Just a bit of background

My Resume

Damien Komala | Resume

Focused Product Design Lead

Sr Lead UX Designer • Senior Director of Design • Senior Product Designer • Sr Principal Designer • Interactive Prototyping Tools • Design System Architecture • User Journey Mapping • Leadership • Led UX Strategy • Enhanced User Engagement • Developed Design Systems • Raised Accessibility • 2 Summit Creative Awards, Design Excellence • Created User Personas • Modernized Architectures

Work Experience

Mercor/Micro1, Remote, CA — Feb 2026 to Current

UI/UX Design Expert

  • Led AI trainer initiatives for Mercor and Micro1, translating complex UX concepts into scalable, data-driven design guidelines and actionable patterns that improved AI-assisted interface recommendations across multi-platform products.
  • Established end-to-end evaluation loops combining user research, usability analytics, and accessibility standards to continuously optimize AI-generated design decisions, resulting in faster iteration cycles and higher design quality.
  • Built and maintained scalable design-system-driven playbooks for AI-trained interfaces, enabling consistent user experiences, efficient cross-team collaboration, and measurable gains in engagement and conversion across Mercor/Micro1 deployments.

Platinum Digital, Newport Beach, CA — July 2025 to Jan 2026

Senior UI/UX Designer

  • Defined 3 distinct user personas (buyers, vendors, and loan officers), delivering tailored design and leading UX strategy and interface design for a blockchain-secured loan application.
  • Optimized multi-persona user journeys, balancing intuitive, streamlined experiences for buyers with complex, data-intensive workflows for loan officers and vendors, improving usability.
  • Designed a companion marketing website for a mobile event ticketing application, translating the iPhone app experience into a high-impact web presence for sports and concert audiences.
  • Developed a custom ambassador administration interface for a consumer brand, delivering a streamlined dashboard that enabled representatives to manage accounts and track activity.
  • Applied scalable design systems across multiple projects, ensuring visual consistency, reusable component libraries, and efficient developer handoffs across platforms and industries.

PropertyReach, Lake Forest, CA — Feb 2023 to July 2025

Senior UI/UX Designer & Creative Director

  • Directed UX strategy for a core real estate SaaS platform, championing the full design lifecycle from user research and journey mapping through high-fidelity prototyping and delivery.
  • Partnered closely with engineering teams within Agile frameworks to deliver targeted feature enhancements, resolving key usability challenges and elevating accessibility standards.
  • Built and scaled a unified design system in Figma, reducing design-to-development handoff time while ensuring consistent, high-quality, and reusable UI components across the platform.
  • Modernized information architecture and interface design, driving measurable improvements in user engagement, improving navigation efficiency, and optimizing end-to-end conversion flows.
  • Influenced product strategy by delivering data-driven insights on user behavior, market trends, and competitive positioning, shaping roadmap priorities and feature development.

PropStream, Lake Forest, CA — May 2019 to Jan 2023

Creative Director & UI/UX Designer

  • Drove 60% growth by leading and optimizing paid marketing strategies, including PPC and diversified digital campaigns across key platforms, improving acquisition efficiency and ROI.
  • Led design and delivery of PropStream’s first native iPhone application, managing product from concept through launch, ensuring a consistent experience across iOS and Android ecosystems.
  • Owned the end-to-end brand ecosystem across web, digital content, and social media, including writing, directing, and appearing in YouTube campaigns that strengthened brand identity.
  • Designed and launched the framework for “PropStream Academy,” a scalable customer education platform that improved user proficiency and increased product adoption.
  • Created high-fidelity white-label prototypes for global enterprise partners, enabling the sales team to effectively demonstrate customized solutions and close high-value enterprise deals.
  • Redesigned onboarding flows using A/B testing insights, improving user activation and retention within the REI web application through enhanced usability and reduced friction.

Ecom Automotive, Santa Ana, CA — Dec 2015 to May 2019

Senior Designer & Front-End Developer

  • Spearheaded end-to-end brand strategy and digital design for multiple e-commerce brands, including TuffStuff4x4 and TrueFlame, overseeing website UI/UX and product packaging.
  • Implemented custom operational systems for inventory management and CRM, eliminating key fulfillment bottlenecks, improving shipping efficiency, and strengthening client feedback loops.
  • Developed and optimized front-end experiences for high-traffic e-commerce websites, improving site performance, page speed, and SEO rankings to enhance visibility and conversion rates.
  • Evaluated, selected, and standardized design tools and workflows, streamlining creative operations, improving team efficiency, and elevating overall design quality and consistency.

PMP Marketing Group, West Palm Beach, FL — Sep 2012 to Dec 2015

Senior Designer

  • Enabled deployment of 37 websites, building a scalable Bootstrap-based template system to ensure responsive design, performance optimization, and streamlined implementation.
  • Received 2 Summit Creative Awards in 2013, earning recognition for innovative, high-impact design work demonstrating excellence in visual communication and brand execution.
  • Led a full company rebrand and managed end-to-end production of marketing assets, including trade show environments, digital collateral, and premium print materials, ensuring consistency.
  • Mentored and developed junior designers, improving team capability and quality standards.
  • Developed innovative design concepts that elevated creative quality, strengthened client relationships, and significantly improved overall client satisfaction.

Sesame Communications, West Palm Beach, FL — Oct 2009 to Sep 2012

Front-End Web Developer

  • Delivered 300+ dynamic PHP websites within an 18-month period, consistently meeting tight deadlines while exceeding client expectations for quality, performance, and usability.
  • Served as technical lead for a remote development team, resolving complex CSS and cross-browser compatibility issues, providing hands-on debugging expertise.

Prior Experience: THAT Agency, Web Designer / Front End Developer

Education

The Art Institute of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH
Bachelor of Arts, Design

Technologies

Figma • Adobe Creative Suite • HubSpot • Confluence • Jira • GitHub • WordPress • Webflow • Claude • Agency Analytics • WooCommerce • Google Ad Manager • Midjourney • Figma Make • Microsoft Teams • Lovable • Gemini • Stable Diffusion • Slack • Asana • Google Workspace • Claude Code • Visual Studio Code