UX at a Unicorn: Inside Deel’s Design-Led Growth
What does UX look like inside a company growing at unicorn scale?
Deel has become one of the most impressive scale-up stories in global tech. Following a recent $300m Series E funding round, the company is now valued at $17.3bn and continues to grow rapidly across product, engineering and design. But behind that growth is a deeper question for the UX and product community: what does design need to become when a company moves from start-up momentum to global scale?
For this special UXCrunch takeover, we’re going inside Deel to hear how design operates in one of the world’s fastest-growing product companies.
This is not just a night about beautiful interfaces or polished portfolios. It is about the changing role of designers in high-growth businesses: how we prove commercial value, move faster without lowering the quality bar, use AI as leverage, and design systems that help teams scale rather than slow them down.
We’ll hear from two senior design leaders at Deel, each exploring a different side of modern design practice at scale.
Carlos F. Wydler, Art Director of Web Design at Deel, will explore why creative commercial awareness is becoming one of the most important skills for designers in an AI-shaped world. His talk will show how designers can prove value before they are hired, uncover business opportunities through 360 audits, and use AI to create more leverage without burning out.
Avi Ashkenazi, Senior Director of Product Design at Deel, will unpack what speed really means inside a company with 150+ product teams. His talk challenges the old trade-off between speed and quality, showing how design systems, research and execution can become accelerants for better decisions, faster learning and higher-quality outcomes.
Whether you’re a designer, researcher, product lead or design manager, this event is for anyone asking what it takes to stay valuable, effective and relevant as companies scale, and as AI changes the shape of our work.
Join us for an evening of honest insight, practical lessons and behind-the-scenes perspective from a design team helping shape the future of global work.
P.S Please bring a valid I.D to the venue, as security staff need to check this against the guest list
Agenda
6:00pm — Doors open
6:30pm — Welcome & intro
6:45pm — First talk
7:30pm — Food & drinks
8:00pm — Second talk
8:45pm — Pub, First Drinks on us! @ The Lord Raglan
📍 Location: Lloyds Banking Group
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Lloyds Banking Group
Owned & Presented by
Format-3.co
Supported by
Gale & Co
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Meet the Speakers
Avi Ashkenazi
Senior Director, Product Design @Deel
Speed is a Quality Signal: Designing at Scale in the Age of Efficiency
In an industry currently defined by "doing more with fewer," the traditional tension between speed and quality has become a false dichotomy.
We’ve been taught that moving fast breaks things, but at Deel, an org with 150+ product teams, we’ve learned that speed is often the fastest path to truth. This talk explores how to transition from "Delivery Mania" (the dopamine hit of closing tickets) to "High-Velocity Quality."
We will dissect what speed actually looks like across different design disciplines: Speed in Systems: Why a design system isn't a library, but an accelerant.
Speed in Research: Moving from generic AI-generated insights to niche customer truths.
Speed in Execution: How choosing the right medium (words vs. prototypes vs. code) dictates your reaction time.
Key Takeaway:
Attendees will learn how to audit their own organisation’s strengths to build a culture where speed isn't about rushing—it's about reducing the time between a hypothesis and a high-quality solution.
Who is this for?
Senior Designers, Design Managers, and Product Leads who are navigating the reality of smaller teams and need to maintain a high quality bar without burning out or slowing down.
Carlos F. Wydler
Art Director of Web Design @ Deel
Creative Commercial Awareness: A Premium Design Skill Driven by 360 Audits
How do we become valuable in an AI world, when our portfolio isn't enough anymore and most creatives just don't know how to prove it?
Creative Commercial Awareness is a hidden skill very few designers can prove, because most have never owned outcomes.
This talk is about how to make yourself impossible to ignore by creating value before you're hired, the only real career strategy left in an AI world, and I'll show you how to do it without burning out.
Key Takeaways:
360 Audits — my repeatable framework for conversion rates, a way of thinking paired with the right tools and strategy to identify problems and uncover opportunities. It's how I drive results for clients and companies like Deel.
How to land jobs and clients, by showing value before you're hired, and how you can use the same approach to negotiate up, get promoted, or create business.
AI as Leverage, a case study of how I use L.A.S. for prompt engineering and token maximisation to deliver work at Deel.
Who it's for:
Designers, researchers, and creatives who are tired of feeling replaceable, curious about AI leverage, and ready to stop applying to jobs and start being chosen for them. Or any digital business losing users, leaving revenue on the table, or watching competitors pull ahead.
Our Vision
Bringing the best thinkers, speakers and leaders from across design together in intimate meet-up environments where real conversations can happen.
Why We Charge for Tickets
Our vision is to bring the best speakers to a premium meet-up environment with a high bar for the overall experience, including great food, drinks and production.
Ticket revenue helps cover:
• Refreshments and drinks
• Speaker travel and expenses
• Event marketing and operations
• Venue and production costs
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