Nicolas El Azzi

Senior Product Design Manager

I help growing B2B SaaS teams regain clarity and delivery confidence when product environments become complex or unstable.

I join design teams at inflection points where growth, complexity, or instability threaten reliable delivery. Typical scenarios include:

  • Scaling faster than structure can support
  • Unclear ownership between Design, Product, and Engineering
  • Discovery fragmented or disconnected from delivery
  • Design seen as a bottleneck rather than a driver

My role is to bring clarity, structure, and predictable execution without heavy process or unnecessary overhead.

Leadership

As a Design Manager, I lead through three priorities:

  • Clarify decisions in complex domains: Surface trade-offs early, make risk explicit, ensure product choices are grounded and actionable.
  • Build autonomous design teams: Hire, develop, and coach designers with clear expectations, regular feedback, and accountability structures that support growth.
  • Stabilize cross-functional delivery: Align Design, Product, and Engineering around shared priorities. Reduce duplicate work, increase predictability.

I operate hands-on during high-risk phases (discovery, critical flows), then step back to let teams own execution.

Experience Highlights

  • Salsify: Rebuilt European design team after full turnover. Embedded designers in product squads, improved onboarding efficiency, and established research ops.
  • Ippon: Scaled design practice across client engagements. Structured discovery frameworks and aligned delivery with business priorities.
  • Earlier roles: Led B2B/enterprise UX across banking, retail, healthcare, and SaaS. Consistently focused on measurable outcomes and team capability building.

How I Work

  • Lead teams while contributing hands-on to high-stakes initiatives
  • Keep governance light. Structure should enable delivery, not hinder it.
  • Prefer measurable impact over lengthy alignment cycles

Let's talk about how I can help your design team regain clarity and delivery confidence.

Contact me on LinkedIn

Based in Paris, open to remote work across Europe.