Senior Product Designer

Hi, I'm Catarina. I bring clarity to complex systems built for scale.

Senior Product Designer with 8+ years across Fintech and E-commerce, working alongside engineering and business to translate legacy systems and compliance constraints into clear, useful, and consistent interfaces.

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(01) About

I'm a product designer and Certified Educator (CCP) where business, technology, and users collide.

For the past eight years I've worked across Fintech and E-commerce, turning legacy systems and compliance rules into interfaces people actually trust, understand, and keep using every day.

My work sits at the intersection of constraint and the user: deliberate, dependable, and quietly rigorous. No shortcuts, just solutions.

Years Experience

30+

Projects Delivered

20+

Teams Collaborated With

Award Recognitions

(02) Stack

The tools I reach for, day to day.

Figma

Figma AI

Figma Dev Mode

HTML & CSS

UserTesting

Hotjar

Google Analytics

FigJam

Miro

Azure DevOps

Jira

Zeroheight

(03) Experience

Where I’ve been designing.

2024 — 2026

Senior Product Designer

— Bliss Applications

Led product design for Pulsoo (BPI & NOS), an award-winning financial management app for small businesses. Designed or rebuilt all 21 of its flows and restructured the inherited UI kit into a scalable design system, implemented in production. Also worked on BPI’s Core Banking evolution, including Home Loan digitization and the AGE App, across 5 squads.

2022 — 2024

Product Designer

— Instinct

Designed the UI, user flows and UI kit for the new MEO Blueticket app and website, one of Portugal’s largest ticketing platforms: more than twenty end-to-end flows, including self-service sharing, resale and upgrade, and a dedicated flow for accessible seating. Also designed the UI of the Colombo Loves Me prototype for Sonae Sierra, tested with visitors at Colombo and NorteShopping.

2020 — 2022

Product Designer

— Next Engineering

Designed the document collection flow of Banco Credibom’s fully digital personal loan: more than a hundred screens and states connecting four public and banking services, each with a designed fallback. Ran design QA across the full journey with engineering. Earlier, contributed UI to Pisca Pisca, part of the Credibom group.

(04) Selected Work

A few products I’m proud to have shipped.

FINTECH

Pulsoo

A free financial management app for micro and small businesses, launched by BPI and NOS, bringing multi-bank aggregation via Open Banking, tax and social security alerts, and payment initiation into one app.

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TICKETING

MEO Blueticket

One of Portugal's largest ticketing platforms, redesigned for app and web to handle festivals, museums and seated shows in one system, with split payments, instalments and self-service resale built in.

View Project

RETAIL

Colombo Loves Me

A companion app for two of Portugal's largest shopping centres, prototyped and tested with real visitors to bring content, cross-store shopping, services and loyalty into one place. Several of the ideas it tested appear in the app Sonae Sierra launched in 2024.

View Project

FINTECH

Credibom

A fully digital personal loan for Banco Credibom, a consumer credit bank in the Crédit Agricole group, built to take a customer from simulation to a signed contract without paper or a branch visit, with proof of address, income and bank details retrieved through four integrated public and banking services.

View Project

(05) Blog

Latest Articles & Publications

All Articles

Community

In Times of Chaos, Does AI Matter? A Crisis Case Study

Education

The Future of Product Design Education: Challenges and Tomorrow's Demands

Product Design

Generalist, Specialist, or T-Shaped: What Is Your True UX Career Profile?

Community

In Times of Chaos, Does AI Matter? A Crisis Case Study

Product Design

Generalist, Specialist, or T-Shaped: What Is Your True UX Career Profile?

Education

The Future of Product Design Education: Challenges and Tomorrow's Demands

Community

In Times of Chaos, Does AI Matter? A Crisis Case Study

Education

The Future of Product Design Education: Challenges and Tomorrow's Demands

Product Design

Generalist, Specialist, or T-Shaped: What Is Your True UX Career Profile?

(06) Testimonials

Strict WCAG compliance and high-converting checkouts don't usually coexist in enterprise commerce. Catarina proved they could, without compromise.
Brand Director
·
E-commerce
Strict WCAG compliance and high-converting checkouts don't usually coexist in enterprise commerce. Catarina proved they could, without compromise.
Brand Director
·
E-commerce
Strict WCAG compliance and high-converting checkouts don't usually coexist in enterprise commerce. Catarina proved they could, without compromise.
Brand Director
·
E-commerce
Dense financial compliance rarely translates cleanly into digital flows without extra rework. Under Catarina, ours shipped faster because of it, not despite it.
Product Owner
·
Core Banking
Dense financial compliance rarely translates cleanly into digital flows without extra rework. Under Catarina, ours shipped faster because of it, not despite it.
Product Owner
·
Core Banking
Dense financial compliance rarely translates cleanly into digital flows without extra rework. Under Catarina, ours shipped faster because of it, not despite it.
Product Owner
·
Core Banking
Catarina took ownership of Pulsoo end-to-end, from problem framing to delivery, with no direct design lead beside her, and raised the team's accessibility bar.
Design Manager
·
Consultancy
Catarina took ownership of Pulsoo end-to-end, from problem framing to delivery, with no direct design lead beside her, and raised the team's accessibility bar.
Design Manager
·
Consultancy
Catarina took ownership of Pulsoo end-to-end, from problem framing to delivery, with no direct design lead beside her, and raised the team's accessibility bar.
Design Manager
·
Consultancy
Legacy blockers had stalled our retail checkout for months. Catarina untangled the cross-team dependencies and got it shipped on schedule.
Product Owner
·
Retail
Legacy blockers had stalled our retail checkout for months. Catarina untangled the cross-team dependencies and got it shipped on schedule.
Product Owner
·
Retail
Legacy blockers had stalled our retail checkout for months. Catarina untangled the cross-team dependencies and got it shipped on schedule.
Product Owner
·
Retail
Handoff friction used to eat our sprint velocity. Catarina's architecture removed it our engineering cycles got shorter, full stop.
Tech Lead
·
Fintech
Handoff friction used to eat our sprint velocity. Catarina's architecture removed it our engineering cycles got shorter, full stop.
Tech Lead
·
Fintech
Handoff friction used to eat our sprint velocity. Catarina's architecture removed it our engineering cycles got shorter, full stop.
Tech Lead
·
Fintech
Rare to find a designer who thinks in API constraints, component states, and user behavior at once. Catarina builds for all three, and it shows in the shipped product.
Front-End Engineer
·
Fintech
Rare to find a designer who thinks in API constraints, component states, and user behavior at once. Catarina builds for all three, and it shows in the shipped product.
Front-End Engineer
·
Fintech
Rare to find a designer who thinks in API constraints, component states, and user behavior at once. Catarina builds for all three, and it shows in the shipped product.
Front-End Engineer
·
Fintech
Organizational ambiguity kills most projects before they ship. Catarina brings disciplined structure, turning it into execution systems that scale. That's the actual skill.
Design Lead
·
Banking
Organizational ambiguity kills most projects before they ship. Catarina brings disciplined structure, turning it into execution systems that scale. That's the actual skill.
Design Lead
·
Banking
Organizational ambiguity kills most projects before they ship. Catarina brings disciplined structure, turning it into execution systems that scale. That's the actual skill.
Design Lead
·
Banking
A true mentor and a natural guide. Catarina's sharp perspective and steady leadership raise the entire team's UX thinking and UI quality in every project.
Product Designer
·
Core Banking
A true mentor and a natural guide. Catarina's sharp perspective and steady leadership raise the entire team's UX thinking and UI quality in every project.
Product Designer
·
Core Banking
A true mentor and a natural guide. Catarina's sharp perspective and steady leadership raise the entire team's UX thinking and UI quality in every project.
Product Designer
·
Core Banking

(07) FAQ

Frequently asked.

Who do you work with?

What technologies do you use?

How long does a project take?

Do you work remotely?

Can you join an existing team?