Experience

Hi, I'm Edvinas, been building and designing digital products for 15 years. My whole career I was "sitting on two chairs" - doing working on design and web frontends - yet always considered myself a designer. I excel in teams needing generalists or positions, where the intersection of these skills: building advanced user interfaces, working on design systems, etc.

Find more details below, or get in touch via [email protected] if you think I'd be a good addition to your team and/or project.

3.5 years @ Adform

After working for a couple of years in design agencies doing design/flash/frontend development, decided to focus more and Adform was my first "product" company.

Joined as an ActionScript developer, but from the first day switched to doing design - team appreciated my previous experience and asked to help with building internal tool and after that, I switched to building and designing the main app.

Since there was no previous designer role, the company didn't know what to do with me. Lucky for me, I joined the architects (.NET, DB, etc.) team. This was great - could learn from most experienced people in a company, my manager was Head of Development: was great to be involved in big picture things, understanding how things and the company work, where to focus and what matters, etc.

"Frontend" was not a thing at the moment (backend developers were responsible for that, but we all know how it goes...). I already knew how to do that, so was not only owning and doing the design but helping teams implement them, guiding how those technologies work (doing layouts with tables was still a thing at the time and CSS starting to pick up steam), etc.

4.5 years @ Vinted

Joined Vinted when the company was still about 10 people in size and today it's the first Lithuanian unicorn! Again, was very lucky that I had an opportunity to contribute to its growth and learn how modern startups grow, what are the pains, problems, how things change, what works and what not, etc.

To this day it's Rails app, so all the team was familiar with the ideas promoted by Basecamp and adopting them. Amazed to this day how great the environment there was, how far trusting people and giving them ownership gets you - like all startups, it was a bumpy road.

Like in Adform, had great managers and mentors there. People from our first "cross-functional" team grew up to be heads of their departments: product, development, etc. I also grew up and was leading frontend and design teams at the company, later finding people who can take ownership of that.

We had offices in multiple countries, had an internal tool to do async communication - everyone understood how important that is, etc. Even if it wasn't a "remote first" company, I managed to work remotely too.

Like in Adform, was doing frontend, design work (all platforms: web, iOS, Android) - and everything in between - you can imagine, what being the first designer in a startup feels like. But I managed, knew that I need to help grow other designers joining the company - still best friends with all of the team to this day.

1 year @ SeditionArt

After 4.5 years in Vinted, wanted something completely different, so joined a small team of this London-based company - a development team remote, based in Lithuania.

Product was still a marketplace, so was a great opportunity to test what I learned in Vinted. Once again was doing product design and helping with implementation.

Didn't spend a lot of time in the company - person, which I replaced, came back after his other startup failed and we had different visions of how things should work. Even when talking about the management issues, they were not addressed and I decided it's not productive for both sides to continue like this.

Yet despite a short period, managed to streamline the products design/frontend system, so small team could move faster. Also helped to shape process, introduced Basecamp, so we can discuss things easier and in an async way, etc.

2.5 years @ NordVPN

Even that industry of VPNs is a bit shady and not entirely "my cup of tea", the ability to work with one of my previous mentors from Vinted, who was Head of Development in Nord excited me. So after he invited me to help with the product design, didn't think for too long - needed to see things for myself. Also, the company was still small at the time and I thought that it was just the youth of the company, and having experience and trust of management, I can still help shape it.

Yet again, was the only product designer in the company. A new thing for me was now doing design not for usual iOS / Android platforms, but here we had Windows and Mac apps. never done that before, but picked up fast and was focused on helping build great native desktop / mobile apps, finding ways to have a cohesive family of apps.

Started as a designer in single "apps" team, by the time I left, was supporting 5 product owners/teams as the company grew. Not worked with them shaping the apps for different platforms, but helped other teams too: designed the first version of NordVPN for teams. Later when the company started building new products, prototyped and helped build initial versions of Windows and macOS version of NordLocker - a new product for encrypted file storage.

Was trusted not only by product teams but also helped the marketing team when working on company branding, helping them unify our products portfolio, etc.

2 years @ The Remote Company / Ycode

The current company I work for. The first one that's truly "remote first". You may know the company better from their original product - MailerLite. Now company grow its product portfolio and I'm one of two designers building the Ycode app.

It's a web app builder, so feels closest and most familiar to me - I've been doing design and frontend for more than 15 years, so it's great to work on tools that try to improve this space.

NordVPN was the only company where I didn't code, so getting back to this is great. There are lots of interactions in the product, so having the ability to implement / prototype these helps a lot. Learned and experienced what "eat your own dog food" actually means and feels like.

When joining didn't have any experience with Vue.js, a framework we're using for developing app builder, but picked up quickly and now have built a great chunk of advanced features and app UI.

Think I'd be a good fit for your team? Get in touch: [email protected]