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Track Record: Helped a client acquired by Shopify Helped raise $4M+ seed round Client acquired by Blue Bottle Coffee Helped scale a platform globally (Walmart.com) Client acquired by Disney 2 clients had successful IPOs Client acquired by Groupon

Senior product design leadership, accelerated by AI

Frank Ramirez
I’m Frank Ramirez . I’ve spent 20+ years helping startups and product teams ship — from Walmart.com to LinkedIn to five startup acquisitions.
 
Today, I use AI-native design workflows to build functional prototypes directly from product concepts. Fewer handoffs. Less waiting. I embed at the leadership level, however you need me.

I’ve helped startup clients go from zero-to-one to successful exits…

… and designed for some of the most recognized product teams in the world.

ebay
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I don't hand you a Figma file and disappear.

I embed at the leadership level as a Founding Designer, a Fractional Head of Design, or whatever your team actually needs, and I ship working product alongside you.

design

Strategic Product Design

Great UI is worthless without the right product strategy behind it. I bring 20 years of experience simplifying complex workflows from healthcare to fintech to streaming analytics into interfaces people actually understand.

speed

AI-Native Prototyping

I build functional React prototypes directly from product concepts using Claude and Gemini, skipping the static mockup phase entirely. Your team tests real interactions on day one, not after weeks of design review.

Embedded Research & Validation

Usability studies, stakeholder interviews, heuristic evaluations - I run the research that keeps your team honest about what users actually need, not what you assume they want.

Have questions?

How do you actually work with product teams?

I embed directly into your team as whatever you need — a Fractional Head of Design, a Founding Designer, or a senior IC on contract. I’m in the Slack channels, the standups, and the design reviews, collaborating in real time with your leadership team, engineers, PMs, and stakeholders. And because I build working prototypes with AI-assisted tooling, we tests real interactions instead of reviewing static mockups.

Absolutely. One of the things I do best is work with other creative people. I’ve led cross-functional teams of 4 to 6 across product strategy, interaction design, prototyping, and front-end implementation. If you have designers on staff, they become part of the process and get mentorship (if they want) along the way. My goal is to make your team better, not to replace them.

I work best with early-stage startups (Seed through Series B) that are building complex products and need experienced design leadership who is all-in on AI-assisted dev.

If your technology is sophisticated but your user experience isn’t, that’s exactly where I come in. I’ve done this for healthcare apps, streaming analytics platforms, mobile apps, fintech products, and B2B SaaS apps.

It means I’ve moved past the traditional Figma-to-developer-handoff workflow. I use tools like Claude and Gemini to generate functional React and Tailwind prototypes directly from design concepts.

This collapses the gap between “what it looks like” and “how it actually works,” so your team can test, iterate, and validate before writing production code. It’s not about replacing design thinking. It’s about removing the bottlenecks that slow it down.