Senior UX Designer
End-to-end ownership of a product surface or pod. Strong individual craft plus cross-functional partnership with PM, eng, and research.
About — Lead UX Designer
A lead UX designer on the principal-track IC path.
I'm Vinoth Kumar Manickam — a lead UX designer with 8+ years driving design for enterprise software, fintech platforms, and AI/ML products. I'm currently Lead UX Designer at Fannie Mae and open to lead and principal UX designer roles.
Austin, TXCT · UTC−6Remote · USUS work-authorized
I'm a lead UX designer on the path to principal UX designer. Over the last eight years I've led design on multi-stakeholder enterprise platforms, fintech infrastructure, and AI/ML product surfaces — at Fannie Mae, PayPal, Vanguard, Esper, and Atlassian.
My specialty as a lead UX designer is taking ambiguous, regulated, multi-role problems and reducing them to a small set of decisions that matter. I work end-to-end: framing, research, IA, interaction, system, prototype, ship — and I lead cross-functional partners through the trade-offs along the way.
I write about UX for AI inside regulated organizations under a framework I call the Systemic Design Method, and I mentor 40+ mid-level designers moving into Senior, Staff, and Lead UX roles in AI and fintech.
Outside the work: avid runner, espresso obsessive, and a slow but determined HCI reader.
Levels & roles I'm open to
Senior, Lead, and Principal UX Designer roles.
Lead UX Designer
Design lead across multiple connected surfaces. Setting design direction, mentoring 1–4 designers, and owning the relationship with product and engineering leadership.
Principal UX Designer
Org-level design impact: frameworks, design systems, AI surface patterns, and programs that change how the company ships. Staff+ IC track, not management.