👋 Hi there, nice to meet you
Hi, I’m Pedro and I’m a multi-disciplinary design leader, currently residing in London, but I’m originally from sunny Lisbon, Portugal.

In my 15 years career I've built and managed design organizations of various sizes at established companies, scale-ups and fast growing startups. I've designed products that are used by dozens of millions of users across multiple industries, from transit, to retail, to complex financial enterprise tools.

My career has taken me from Lisbon, to New York, to the historical Edinburgh and now London. I've had the opportunity to meet some of the most inspirational design leaders and the immense privilege of leading incredibly talented design teams.
tl;dr version
/ founded a design agency in Lisbon 12 years ago
/ co-founded a tech startup on the ride-sharing space before smartphones were widely adopted
/ built the design function at a tech startup in New York, later acquired by Siemens
/ built one of the first omni-channel design systems at 32k people business composed of multiple brands. also designed a better switching experience for 20m people.
/ managed a multi-disciplinary design team at a 142 year-old tech company, building products for scientists and doctors.
/ helped scale the design function from scratch at a $40b fintech, from a small pocket of designers to a full multi-disciplinary +50 design org in less than 1 year
/ led the design team responsible for a payroll revolution at one of the most valuable companies in Europe
Long version
Straight out of college, and with a few years of experience as a freelancer, I've founded a design agency in Lisbon more than 12 years ago, and had the privilege to work with some of the most innovative brands and tech companies from Portugal and that ended up sponsoring the biggest tech conference in Portugal back in the day.

Around the same time I co-founded a tech startup called wiRide, a mobile app on the ride sharing space, in a time where almost no one had smartphones in Portugal, or credit cards. We ended up winning the biggest bootcamp competition in Lisbon, called Lisbon Big Apps.
We ended up joining forces with Vodafone to bring our ride-sharing services to hundreds of thousands of festival-goers in Portugal.
Moved to New York in Autumn 2014 and joined a startup called Bytemark, which provided transit products for both consumers and transit agencies. As one of the first 25 employees I've built the design function from scratch as well as designed their main consumer and enterprise products. Designed a white-label design system when there were no medium articles about what a design system was, and built one of the first digital wallet services, before they became common on any smartphone. Bytemark was later acquired by Siemens.
After New York, I ended up in London, and joined the design organization at Currys, the biggest technology retailer in Europe. There I designed an omni-channel design system, for multiple brands, operating systems and use-cases. I've led a design team responsible for launching a new broadband switching experience for +20m users.
While in London, I ended up taking a leadership role at the design organization at Elsevier, a 142 year old company, focused on building products for researchers, scientists and clinicians. I managed the entire Mendeley design team, and their entire ecosystem of products.

I led the team that designed the Mendeley Reference Manager, a productity tool for researchers and scientists, used by hundreds of thousands of users and considered one of the most innovative tools in the research area.
In March 2021, I decided to join checkout.com, a London fintech evaluated at $5b. I was the first senior design leader hired, and alongside the SVP of Design, I've helped scale the design org from scratch. From a small pocket of designers, to a multi-disciplinary design organization of +50, composed of product designers, researchers, design operations, brand design and content designs.

My role evolved, and I led the biggest design team in the organization, responsible for building one of the most innovative enterprise tool in the fintech area, in one of the most critical business pillars, the Merchant Experience.

Since I joined in March 2021, checkout.com grew from 800 people to 2600, and today is valued at $40b. The most valuable fintech in Europe.
After my time at Checkout.com, I joined one of Europe's most valuable tech companies, Personio, where I led a design team responsible for a payroll revolution.
I'm currently leading a 32-people design organization at The Stepstone Group, one of the world's leading job platforms, building an AI revolution when it comes to candidate and job seekers experience.
Copyright © 2023 Pedro Ventura de Oliveira.
All work is original and all rights reserved.