# Niharika Dalal > Product Designer · UX Design · Systems Thinking & End-to-End Ownership Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/niharikadalal I’ve learned that the most effective design starts with a simple question: "Why?" Focusing on the root cause of a problem — why a workflow is frustrating, or why a feature isn't working, has become a central part of my design process. This perspective is what guided my transition from a front-end engineer, where I saw the direct impact of design choices on users, to a UX designer, where I could help shape those choices from the start. This transition was a deliberate one. To complement my technical background with a strong design framework, I earned the Google UX Design Certification to formalize my user-centered methodology. My breakthrough came when I got the chance to apply these skills to a key UX/UI project at work. Delivering strong results in that role cemented my move into the field, and I've been focused on creating thoughtful, user-centered solutions ever since. When I’m not designing seamless user experiences, you’ll likely find me lost in a gripping crime fiction novel or experimenting with paints and canvases. ## Work Experience ### Product Designer @ EXL Jan 2021 – Present | San Jose, California, United States Designed and delivered end-to-end user experiences for industry-leading clients in the finance, insurance, and education sectors, translating complex business requirements into targeted digital solutions. Leading Private University | Admissions Process Acceleration - Addressed a major operational bottleneck for admissions counselors by designing an application that automated the manual, time-consuming process of evaluating student transfer credits. - The new tool increased counselor productivity by a measured 60%, allowing them to process an average of 25 applications per day (up from 16) and significantly accelerating the admissions timeline. Prominent Home Insurance Company | Website Redesign & Contract Award - Secured a major contract with a $600M insurance provider by designing the pivotal proof-of-concept for a competitive RFP, showcasing a bold vision that aligned with the client's key initiative to reach a $1B valuation. - Led the end-to-end design of over 40 pages, building a scalable component library with 30+ reusable components, collaborating on developer handoff, and conducting design QA. Top-Tier Global Bank | Loan Application Experience Optimization - Streamlined a complex, 11-screen mobile loan application feature that was causing high user abandonment rates due to a lengthy and unintuitive workflow. - As the sole designer, I reduced the workflow to just 7 screens, redesigned tedious inputs with more efficient components (e.g., sliders vs. dropdowns), and introduced motivational animations, projecting a 40% reduction in loan application completion time. Global Payment Solutions Provider | CSR Reporting Platform - Led the UX/UI design of a unified CSR platform that solved critical data fragmentation across 8 global departments, delivering core artifacts like information architecture, user flows, and wireframes. - Delivered a high-fidelity prototype providing teams with standardized metric tracking and leadership with a strategic insights dashboard. ### Front-end Engineer @ EXL Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Chandler, Arizona, United States Fortune 500 FinTech Company | Internal Transaction Ledger - Translated UX mockups into a pixel-perfect ReactJS UI for an internal transaction ledger, collaborating closely with the designer to balance design fidelity with business needs and technical feasibility. - Contributed to a cross-functional and cross-cultural team by utilizing Agile practices to efficiently develop and deliver product features. ### Front-end Developer (Co-op) @ Ahold Delhaize Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Mooresville, North Carolina, United States - Worked on 2 projects using ReactJS to build websites for subsidiaries. - Coordinated with the UI/UX, back-end and QA teams to get the websites ready for deployment, while following a SCRUM process to deliver features in sprints. - Created mock designs using Figma for visual interfaces, and used Premiere Pro to create videos. ### Software Developer (Co-op) @ Alstom Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Rochester, New York, United States - Worked with company tools and simulators to assist with railway signaling solutions, while writing code in Visual Basic to generate database facts used to create signaling equations. - Drafted railway track plans in AutoCAD to generate route information. ### Graduate Assistant @ Rochester Institute of Technology Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Rochester, New York Area - Assisted a professor in his research project on developing visual analytics for software team using data mining and Natural Language Processing. - Created a tool to extract a relay chat data from the web browser. The algorithm analyzed the data and classified each word from the relay chat into eight categories of human emotions. - Visualized different frequencies of emotions in the relay chat, in the form of a graph. ### Information Technology Intern @ Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India - Worked on front-end development with Dreamweaver, content writing; designed responsive and adaptive webpages for the website of HPCL. - Participated in development of the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy website. - Led a team of four, took the initiative to present and explain the work done to the senior members in the project. ## Education ### Master of Science - MS in Software Engineering Rochester Institute of Technology ### Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) in Computer Engineering SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/niharikadalal - Portfolio: https://niharika95.github.io --- Source: https://flows.cv/niharikadalal JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/niharikadalal/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13