remained solo) across ALL product areas for BondNav (customer-facing) and BondNav Admin (internal admin and trade desk tool), and remained heavily involved during all phases of the product development lifecycle. Product areas: [1] Reference Data & Search, [2] Trade Desk, Order Management & Partner Integrations, [3] Lists, Portfolios & Alerts, and [4] New Issues. ➼ Elevated and significantly improved the product and user experiences by [1] defining how different product offerings and user workflows work together at a systems level, [2] shipping new features, and [3] turning high-level and/or vague product requirements into end-to-end interface experiences (some even resulting in partnerships including an exclusive licensing deal). ➼ Unified the overall BondNav brand and experience by standardizing the color palette and UI components, completing multiple redesign projects that touched all of BondNav, and writing UX copy across multiple touchpoints within the BondNav ecosystem (web apps, emails, in-app notifications, etc.). ➼ Partnered with Product to conduct user research during the discovery phase, finalize product requirements and project goals, plan the quarterly roadmaps for individual product areas, and drive product decisions with cross-functional peers during project discussions. ➼ Worked closely with Front-End Engineering to create reusable components, provided CSS solutions for redesign projects, and personally reviewed PRs locally to increase design implementation quality and reduce bugs. ➼ Collaborated with QA to assess implemented features and experiences, and identified and logged design-related bugs on Jira to reduce design debt and maintain quality control of the UI/UX. 🗒 I joined the fintech startup 280 CapMarkets who then merged with the financial firm Incapital to become InspereX. ### Founding Product Designer & Front-End Engineer @ Pomello Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco, CA ℹ️ HR Tech (B2B): Predictive HR analytics for employee engagement and recruiting 💁‍♀️ Joined as employee #3 and founding team member to lead the end-to-end design and front-end implementation for all projects. ➼ Led, designed, implemented, and QA tested the UI/UX overhaul of the Pomello web app. End-to-end design work included facilitating design workshops and reviews, defining the information architecture, designing and prototyping top user flows, and conducting user testing sessions to validate and iterate on design decisions. ➼ Established the brand and visual identity, redesigned the company website which improved SEO and increased demo sign-ups, and created marketing materials and landing pages that helped drive the top-of-the-funnel lead generation. ➼ Refactored and removed significant front-end code to cut tech debt and support new design work, and created reusable design components for quicker development. ➼ Worked with the leadership team on the entire product development process, including product roadmapping, feature scoping/planning, designing/developing/QA testing, and running post-launch retros. 🗒 Acquired by Outmatch ### UI Developer @ Funding Circle USA Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco, CA ℹ️ Fintech (B2B): Peer-to-peer lending for small businesses 💁‍♀️ Joined as the first and sole US-based UI Developer to lead web development for the US business. ➼ Worked closely with Product, Design, and Marketing to scope out new web projects, build new features for internal and customer-facing web applications, build landing pages, and launch user-friendly and cross-browser compatible experiences. ➼ Helped design, build, document, and maintain the first design system. ➼ Decoupled the US Funding Circle website from legacy BE applications and rebuilt it separately to improve performance, scalability, team autonomy, and release cycles. ➼ Launched and taught the first internal company workshop--an intro to web development with a focus on HTML and CSS! Taught a total of two 2-day workshops. ### UX Designer @ ONWARD Agency (Formerly Full & By) Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco, California, United States ℹ️ Digital creative and marketing agency ➼ Created UX deliverables for client websites and web applications, including competitive analyses, sitemaps highlighting the information architecture, wireframes, and hi-fidelity mockups. ➼ Designed and implemented websites with cross-browser compatibility, including Drupal and WordPress customizations. ➼ Delivered a wide variety of marketing materials, including brand identity, corporate style guides, packaging, event collateral, and email campaigns. ➼ Brainstormed concepts and ideas for marketing projects and client pitches. ## Education ### Bachelor of Arts - BA in Communication Studies San Francisco State University ### Associate of Science - AS in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Merced Community College District ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/thejuanitalee - Portfolio: http://thejuanitalee.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/juanita JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/juanita/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13