Description

Product designer with 25 years of experience building digital products across fintech, gaming, and B2B software. I treat design as an engineering discipline — every decision grounded in function, technology, and purpose. For the past nine years I worked as the founding designer at Capitolis, a fintech unicorn ($358M raised, $1.6B valuation), shaping products from seed-stage concepts to enterprise-scale platforms serving the world's largest financial institutions. I work best in small, autonomous teams where design and engineering think together, and I bring a modern AI-augmented workflow to everything I do.

Industry field of expertise

Languages

Ukrainian
Native or bilingual
English
Fluent
German
Basic
Russian
Native or bilingual

Workplace preferences

Can work on-site

Cologne (up to 50km)

kurkin.de
Product/UX/UI Designer, Art Director & Consultant
DIGITAL AND IT
April 2012 - Today (14 years and 2 months)
Cologne, Germany
Independent design and consulting practice with a focus on B2B products, mobile games, and ecommerce.
Notable projects include full-cycle art direction for mobile game Vector at Nekki (10+ million downloads on iOS
and Android), ecommerce and digital project management for clients including Gazprom Neft and 2x2 TV
Channel at AERO Creative Agency, UI work for New York Road Runners (delivered via a third-party
technology partner), and early-stage product design for a health sector startup.
User Interface Design Design Thinking User Experience Design Information Architecture
Capitolis
Product Designer
December 2016 - May 2026 (9 years and 5 months)
New York, NY, USA
Joined as the company's first designer at seed stage. Over nine years, contributed across the full product lifecycle — from early sales concepts to enterprise-scale platforms — working directly with founders, VPs, and PMs in a fully remote, cross-functional environment.
• • Designed and iterated on 15–20 product concepts and POCs during the company's high-growth phase, directly supporting sales efforts
• • Created the company's founding visual identity, including its original logo
• • Led the design of two core product lines — Portfolio Optimization and Capital Marketplace — each comprising 100+ screens
• • Initiated and drove the adoption of a unified Design System based on MUI, implemented through Storybook and partially migrated across all products
• • Evolved the design toolchain from Sketch/InVision to Figma, and most recently integrated AI-augmented tools including Claude and Cursor into the workflow
EPAM Ukraine
Senior UI Designer
September 2016 - September 2017 (1 year)
Kharkiv, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine
Worked across multiple B2B client projects in a large distributed engineering environment. Participated in an internal design internship programme, contributing to the preparation and delivery of training for prospective junior designers.