From Engineer to Head of Product

I joined OneUp as the lead front-end engineer, owning all product design for nearly five years. Eventually, I hired a dedicated Product Designer to work alongside me and scaled the engineering team from 2 to 8. During my time, I led the conception, design, and launch of all platform features, working closely with design and engineering to drive impactful solutions. Beyond product, I played a pivotal role in marketing and brand design, shaping OneUp’s aesthetic and presence. For the last two years, I served on the Senior Leadership Team, reporting directly to the CEO and board, and helping guide OneUp’s strategic direction.

OneUp is a sales performance management and motivation platform on a mission to rid the world of boring spreadsheets. Early on, the platform gained traction in the recruitment space, which has remained its core market ever since.

Design had never been OneUp’s strength. When I joined, I became the sole designer in the company. The existing brand felt outdated, antiquated, and unprofessional. In my first few months at OneUp, I set out on a personal mission to completely redefine the brand.

The refreshed logo I produced to elevate the brand image

Culture is an inherent trait of any company. Without intention from the start, it can go awry as you scale. From day one, I took pride in being a driver of culture, becoming known internally as “the culture guy.” I helped the company establish and stay aligned with our values.

I established and led the culture interview stage in our hiring process, ensuring we hired in alignment with our core values.

Sure, there were stressful times at OneUp, but it was one incredible journey. We had some great fun along the way—times I’ll treasure forever 💙

During my time at OneUp, the company grew from 5 to 40 people, and we scaled revenue from £300K to £2.1M.

We consistently ranked high in our category on G2. Most notably, for ease of use and best usability.

Redefining OneUp’s brand included redesigning and building the website to give it a fresh, clean, and bold new look.

I still remember, in my third week at OneUp, setting up a call with the CEO and CTO to give them my assessment of the platform’s state: we needed to rebuild this monolith. The existing platform was overflowing with tech debt, making it impossible to scale. I embarked on a complete redesign and rebuild of the platform on a new tech stack.

I led the strategy to formalise our interface with a robust design system, collaborating with the Product Designer I hired to bring it to life and roll it out across the product and engineering teams.

I led the development of OneUp’s first standalone product, designed to tackle the complex process of real-time commission calculation for sales teams.

Commission was calculated only at the end of each quarter, meaning consultants had to wait months to see their earnings progress. This process was often error-prone, making quarter-end a stressful period for both managers and consultants. Additionally, a lack of transparency in commission schemes hindered motivation for salespeople.

Commission piloted with 10 customers, 60% of whom were interested in continuing beyond the initial pilot. Unfortunately, due to a shift in priorities the product was put on pause.

I led the transformation of the legacy dashboard into a fully customisable, shareable solution with built-in data access controls for larger organisations.

The existing dashboard was a one-size-fits-all solution, but users wanted the ability to customise the information to suit their individual needs.

A 40% increase in dashboard usage, week on week.

Targets are at the core of OneUp, enabling quota-setting for sales teams. I led a redesign of the targets system, transforming it into a scalable solution to better support managers setting multiple targets for different users.

Managers found the process of setting multiple targets for many users too time-consuming, often abandoning it altogether.

A sixfold reduction in the time needed to create bulk targets and a 30% increase in targets set per user.

One of the most enjoyable features I worked on was the TV Flash, which appears on customers’ office TVs to celebrate consultants’ achievements, like closing a deal. I led a refresh to enhance the flash with more context.

The existing flash only showed the consultant’s name, photo, and a basic metric (e.g., 1 placement). Customers wanted more detail to give better context to each celebration.

Overwhelmingly positive feedback and an 80% adoption rate for the new, customisable flash features.

I naturally strive for perfection, which is both my greatest strength and my weakness. Not everything has to be flawless—sometimes, trade-offs are necessary. While poor quality should never be accepted, the pursuit of perfection can often be incremental.

Becoming a senior leader at 25 was a big achievement, but it also brought a lot of pressure—and truthfully, I probably wasn’t fully ready for it. I can be my own worst enemy, pushing myself beyond physical limits to get things done. It’s important to remember that you’re only human and can’t solve every problem; sometimes, you have to let certain fires burn.

The exceptional hires we made propelled us forward with the momentum of five mid-performers combined. Don’t compromise on great talent—do whatever you can to bring them on board and keep them.

OneUp struggled from the start with a lack of a well-defined problem or clear purpose in the market. Simply put, the two founders wanted to build a cool startup after uni. They worked incredibly hard and got lucky, but there was never a strong drive toward a clearly defined mission. Moving forward, I know this is something I need in any company I work with.

I’ve intentionally kept my online portfolio light on detail to let the visuals speak for themselves. However, I’d be happy to dive deeper and discuss any aspect of my work.