DamienKomala.
Résumé

Damien Komala.

Senior UI/UX Designer & Web Designer

Focused Product Design Lead

Sr Lead UX Designer · Senior Director of Design · Senior Product Designer · Sr Principal Designer

Hire Me
Overview

A full-stack design perspective

Results-driven Senior UI/UX Designer and Web Designer with over 27 years of experience spanning product design, creative direction, front-end development, and brand strategy. I operate at the rare intersection of design craft, technical fluency, and strategic thinking — bringing a full-stack design perspective to every engagement. My career spans SaaS platforms, fintech applications, real estate technology, e-commerce, mobile apps, and enterprise marketing, giving me an unusually broad foundation for solving complex design challenges across industries.

Most designers either think visually or think technically. I do both. Having hand-coded over 300 websites in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, I design with a deep understanding of what is actually buildable — eliminating friction between the design studio and the development sprint. This technical grounding accelerates timelines, reduces costly revision cycles, and produces handoff-ready deliverables engineering teams can act on immediately.

Skills

Core competencies

Design

  • UI/UX Design
  • Design Systems
  • High-Fidelity Prototyping
  • Responsive Web Design
  • Mobile App Design (iOS/Android)
  • Brand Identity & Creative Direction
  • Interaction Design
  • Wireframing

Technical

  • HTML5 / CSS3 / JavaScript
  • PHP / jQuery / Bootstrap
  • Figma / Adobe Creative Suite
  • Webflow / WordPress
  • Responsive Front-End Development
  • Handoff-Ready Deliverables

Strategy

  • UX Research & Strategy
  • A/B Testing & Optimization
  • Agile Product Collaboration
  • SEO / SEM
  • Enterprise & White-Label Solutions
  • Growth Marketing & PPC Creative

AI & Agentic Development

  • AI-Assisted Design & Prototyping
  • Claude Code (Agentic Development)
  • Context Engineering
  • Prompt Engineering & Test-Driven Development
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP)
  • AI-Assisted Git → Vercel Deployment
  • Agent Skills & Slash Commands
  • Subagents & Parallel Agents
  • Browser Automation
Highlights

Career highlights

  1. 01

    60% company growth at PropStream

    Contributed creative strategy to initiatives that drove a 60% increase in company growth.

  2. 02

    PropStream's first native iPhone app

    Led the design and launch from concept to App Store, delivering a consistent iOS/Android experience.

  3. 03

    PropStream Academy

    Architected a customer education platform that measurably reduced support ticket volume and improved retention.

  4. 04

    Blockchain-secured loan application

    Designed multi-persona UX with distinct, role-specific interfaces for buyers, vendors, and loan officers within one design system.

  5. 05

    Scalable Figma design systems

    Built and maintained systems across multiple SaaS products, compressing design-to-dev handoff and ensuring visual consistency.

  6. 06

    37 law firm websites

    Deployed through a custom Bootstrap templating system, dramatically improving production efficiency and consistency.

Experience

Work experience

UI/UX Design Expert

Mercor / Micro1 · Remote, CA

Feb 2026 – Present

  • Led AI trainer initiatives for Mercor and Micro1, translating complex UX concepts into scalable, data-driven design guidelines and actionable patterns that improved AI-assisted interface recommendations across multi-platform products.
  • Established end-to-end evaluation loops combining user research, usability analytics, and accessibility standards to continuously optimize AI-generated design decisions, resulting in faster iteration cycles and higher design quality.
  • Built and maintained scalable design-system-driven playbooks for AI-trained interfaces, enabling consistent user experiences, efficient cross-team collaboration, and measurable gains in engagement and conversion.

Senior UI/UX Designer

Platinum Digital · Newport Beach, CA

Jul 2025 – Jan 2026

  • Defined 3 distinct user personas (buyers, vendors, and loan officers), delivering tailored design and leading UX strategy and interface design for a blockchain-secured loan application.
  • Optimized multi-persona user journeys, balancing intuitive, streamlined experiences for buyers with complex, data-intensive workflows for loan officers and vendors, improving usability.
  • Designed a companion marketing website for a mobile event ticketing application, translating the iPhone app experience into a high-impact web presence for sports and concert audiences.
  • Developed a custom ambassador administration interface for a consumer brand, delivering a streamlined dashboard that enabled representatives to manage accounts and track activity.
  • Applied scalable design systems across multiple projects, ensuring visual consistency, reusable component libraries, and efficient developer handoffs across platforms and industries.

Senior UI/UX Designer & Creative Director

PropertyReach · Lake Forest, CA

Feb 2023 – Jul 2025

  • Directed UX strategy for a core real estate SaaS platform, championing the full design lifecycle from user research and journey mapping through high-fidelity prototyping and delivery.
  • Partnered closely with engineering teams within Agile frameworks to deliver targeted feature enhancements, resolving key usability challenges and elevating accessibility standards.
  • Built and scaled a unified design system in Figma, reducing design-to-development handoff time while ensuring consistent, high-quality, and reusable UI components across the platform.
  • Modernized information architecture and interface design, driving measurable improvements in user engagement, navigation efficiency, and end-to-end conversion flows.
  • Influenced product strategy by delivering data-driven insights on user behavior, market trends, and competitive positioning, shaping roadmap priorities and feature development.

Creative Director & UI/UX Designer

PropStream · Lake Forest, CA

May 2019 – Jan 2023

  • Drove 60% growth by leading and optimizing paid marketing strategies, including PPC and diversified digital campaigns across key platforms, improving acquisition efficiency and ROI.
  • Led design and delivery of PropStream's first native iPhone application, managing product from concept through launch, ensuring a consistent experience across iOS and Android ecosystems.
  • Owned the end-to-end brand ecosystem across web, digital content, and social media, including writing, directing, and appearing in YouTube campaigns that strengthened brand identity.
  • Designed and launched the framework for “PropStream Academy,” a scalable customer education platform that improved user proficiency and increased product adoption.
  • Created high-fidelity white-label prototypes for global enterprise partners, enabling the sales team to demonstrate customized solutions and close high-value enterprise deals.
  • Redesigned onboarding flows using A/B testing insights, improving user activation and retention within the REI web application through enhanced usability and reduced friction.

Senior Designer & Front-End Developer

Ecom Automotive · Santa Ana, CA

Dec 2015 – May 2019

  • Spearheaded end-to-end brand strategy and digital design for multiple e-commerce brands, including TuffStuff4x4 and TrueFlame, overseeing website UI/UX and product packaging.
  • Implemented custom operational systems for inventory management and CRM, eliminating key fulfillment bottlenecks, improving shipping efficiency, and strengthening client feedback loops.
  • Developed and optimized front-end experiences for high-traffic e-commerce websites, improving site performance, page speed, and SEO rankings to enhance visibility and conversion.
  • Evaluated, selected, and standardized design tools and workflows, streamlining creative operations, improving team efficiency, and elevating overall design quality and consistency.

Senior Designer

PMP Marketing Group · West Palm Beach, FL

Sep 2012 – Dec 2015

  • Enabled deployment of 37 websites, building a scalable Bootstrap-based template system to ensure responsive design, performance optimization, and streamlined implementation.
  • Received 2 Summit Creative Awards in 2013, earning recognition for innovative, high-impact design work demonstrating excellence in visual communication and brand execution.
  • Led a full company rebrand and managed end-to-end production of marketing assets, including trade show environments, digital collateral, and premium print materials.
  • Mentored and developed junior designers, improving team capability and quality standards, and developed design concepts that strengthened client relationships and satisfaction.

Front-End Web Developer

Sesame Communications · Remote — West Palm Beach, FL → Seattle, WA

Oct 2009 – Sep 2012

  • Developed over 300 dental practice websites in dynamic PHP within an 18-month period — working remotely from West Palm Beach, FL with the Seattle, WA team — consistently meeting tight deadlines while exceeding client expectations for quality and performance.
  • Served as technical lead for a remote development team, resolving complex CSS and cross-browser compatibility issues and providing hands-on debugging expertise.

Senior Designer / Developer

THAT Agency · West Palm Beach, FL

Nov 2006 – May 2009

  • Delivered site planning and wireframing for clients needing high-end CSS / PHP / Ruby on Rails sites — including global work for Sol Meliá and ME by Meliá Hotels.
  • Implemented a full UX/UI planning and research system, building sites with each client's needs at the forefront.

Art Director

Native Remedies LLC

Jul 2004 – Nov 2006

  • Designed all product elements across a set of three e-commerce websites, plus packaging, labels, and marketing materials for the health & wellness brand.

Art Director / Lead Designer, Marketing

Cole + Russell Architects

Jul 2003 – Jul 2004

  • Led all marketing materials — Flash presentations, brochures, and a new website — and served as architectural photographer across the firm's projects.

Freelance Designer & Developer

Freelance Projects

2002 – 2004

  • Delivered web design and e-commerce projects for a range of independent clients.
Stack

Tools & technologies

  • Figma
  • Figma Make
  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Webflow
  • WordPress
  • WooCommerce
  • HubSpot
  • Jira
  • Confluence
  • GitHub
  • Google Ad Manager
  • Agency Analytics
  • Google Workspace
  • Slack
  • Asana
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Claude
  • Claude Code
  • MCP
  • n8n
  • Obsidian
  • Vercel
  • Gemini
  • Midjourney
  • Stable Diffusion
  • Lovable
Industries

Where I've worked

  • FinTech
  • Real Estate SaaS
  • E-Commerce
  • Legal Marketing
  • Hospitality
  • Automotive
  • Health & Wellness
  • Event Ticketing
  • Architecture
  • Blockchain Applications
  • Enterprise Software
Philosophy

How I work

“I thrive at the intersection of strategy, systems, and craft — and I bring all three to every team I work with.”
Credentials

Education & awards

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Art & Design

The Art Institute of Cincinnati · 1998

Awards

Two-time Summit Creative Award winner (2013) for design excellence.