Natalia Cackowska
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Warsaw, Poland
Toptal member since October 2, 2016
Product designer with 16 years of experience designing large-scale SaaS and enterprise applications for Fortune 500 clients in regulated industries. Excels at entering complex domains, understanding business and user needs, and translating them into clear user flows, information architecture, and scalable UI. A cross-functional partner to product, engineering, and business stakeholders. Fluent in Figma. Uses AI tools to accelerate research synthesis, ideation, and design exploration.
Experience
- UX Design - 16 years
- Product Design - 16 years
- UX Research - 16 years
- Design Systems - 10 years
- Enterprise SaaS - 9 years
- Data Visualization - 8 years
- Executive Presentations - 8 years
- Figma - 6 years
Portfolio
Work Experience
UX/UI Designer (Contract)
Roche
- Worked as a long-term UX partner for Roche R&D, designing two validated and versioned clinical trial data management platforms (hundreds of screens each) for a regulated research environment.
- Supported study managers and researchers across study planning, contract-compliant data submission, and data completeness insights.
- Led UX from problem framing and domain understanding through information architecture, end-to-end flows, detailed interaction design, and implementation support.
- Designed intricate workflows spanning multiple user roles, permissions, data states, and exception scenarios in a versioned, regulated clinical environment.
- Contributed to a strategic product with a 6M USD annual budget and a 30-person cross-functional team; nearly 40 clinical trials were onboarded last year.
- Acted as a UX partner to product, engineering, and business stakeholders, translating clinical-operations needs into usable, well-structured products; recent focus on system behavior, data-state logic, and cross-module consistency.
- Co-created and owned the design system: laid the foundations, guided and supported another designer through more complex components, then took over full ownership — maintaining and expanding it over time.
Solo Product Designer
Enterprise SaaS
- Designed and improved enterprise SaaS products across data quality, anonymization, and AI-assisted due diligence - working solo in ambiguous, unfamiliar domains, structuring the problem space, and turning business processes into usable flows.
- Redesigned enterprise data quality management software, improving clarity of workflows, navigation, and task completion across high-volume data operations. (2019–2024).
- Designed a platform for consistent data anonymization across multiple sources, including AI-supported capabilities; product work supported the company's early funding rounds. (2022–2025).
- Redesigned and usability-tested AI-based due diligence automation software, validating key flows and improving interaction patterns for high-stakes decision-making. (2021–2022).
- Worked directly with founders, product owners, and domain experts to clarify requirements, challenge assumptions, and shape feasible solutions.
- Selected, designed, or adapted existing design systems as the foundation, then expanded and maintained them to fit the products' evolving needs.
UX Team Manager
Syncron
- Led UX for ERP SaaS products supporting intricate inventory and price management for global automotive and heavy-machinery customers — Caterpillar, Harley-Davidson, Daimler Trucks, Volvo, and Claas.
- Oversaw the UX process for multi-module enterprise systems with dense business rules and demanding operational UI.
- Built and managed a UX team of five designers/researchers, including recruitment, onboarding, and design-process setup.
- Partnered with R&D leadership and an external design agency to deliver a UI facelift across the full product portfolio within one year.
- Presented design direction and progress to senior leadership, including the CEO and board-level stakeholders.
Lead UX Designer
Roche/Genetech
- Built and led a UX team serving the US-branch R&D — recruiting designers, preparing client bids, and scoping and estimating projects.
- Retained existing accounts and won new ones, despite two-thirds of the team being juniors,.
- Designed dozens of business applications, from mobile to complex enterprise systems.
Education
Certificate in UI Design
Career Foundry - Online
Master of Science Degree in Information Systems
Warsaw School of Economics - Warsaw, Poland
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology
Silesian University - Katowice, Poland
Certifications
B2 Swedish Language Certificate (Självständig Språkanvändare)
Folkuniversitetet
Skills
Tools
Sketch, FigJam, AI Tools, Figma Component Library, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, Claude
Platforms
Figma, iOS
Other
Prototyping, UX Research, UX Design, UI Design, User Interface (UI), Enterprise SaaS, Enterprise Systems, B2B, Dashboard Design, UX Wireframes, Web App Design, Presentations, PowerPoint Design, Presentation Design, User Experience (UX), Usability Testing, User Flows, Heuristic Analysis, Card Sorting, Web Design, Visual Design, Mobile UI Design, Mobile App Design, User Research, Product Design, Design Thinking, MVP Design, Data Visualization, UX Audits, User Journeys, Startups, Lean Startups, Design Workshops, SaaS Design, Design Systems, Component Libraries, App Design, Reusable Components, Online Banking, Order Management, Document Management, Workshops, Business Analysis, Information Systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Pitch Decks, Executive Presentations, ChatGPT, Swedish, Investor Presentations, Fundraising, Seed Fundraising, Data Privacy, Data Security, Startup Funding, Visual Storytelling, Claude Design
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