# Pedro Martins > Design Systems Lead @Smartling Location: United Kingdom, United Kingdom Profile: https://flows.cv/pedromartins As a seasoned design leader with 15 years of experience, I serve as the strategic bridge between design, product, and engineering to build world-class web platforms. My work spans B2B and B2C domains - including localisation, marketing, retail, and government - where I've helped companies untangle complexity by creating scalable design systems and establishing efficient design operations and processes . My approach is both strategic and hands-on, guiding teams on everything from high- level architecture and governance processes down to the tactical design and development of complete system platforms. ## Work Experience ### Lead Product Designer - Design Systems & Ops @ Smartling Jan 2025 – Present | New York, United States • Promoted to Design Systems & Operations lead after 2 years at Smartling. • Leading Design System squad dedicated to a new design language creation. • Acted as the primary point of contact and subject matter expert for the design system, supporting and guidance to product designers and engineers. • Fostered a culture of systematic thinking and reuse, mentoring team members on best practices for component-based design. • Partnered with Product, Engineering, and Brand leadership to ensure the design system met the evolving needs of the business. • Led the end-to-end lifecycle of components & patterns, from initial concept and design to development, testing, and release. • Ensured all components met stringent accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2 AA) and were built with semantic HTML and CSS. • Created and maintained robust documentation for designers and developers, covering component usage, accessibility guidelines, and brand principles. • Managed the DS backlog, prioritising new components and improvements based on user research and organisational needs. • Championed and introduced AI-driven design methodologies to the organisation, utilising a modern AI tool chain (Figma MCP Server, Cursor, Lovable) and generative AI (Claude, ChatGPT , Gemini) to rapidly build and iterate on interactive, WCAG-compliant prototypes. • Developed and launched a custom Large Language Model (LLM) for the design system, trained on our comprehensive documentation. This provided users with a conversational interface to ask natural language questions and receive instant, accurate answers, significantly improving the discoverability of information and reducing support overhead. • Empowered product designers across the organisation by establishing a multi-faceted mentorship program. This included implementing formal Design QA sessions, introducing detailed "Accessibility Notes" into design files, and creating a library of video tutorials on how to effectively use DS components and patterns. ### Senior Product Designer - Design Systems @ Smartling Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | New York, United States • Architected and fixed existing component library in Figma, which accelerated the design prototyping process by an estimated 40% and improved design-to-dev handoff consistency. Reduction from 780 components to 92. • Conducted a comprehensive UI audit across 4 products, inventorying hundreds of existing components and patterns to identify opportunities for consolidation and standardisation. • Analysed and documented widespread CSS inconsistencies and visual design debt across the platform, creating a data-informed backlog to prioritise the design system roadmap. • Defined and implemented a robust component naming convention and taxonomy, which created a shared language and significantly improved communication and alignment between design and engineering teams. • Evangelised the design system's value across the organisation through presentations, workshops, and office hours, leading to a 20% increase in adoption over 12 months. • Chaired the Design System Guild/Council, facilitating decision-making on new patterns, component deprecation, and breaking changes. • Spearheaded the creation of a "trial system," a high-fidelity rebuild of a core product feature using the new design system, to create a compelling, data-driven business case for increased investment in platform modernisation. ### Design Mentor @ adplist.org Jan 2023 – Present ### Freelance UX & Product Designer @ Self-employed Jan 2011 – Present ### Senior Product Designer @ Mention Me Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Remote - Lead Product Designer on "Engagement" Platform Squad user journey, from improvements of existing features to new journeys/flows - Creating scenarios, user stories, journey flows, prototypes, wireframes. - Integration, development and supervision of Design thinking processes in the organisation such as Design Sprints, Design Critique sessions, Pair Designing and Design QA (together with devs) - Developing the UX team's design operations process and resource toolkit - I've integrated Figma in the organisation, transitioning from Sketch, Invision and Zeppelin. - Cross platform design (Desktop, tablet, mobile web). Working closely with the product and engineering teams to create, plan and execute new features for the platform. - Improving user journeys by analyzing problems (problem framing frameworks) user pain points, struggles and happy moments. - Observation (session recordings), competitors analysis, UX Interviews (internal and external users), analyse analytics data, heat maps, collaborating with UX Researcher. - Development of experiments (based on hypotheses testing model) in partnership with Product Managers. - Ownership of the design system creation and maintenance, based on the company’s brand values and vision - Figma components and variants, documentation on Confluence and ZeroHeight, Frontend integration support on Storybook. - Mentoring and coaching other designers (development of career plans, skills to learn and improve, plan of actions). - Facilitate UX workshops both internally and with clients, bringing people from all areas of businesses together to collaborate. ### Lead UI/UX Designer @ RotaMaster Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Leeds, United Kingdom - Building a design system based on the company’s brand values and vision. - Working closely with the product team to create, plan and execute new features for the SaaS platform. - Improving user experience by listening to what customers say about the features. - Conducting user research and drawing insights for the next rounds of design iterations. - Improving user journeys by analysing user pain points, struggles and happy moments. - Creating best in class visual UI journeys that respect and complement the company’s brand language and vision. - Working closely with Dev team and provide ongoing design support during sprints. ### Senior UI/UX Designer @ Morrisons Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Leeds, West Yorkshire, Reino Unido - Redesign and design new websites/apps and functionalities on several Morrisons projects (like Food to Order, EatFresh, Groceries, Click & Collect PWA, Wholesale). - Define a strategy to create and elaborate Morrisons Design Systems, working with copy and dev teams. - Design and implementation of our Design Systems, conceptualizing UX rules, UI rules, Front-end rules (especially on accessibility and semantics). - UX Research activities with users to get real data, like observation, focus groups, online and in-store questionnaires. - In-house Design Thinking culture creation, implementing UX workshops with different staff across the company to provide their best feedback, based on their work experiences. - Support the current Online team not only on UI/UX tasks but also on front-end tasks too, especially dealing with external development companies who work for us, focusing on technologies like Html, Css, Javascript, React and Vue. - Mentoring other Designers to manage other projects or tasks, trying to put them more comfortable on their jobs. ### Senior UI/UX Designer & Front-end Developer (Contract) @ NOS SGPS Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Remote A Senior UX/UI Designer of NOS UX team. Working with a great team, my multidisciplinary role consists of: • Generating user research, design concepts, user flows, user personas, wireframes, design concepts,user interface designs and low fidelity / high fidelity prototypes, transforming business needs to usable solutions. • Constantly reviewing, evolving and updating design guidelines to ensure each visual solutions are at a consistently high standard.  • Development of production-ready cross-browser front-end code using HTML,CSS, LESS, SASS, Bootstrap, JS, Jquery. • Working on agile process to quickly find the right solution for the user & business needs of a huge and complex organisation. ### Senior UI/UX Designer (Contract) @ Independent Strategic Technology (IST) Ltd Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Manchester, Reino Unido Independent Strategic Technology (IST) is a FinTech company, providing next generation digital solutions to the investment landscape. IST Creates fully automated and modular tools to digitalise investment management propositions. As a Senior UI/UX Designer, my main responsibilities were: • Leading user interface visual design phases of different internal projects; • Liaising with marketing team to define the visual design requirements of internal projects; • Translating client requirements into compelling Wireframes and User Journeys; • Creating Visual Design guidelines to be followed by the development team; • Working with Software Developers to translate client requirements into compelling UI’s. ### UI/UX Designer & Front End Developer @ iD30 Ltd Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Huddersfield, United Kingdom iD30 is a small Design agency specialised in multichannel eCommerce, Website Design and Development, working around the UK. As a UI/UX Designer, I’ve been creating and presenting web (mostly) design projects for different types of clients, from scratch. Oriented to each client web goals, I usually organise the web project strategy, information architecture and the first wireframes. After that, with client’s approval and feedback, I proceed to finishing the wireframes and start the visual design (with Photoshop and Sketch). When it’s done, prototyping (with Invision) has been a great way to contextualize the client on this new web reality and to get more feedback (keyword for this type of projects). As a Front-end Developer, I’m responsible for the implementation of the Project “Visual Side”, writing hand-code with HTML, CSS and Jquery. Boostrap is also a tool which we integrate in ID30 projects. Semantic validation and SEO strategy are a very important components on this projects, as well. ### UI/UX Designer & Front-end Developer (Contract) @ NOS SGPS (Noesis Consultant) Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Lisboa e Região, Portugal Web & UI/UX Designer of Web Sales department. Responsible for multiple aspects of the projects execution and creative part of sales campaigns. Re-design and design brand new modules or pages of NOS SGPS website and store: - Information architecture; - Usability; - User Experience (mockups and wireframes); - User Interface Design - Front-end Development (Html,CSS,Javascript, Jquery); - Semantic and W3C Standards and testing; - Responsive Web Design and Scability rules Sales campaign creative stuff: - Campaign Brainstorming and Design concept; - Image manipulation/edition; - Banners (Google Adwords) and Website popups; - Responsive Email Marketing (Design and HTML Development); ### Web Designer & Developer @ Oceanlab Jan 2012 – Jan 2015 | Lisboa e Região, Portugal Web Design and Development, through front-end languages (HTML5, CSS3, Javascript and Jquery). Interface Design (UI Design) and Interaction Design of Web and mobile projects. ### Web Designer (Freelancer) @ trustit.pt Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | Aveiro e Região, Portugal Web design and development of web applications (Html, CSS and Javascript). Graphic Design (logotypes, brochures and branding) ### Web Designer & Developer (Freelancer) @ Universidade de Aveiro - Cetac.Media (Centro de Estudos das Tecnologias e Ciências da Comunicação) Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Aveiro e Região, Portugal Interface Design and Web Development of new cetac.media site. The project has an operation structure like a social network (where each user can send messages, make publications of scientific papers and insert themselves into several groups of that community). Wordpress Development (PHP + MySQL) ## Education ### New Technologies of Communication in Tecnologias da Comunicação Universidade de Aveiro ### Design and UX for mobile apps in Design Digital e Multimídia EDIT. - Disruptive Digital Education ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/opedromm --- Source: https://flows.cv/pedromartins JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/pedromartins/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-31