Hello, my name is Anton
If a thing is difficult to be accomplished by thyself, do not think that it is impossible for man: but if anything is possible for man and conformable to his nature, think that this can be attained by thyself too.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Journey
- 2008I studied law and even worked in the field for a while after graduating. But I quickly grew disillusioned with the profession. I’ve always been naive and believed in people, yet I saw what the reality was really like. I didn’t enjoy it. So I moved on to keep searching for myself.
- 2009And I found myself at one of the three best design studios in Dnipro — 908. I’m grateful to fate and to my best friend Sasha for recommending me.
- Wrote copy and managed client accounts
- Learned the craft and moved into QA
- 2010I started as a manual tester, but soon became fascinated by automation.
- Ran manual testing across projects
- Wrote interactive tests with Selenium in Java
- Built automated tests in PHP with Codeception, integrated into CI
- 2017I worked at the company for 9 years. It felt a lot like product management — in a small company everyone did everything, and I was good at it.
- Hired and grew a team of QAs
- Owned entire projects and their quality
- Contributed ideas for new features and business strategy
- Gave a talk on testing in Agile
- 2018Over time I became less interested in testing projects and more interested in creating them. The most effective tool I found was design — I loved to create and to see the results of my work.
- Built mockups and prototypes for web and mobile apps
- Animated with Quartz Composer (Origami), AE, Framer.js, Principle, etc.
- 2019A new era began, and to this day I’ve never regretted changing my path for a single moment. I joined Reactor, the company behind Ukraine’s most popular job-search platform — Work.ua. Back then I was told my portfolio was better than that of many designers with hands-on experience who had interviewed with them. It was very nice to hear. I’m still grateful for that recognition and trust.
- 2019This is where I came into my own as a true professional designer. My technical background helped me speak the same language as other teams. I became an informal leader — my colleagues would come to me for advice.
- 2021After two years of work and many completed projects, I was offered the chance to lead the design direction. It was an incredible honour — I’d never dreamed of being a leader, but on the condition that I’d keep doing hands-on work, I happily accepted. An incredibly interesting and productive time.
- Led the design direction
- Kept building individual projects hands-on
- Took part in strategic planning of new features and updates
- Helped drive major launches, like the mobile app
- 2022Then the war began, and I found myself abroad. It was time to move forward. I wanted to work at an international company, try myself at communicating in English, and open up new markets beyond the Ukrainian one. That’s when I found Rocken — a candidate-sourcing platform in Switzerland.
- 2024I worked as an individual contributor and a mentor to junior designers, taking on large projects.
- Adapted the interface for entering the German market — a complex internal CRM and external candidate platforms
- Built design structure, a design system, and a design language
- Significantly improved the CRM filtering system
- Enhanced search and display of candidate and company locations
- Redesigned the job application form — 15% more applications and an easier flow
- 2025After years of putting it off, I finally built the place I kept promising myself — this site, designed and coded end to end. It turned into the reason I started writing regularly again instead of keeping everything in notes nobody reads.
- Designed and built this site from scratch, and keep shipping to it
- Took AI seriously as a working tool rather than a novelty
- Earned the Claude Code in Action and Claude 101 certifications
- 2026I’m in an active search again, looking for new and interesting projects — product design where research, interface and code sit close to one another. If that sounds like the work you have, write to me.
- Reworked the CV upload and application flow in the Djinni mobile app
- Moved wireframing and prototyping into Claude Code, on real project work