# Paddu Raghavan > Designing AI Agents @ Samaya AI | Product Design Leader · Full-Stack Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/paddu I’m a full-stack product design leader with founding experience, focused on AI-native systems, growth, and scale. With an engineering background and depth across strategy through execution, I design high-leverage platforms that drive measurable user value and durable business impact. At Course Hero, I grew from founding designer to Director, contributing to $200M+ ARR and 2M+ subscribers. Now I lead product design at Samaya AI, building AI-native systems for complex financial workflows that demand precision, auditability, and high-trust decision support. Open to selective conversations about senior+ or player-coach design leadership roles. Portfolio available upon request. ## Work Experience ### Product Designer @ Samaya AI Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Led product design across platform, AI workflows, and systems design in a flat organization. - Shaped Samaya AI’s platform and website as an AI-native financial research system built for precision, auditability, and institutional trust. - Drove the Design 2.0 strategy, aligning product, GTM, and brand around transparent AI workflows tailored to analyst-grade rigor and compliance-sensitive use cases. - Led several 0→1 initiatives, defining interaction models for autonomous AI research with traceable, source-backed, and verifiable outputs. - Built Samaya’s unified design system, standardizing patterns for citations, reasoning visibility, and data validation in high-stakes financial workflows. - Created a production-mirroring sandbox environment for rapid prototyping and validation using real analyst scenarios and datasets. - Defined experience principles for AI-driven financial workflows, turning complex models into intuitive interfaces that increased trust and reduced cognitive load. ### Director of Product Design - Growth @ Course Hero Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | Redwood City, California, United States Led Growth Design and AI study experiences across a $150M+ portfolio. Launched 0–1 AI features lifting WAU by 16%, and evolved funnels to match post-GenAI student behavior. Built a multi-brand design system across 10 domains, doubling experiment velocity after early growing pains balancing speed and craft. Redesigning PaperRater post-acquisition taught me firsthand how product and brand trust must evolve together. ### Sr. Product Design Manager @ Course Hero Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | Redwood City, California, United States I repositioned our core experience while scaling growth and launching new zero to one initiatives. I revamped the document experience, driving over a 25 percent lift in conversion. Scaling machine learning powered study flows taught me how important early trust signals are, especially when building for a wide variety of unpredictable user needs. I also learned the hard way that internal alignment matters just as much as the features themselves when navigating zero to one work. ### Staff Product Designer @ Course Hero Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | Redwood City, California, United States I led the mobile-first transformation of CourseHero.com and built foundational design systems across Web, iOS, and Android platforms. During this time, I also helped shape the company’s broader product vision, connecting design work more directly to business strategy. I launched our first unified design system after the brand refresh, realizing early that consistency is as much about team culture as it is about components. Mentoring newer designers showed me that investing early in craft and clarity pays off with stronger team momentum over time. ### Product Design Manager @ Course Hero Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | Redwood City, California, United States Scaled the design team from 3 to 14 across Web, iOS, and Android. Led the 2016 brand redesign with Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, unifying voice and product. Launched our first iOS app, reaching Top 10 in Education. Learned the hard way that fast team growth needs equally fast process clarity to avoid friction later. ### Senior Product Designer @ Course Hero Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Redwood City, California, United States I owned critical growth flows across purchase, uploads, and onboarding. I redesigned the subscription flow and uploader experience, boosting growth by more than 30 percent year over year. I started scrappy campus research visits, which taught me that field insights almost always trump desk research. I also learned that moving too quickly without enough safeguards could lead to lost activation gains later. ### Product Designer (Founding Designer) @ Course Hero Jan 2012 – Jan 2014 | Redwood City, California, United States Joined as the first designer to build everything from the ground up. Shipped the student–tutor marketplace, Flashcards, and Courses. Helped double Q&A match rates and led a major philanthropy effort donating 250,000+ books. Learned that relentless shipping beats perfection, but focus must stay sharp to avoid “build everything” syndrome. ### Design Advisor @ Shycart Jan 2017 – Jan 2021 Collaborated closely with the founder and internal team to shape the product vision and advise on strategic direction. Conducted a sitewide audit, recommended critical improvements, and guided the team to double both conversions and traffic. Developed a new brand identity to reposition Shycart and oversaw the launch of a full website redesign, driving significant gains in brand awareness and direct traffic. ### Founding Designer @ Fadaggle Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 | Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Designed UX, branding, and MVP for a social haggling platform. Launched fast with a lean team, but learned that product-market fit demands constant iteration. Managing both UX and delivery taught me grit and creativity under tight constraints. ### Software Engineer @ Oracle Jan 2006 – Jan 2008 I built internal forms and reports to solve development issues across human payroll management systems. I collaborated with cross-functional teams and leaders across remote locations to gather functional requirements and improve the payroll module. Over time, I identified and resolved more than 120 high-priority issues involving both internal payroll systems and third-party vendor integrations. ## Education ### Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Web Design and New Media Academy of Art University ### Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) in Information Technology Anna University Chennai ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/paddu --- Source: https://flows.cv/paddu JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/paddu/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05