Scaling Design Operations: From First Designer to a 150+ Person Company
Business context
Market situation:
Company Growth
PremierSoft grew from a small studio into a strategic partner for Ailos Bank, a Brazilian cooperative, scaling to 150+ employees.
Design Organization Building
As the first and only designer, I built a design organization from scratch while simultaneously delivering dozens of FinTech products, from instant loans to Pix payments, championing UX across 5+ retail‑banking microservices.
Manual Processes
Our processes were manual: design files were exported as PDFs and emailed to developers; QA relied on designers eyeballing screens.
Scale Wall Risk
The growing design team juggled more than thirty app projects and multiple squads. This bottleneck threatened quality and culture. The risk was hitting a 'scale wall' where growth outpaced process, quality collapsed and clients churned, a fate common in body‑shop scaling models.
Team Growth Journey
Organizational scaling milestones
Foundation
Joined as the company's first designer
Design Discipline
Design team of 6+ at a company of 150+
Design as Infrastructure
Elevate design from a reactive service to a core infrastructure function.
Figma-First Design System
Build a Figma‑first design system and a detailed Dev‑Handoff Playbook to serve as the single source of truth for a company of 150+ people across product, engineering and operations.
Metrics-Driven Investment
Use delivery and QA signals to make the case for investment; reposition design as a revenue accelerator rather than a cost center.
Retail Banking Microservices
Champion consistent UX across 5+ banking modules (loans, transfers, Pix) and allow squads to build independently.
Design System Architecture
Central design system powering all microservices
Design as code, mapped 1:1 to components
Figma Design System
Single source of truth
Design Tokens
Tokens
Only Components
Components
Microservices
Services
Strategic interventions
Engineering Multiplier
Collected hard data on QA time, rework rates and engineering idle time caused by unclear designs. Built the business case that a design system would speed delivery, and presented it to the C‑suite, winning confidence and unlocking budget that scaled the product‑tech team. The quality of the work led Ailos to expand the engagement, adding 10+ outsourced designers and developers from PremierSoft.
Figma-First Design System
Built a living design system in Figma that mapped every UI element to coded components in React and Tailwind. Our Dev‑Handoff Playbook prescribed naming conventions, version control practices and API contracts. We standardized typography, color tokens, spacing and interaction patterns across the banking modules. Designers and engineers used the same library, eliminating pixel‑perfect handoff loops.
Retail Banking Microservices
Championed UX for 5+ retail‑banking microservices for the Ailos Bank suite: instant loans, account transfers, Pix QR payments and more. Each microservice inherited its design tokens and components from the centralized system, ensuring the user felt like they were in a cohesive product despite switching modules. Directed the design squad and won C‑suite confidence on the client side.
Business Outcomes
Design ops impact metrics
Business Outcomes
Metrics with industry benchmarks and revenue impact
| Metric | Start | End | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
Design Team | 1 designer | 6+ designers | Founded and grew the discipline |
Company | 2016 | 150+ people | Scaled during tenure |
Banking UX | 5+ microservices | Live | Still in production today |
Growth trajectory
Metric growth during tenure.
Executive summary
Employees at PremierSoft during tenure
Founded the discipline as first designer
Ailos design still in production today
Ailos - O App para Cooperados
Official Websites
Project Artifacts
