Nine things a founder, CTO or hiring manager would reasonably want to know. Where there is a real gap, it is stated as a gap rather than answered around.
Product design for security products, sold as fixed-price pilots. Most of my clients’ engineers generate UI with AI tools; my job is to make sure what the analyst sees is right, consistent, and tested with the people who use it.
My role was eliminated in a layoff in August 2026. Employment runs through October; I am taking clients directly from September.
Mostly true, and it is the point. SSE, ZTNA, cloud firewall and CASB since 2022; VMware NSX before that. The objects in a security product do not change much between vendors, and I have designed all of them for people who use them under pressure.
Yes. The 25% to 90% on-system figure has no control group and no blind raters, and component coverage grew over the same period. The method is public and reproducible, and on any engagement I measure before I change anything, so you get the unit, not my total.
The cost case, with its concessions → The claim that failed →
I write code that settles a design question or removes a handoff, not code that ships to your customers. Prototypes, tokens, component specs, audits of generated UI: yes. Production front-end: your team.
No direct reports. I have run a design system across a federated group of designers and vendors with no authority over any of them, and coached three designers over four years, one of whom was promoted to Senior. If you need a manager of a team of ten, that is a different hire.
For the right team, yes: a founding or principal design role where the product is security and the engineers are already shipping with AI tools. I’ve started taking fixed-price pilots; a full-time role at the right team is the other way this goes, and a pilot is a fair way for both sides to find out.
Measure the current cost per correct screen before changing anything. Then fix the path your customer complained about, test it with them, and hand your engineers a system that keeps the next screens consistent without me.
Pune. I work in Indian, UK and US East hours.
Anything not answered here is worth an email — omkarpkh@gmail.com.