hey, I'm Shadi 👋

Work history

Twilio

I joined a newly funded design system team tasked with streamlining frontend development within the company. At that point, with over a decade under its belt, the company had faced its fair share of challenges with failed component libraries. Building trust and garnering adoption from teams was an uphill battle, especially in a bottom-up culture like Twilio's, where deliverables had to prove their worth independently.

I'm incredibly proud to say that our team's vision became a reality. Starting from scratch, we evolved into a central pillar within both the design and engineering organizations. Today, over 150 projects of varying sizes across the company heavily rely on the design system and its auxiliary components. Despite the modest size of our team, our impact has been substantial.

Throughout my time at Twilio, I've focused on delivering both tactically and culturally, from prioritizing high-impact initiatives to infusing a product-minded perspective to elevate our baseline of quality. Initially, my role revolved around technical leadership—spanning system architecture, component and monorepo design, mentoring, and tooling. We were a small team with nothing but our vision to guide us, so we dove into building as quickly as possible. As the team expanded, I took on the team lead role from the engineering perspective. This involved taking charge of the backlog, nurturing team cohesion, and steering our roadmap forward.

Work samples

• Paste design system
• Insights and metrics that inform the Paste Design System (2021)
• Bringing cohesion to the Twilio product suite (2022)
• Paste Infographic (early 2023)
• A year in review (late 2023)

Discord

I joined Discord in its during its early stages, deeply involved in shaping an innovative communications platform tailored for gamers. As the company's first frontend engineer, I was entrusted with overseeing every aspect of our product lineup. With a lifelong passion for gaming, ensuring an exceptional user experience for fellow gamers was at the core of my work.

In the dynamic environment of a startup, my role evolved to meet evolving demands. One of my notable achievements was establishing and maintaining a cohesive frontend codebase, enabling agile development as our team expanded. Beyond product development, I championed a culture of accessibility within our products, securing executive support to prioritize this objective.

During my tenure, I initially took charge of maintaining the company website and played a pivotal role in creating the highly successful Partner and HypeSquad programs in collaboration with the marketing team.

As my expertise in React and Flux grew, I transitioned to fully working on the desktop app, where I played a key role in the development of various core features such as the main chat view and app dark mode. With no prior iOS development experience, I assisted when needed to develop features like deep linking and native sharing into Discord.

Work samples

• Discord website

ENFOS

I joined ENFOS with the mission to lead the transformation of their SaaS user interface. Working closely with the CTO, I played a pivotal role in conceptualizing, architecting, and successfully deploying a comprehensive rewrite of our entire front-end codebase.

To ensure our solutions were user-centric, I conducted extensive user research through surveys and both one-on-one and group interviews. Collaborating closely with our design team, I refined the user experience and implemented pixel-perfect screens.

Recognizing the importance of robust testing, I established a rigorous testing environment that instilled confidence in our release process. Additionally, I mentored a team of eight, introducing new methodologies and technologies that elevated code quality, ensured consistency in deliverables, and alleviated deadline pressures.

Work samples

• ENFOS website

Paladin Labs

Responsible for generating 7 key industry reports at a monthly cadence using SAP and private market data. These reports were reviewed by the executive team and used as a strong indicator to guide business development, growth, and planning. Due to the critical nature of these reports, I devised mathematic models and created software tooling to verify the integrity of both source data and the resulting reports. This tooling reduced the team's manual workload by over 70%, transforming a time sensitive process into a comfortable one for the team. Good software means also having clear documentation, so I created both a written and video tutorial series to train new hires through the reporting process.