Yuriy Balaka (passport spelling: Iurii Balaka)

Lead Design Engineer

I find what a product’s users will pay for, and I build it until it works: with the owner on the money, with the engineers in the code, with no handoff in between.

My work has two halves. First I decide what to build: user tests on my own tooling, competitor reviews, measurement. Then I build it myself: prototypes in code, tools for the team, my own product. I join teams where one lead owns the result.

Experience

  1. WebPros

    Senior Product Designer

    Nov 2021 – present

    remote

    • Riva, an AI-visibility product: worked on it since its first version. For the redesign: a user test of 8 sessions on my own tooling, a review of 6 competitors, one register of decisions, the redesign brief organised by the jobs users pay for.
    • 360 Monitoring, XOVI, XOVI AI, Koality. Unified sign-up for 360 Monitoring. AI Writer for XOVI Now. Smart Update redesign in WordPress Toolkit. Koality plugin for cPanel.

  2. Say in Place

    own product

    2026

    • Voice typing for Mac, built alone with AI coding agents. First prototype April 2026; version 1.0 and sales from 26 September 2026.

  3. NG&E, including LongHorn

    Senior Product Designer

    green energy, B2B2C

    Nov 2018 – Sep 2021

    Amsterdam area

    • Digital Sales Assistant, Self-Service Portal, Partner Portal, Web Sales Assistant. White-labelling through SCSS. A UI kit in React.
    • Demo days with sales teams and investors: Shell, BAM, Heilbron, Stadlander.

  4. Reconnect

    Product Designer

    Aug 2016 – May 2018

    Utrecht

    • Reconnect Produce. HTML and Angular. Supervised front-end deliverables. Investor presentations.

  5. QWEP

    Product Designer, freelance

    marketplace for car parts, 400+ suppliers

    Jun 2017 – Oct 2017

    • New web platform: structure, flows, a UI kit in HTML. Registration, search, ordering, orders across several carts. HTML prototypes.

  6. MarineCFO

    ERP system for a maritime fleet

    • HR module: an employee record with 400+ fields. The concept of workspaces.

  7. SdamInfo

    Product Designer

    short-term apartment rentals

    Jan 2013 – Jan 2015

    • Redesign of the listings, the flow for adding a listing, an auction for top placement. Daily analytics in Yandex.Metrica: funnels, seasonality, landlord collusion. Three versions of the design. An HTML prototype in 25 iterations. User inflow ×4.

  8. Own studio and freelance

    2009–2019

Open source

How I work

  • Product decisions with the owner, in terms of money.
  • Prototypes in code, inside the engineers’ repository.
  • User tests and competitor reviews on my own tooling.
  • Measurement before guessing.