# Sasha Romanov

> Product Designer & AI-Native 0-1 Engineering | ex Telegram, VK

Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Profile: https://flows.cv/sasharomanov

Product designer who is always on the go. My approach with design is to craft solutions that are simple, delightful, and efficient. Now delivering fullstack apps: vibe coding in Cursor with React, Supabase, GCP. Delivering any idea from scratch to production on my own.

Before: social and AI/ML apps product design and management, fintech/trading experiences for desktop, gamification and messengers.

## Work Experience
### Product Designer / Product Engineer @ Orbit
Jan 2024 – Present | Dubai, United Arab Emirates
— Helped scale the platform to 1.2M MAU with strong day-1 retention.
— Designed & shipped 2 mini apps: AI sticker generator and game center.
— Delivered gamification and reward mechanics that boosted engagement and retention.
— Designed & delivered SDK widget overlay for games.
— Created landing pages in Framer, multiple pitch decks, investor updates, and social media assets.
— Contributed to frontend in production: features, animations, and interactions in React. Introduced error boundaries, insisted on React Query, and advocated for reusable components.
— Collaborated with backend to improve responses, flows, and optimize (FFmpeg, WebP).
— Researched competitors, created user journey maps, and validated UX remotely using Pathway.

### Product Designer @ Top Tier Global Investment Firm
Jan 2020 – Jan 2025 | Dubai, United Arab Emirates
— Built Web design system from scratch: ~85% adoption, ~20% faster frontend delivery.
— Delivered shared library of 100+ complex components, synced with frontend.
— Established tokens for colors, typography, spacing, rounding, and sizes.
— Recreated 200+ custom icons.
— Defined global principles for navigation, layout, forms, tables, labels, tone, and formats.
— Built iOS design system: 80% of production UI covered, closing ~95% of design tasks.
— Documented components in unprecedented detail (states, behaviors, interactions, use cases, examples), reducing disputes, and aligning stakeholders.
— Shipped multiple new products and evolved a large suite of existing apps for web and iOS in a privacy-first, no-analytics environment, relying on direct user feedback and iterative releases.

### Product Engineer @ #Memhash
Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | Dubai, United Arab Emirates
— Co-built #1 grossing mini-app in Telegram’s history in 3-person team, sparking a wave of copycats.
— Designed all updates and flows, owned the entire frontend in Flutter via Cursor, shipping features to production. Built landing pages in Framer, purchased search ads to boost SEO.
— Co-invented monetization upgrades, multiplying median user spend by 4.5×.
— Contributed across product, vision, roadmap, and engineering in an intense hackathon sprint.

### Product Designer @ Neiro AI
Jan 2020 – Jan 2024
— Designed & shipped 6 mobile apps for AI/ML, social, and GenAI ideas.
— Designed & shipped web platform with AI avatars for business.
— Built & shipped multiple landing pages in Framer.
— Composed dozens of B2B and acquisition pitch decks.
— 100+ experiments with onboarding, retention, paywalls, gamification, redesigns, and animations.
— Paywall A/B results: +34% conversion, +17% trial starts, +19% trial-to-paid.
— Validated demand before development with fake ads and landing pages. Created and launched ads on my own. Gathered feedback and contacts to schedule additional interviews for research.
— Split into 3 companies: one app reached positive unit economics, two others close to profitability. 
— Sole designer in a team of 5–40, mostly engineers. Owned end-to-end design, research, contributing and validation of ideas, testing, and product directions.

### Founding Product Designer @ GlamAI
Jan 2020 – Jan 2024 | Dubai, United Arab Emirates

### Co-Founder / Product Designer @ Blaster
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | St Petersburg, St Petersburg City, Russia
— Co-founded a mobile-only social app for gen Z. Raised $2M post-MVP, assembled a team, and scaled to 3M+ users with 500K DAU peak. 90% Eastern Europe, 10% South Korea & US.
— Drove 2 major pivots from dating to LIVE, finding a path to profitability.
— Achieved zero-budget viral growth on TikTok (repeated success 3×, later copied by competitors): record 300K female sign-ups/day, peak 80/20 female-male ratio, and ~42% organic users overall.
— Personally managed $600K in ads and $500K in 1,000+ collaborations with influencers.
— Removed mandatory sign-up (+12% conversion), introduced ideas, Interview and Photo-to-Video video modes (+43% completed profiles).
— Built a 24/7 remote moderation team with custom mobile app, cutting removal time for prohibited content to 2 min and improving feed quality (+9% signup conversion, +7% view-like conversion).
— Post-pivot: introduced gift-based, whale-driven monetization (50% revenue cut), leading to +174% revenue/user, 6.8% payer conversion, +27% ARPPU. 
— Owned entire design and product, responsive for growth, HR, QA, SRE.

### Product Owner @ Desktop / Web @ IQ Option Global
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
— Improved desktop metrics: +30% LTV, +11% deposit conversion, +24% NPS.
— Launched 5+ trading products (options, CFDs, crypto, exchanges) and delivered a white-label desktop version to enable brand diversification and bolder product experiments.
— Shipped 30+ major features: limit/stop orders with profit/loss targets, leverage, trading bots, profiles, messenger, achievements, price signals, notifications, economic & market events, and more.
— Validated hypotheses before implementation via targeted in-app polls & emails. Collected direct client feedback from Support & VIP managers. Continuously researched competitors to balance simplicity with pro-level features.
— Collaborated with Analytics team on reports, metrics, and A/B experiments.
— Planned quarterly features using WSJF and coordinated multiple engineering teams.
— Gained broad expertise across product management, analytics, trading, marketing, and large-scale company processes.

### Senior Product Designer @ Desktop / Web @ IQ Option Global
Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
— Joined as the sole designer for desktop. Hired two colleagues after 2 years of work.
— Designed desktop experience for all key features and trading instruments, including deposits, social & gamification, onboarding, portfolio, analysis and charting tools, and so much more.
— Introduced a formal frontend–design review process before QA, raising product quality.
— Worked within a custom GL-based cross-platform framework (like Qt), where even fundamentals (text, layouts, media, animations) had to be built from scratch.
— Delivered detailed handoffs to engineers (specs, flows, interactions, even HTML/CSS references), improving collaboration, feasibility, and clarity of requirements.
— Tackled cross-team freezes by actively micro-managing and advocating for my team.
— Launched the largest fintech hackathon in Eastern Europe: concept, branding, website, marketing. Spent $3,200 → 3,000 applications → 600 on-site participants (0.9% conversion).

### Product Designer @ Dialog Platform
Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
— Took cross-platform design ownership across web, iOS, Android, and desktop after the Actor team split under a new CEO.
— Rebranded the platform and shipped new social & monetization features to focus on sales.
— Recruited and onboarded a designer to continue the work.
— Later acquired by Sberbank, the largest bank in Eastern Europe, to serve as their corporate chat.

### Product Designer @ Actor Messaging
Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Dubai, UAE
— Joined ex-Telegram colleagues to build an enterprise-first Slack alternative with self-hosting for privacy, initially scoped for a worldwide inter-governmental intelligence agency.
— Owned the entire product design: UI/UX, visual language, interactions, brand, and copy.
— Worked on-site with the team, shipping at high speed and shaping product direction.
— Product was piloted by a team at Apple. WhatsApp offered a multi-million deal to acquihire the team, rejected by CEO.

### Product Designer @ Telegram Messenger
Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Berlin Area, Germany
— Owned macOS app design from the start. Shipped multiple features, crafted fundamental experience, evolving it in process. Designed everything: flows, interactions, animations, and symbols, with freedom to experiment. Shipped & released, still widely used and retains lots of original work.
— Worked on one of Telegram’s two official Android apps. Material redesign, pioneering GIF search, stickers, and instant chat overlays — some features remain popular.
— Contributed to iOS & Windows Phone to maintain cross-platform consistency.
— Non-stop delivery in hackathon-style: pixel-level reviews, rapid experiments, constant feedback.
— Continued contributing to the macOS client after officially leaving in June 2014.

### Early UI/UX Designer @ V Kontakte LLC
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013
— Took part in the design and launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps.
— Recreated all graphics from scratch to bring Retina displays support.
— Dozens of tiny UI/UX improvements across all platforms.
— Android app redesign contributions.
— Won several design contests and was invited into the company to join first 3 designers in VK.
— Helped shape the iOS messenger.
— Multiple web redesigns attempts.


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/traneblow
- Portfolio: https://romanov.design

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Source: https://flows.cv/sasharomanov
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sasharomanov/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-31