I’m a design engineer with 15+ years of experience designing and building digital products with technical founders, startups and established product teams, from early ideas and prototypes to production-ready products people love and rely on.
I’ve honed my skills and judgement as founding designer at Altostrat, co-founder of Owners Circle, and design and development lead for Simvida, Imagemakers and Stream, alongside years of freelance work.
Outside work, I love metal music, old games, mountain biking, nature, beautiful drives and having fun with my wife and our son.
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A design engineer combines design judgement with technical skill to take ideas from exploration to production, caring as much about performance and accessibility as the details that make a product feel great. My work spans product strategy, interface design, prototyping and production development. I can own a product end to end or take on the design and frontend alongside your engineers.
Early ideas that need a working prototype, complex products that need clearer interfaces, teams building or improving a design system, and projects where every detail deserves careful consideration. My work includes AI harnesses, AI agents at Altostrat, fintech at Simvida, and design systems for large logistic platforms, publishing and ecommerce.
I work directly with founders, designers and engineers, getting close to the problem and the existing product. I use working prototypes to explore options, gather feedback and make decisions together, then carry those decisions through to implementation by sweating every single detail. I’m comfortable working remotely and asynchronously, with clear ownership and communication.
I’m always happy to hear about interesting products and meet the people building them. Email nico@vanzyl.co and tell me what you’re working on.