Cahê Scarcela Mendes
Product Designer · Founder's Mindset · Design, Code & Business
Ivrea, Italy
cahe.mendes@gmail.com
+39 375 869 3925
Ivrea, Italy · Own car, mobile across Torino and Milano · Remote or hybrid · EU-based, no visa required
Summary
I started in development, moved into design, and somewhere along the way took on product direction too. For 20 years I've been sitting at the intersection of those three.
AI changed what's possible at that intersection. Now I bring business thinking, design, and code together without losing the thread between them, from problem definition to production, same person, no handoff.
I work best when the brief doesn't exist yet. When the structure needs to be invented. When the product has to earn its place in the market before it earns a roadmap.
Experience
yampa · Financial Intelligence
Staff Product Designer & Design Manager · Oct 2021 – Jun 2026 · 4 years 8 months
- →Tripled MRR from R$80k to R$370k in 24 months by leading end-to-end platform redesign and restructuring the business model alongside the product
- →Reduced design-to-production cycle by 70% by introducing an AI-first workflow, designing in Figma and shipping React components directly to the repository, no handoff
- →Built design system from scratch covering 50+ components and tokens, adopted by the full engineering team
- →Scaled platform to 4,000+ active SME clients by mapping the full customer journey and instrumenting the product with event tracking to back decisions with real usage data
InstaCasa
Product Designer & Product Manager · Jul 2021 – Nov 2021 · 5 months
- →Doubled conversion in under 3 months as first designer, restructuring UX for two distinct users (buyers and brokers) and building a scalable design system from scratch
- →Reduced cognitive load across the main flows by mapping the full purchase journey and designing around the specific pain points of each user segment
eSapiens Tecnologia S.A.
Product Designer & Product Manager · Oct 2011 – Nov 2019 · 8 years
Astrolink, Brazil's leading astrology platform:
- →Grew MRR from R$2K to R$100K/month in under 12 months by rethinking the business model alongside the product and redesigning onboarding interactions for conversion at high volume (1,500–2,000 daily sign-ups)
- →Drove 4M+ downloads by designing and shipping iOS and Android apps end-to-end (research, UX, UI, and design system), expanded to US and Europe
Sexlog, 14M registered users:
- →Grew MRR 10x by leading platform redesign as first designer, establishing UX standards and a design system built around user trust as the core conversion driver
Skills
Design
- Product Design
- UX/UI Design
- Design Systems
- Interaction Design
- Visual Design
- User Research
- Prototyping
- Information Architecture
- Usability Testing
- Journey Mapping
- Wireframing
- Design Tokens
- Atomic Design
- Accessibility (WCAG)
- Responsive Design
- Motion Design (Figma Motion)
- Figma (variants, auto-layout, libraries)
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Design QA
Code
- React · TypeScript
- Next.js
- JavaScript
- HTML · CSS
- Claude · Cursor
- AI-Native Workflow
- Design → Production
- Git · GitHub
- Tailwind CSS
- SQL (queries and analysis)
- Angular (basic)
- Node.js (basic)
- REST APIs
- Framer Motion
- Vercel · Deploy pipelines
- MDX · Markdown
- Antigravity
- Storybook (component documentation)
- Design Tokens in code
Business
- SaaS Strategy
- Business Modeling
- Pricing & Packaging
- Product Direction
- Stakeholder Management
- Cross-functional Leadership
- Mentorship
- Design Ops
- MRR, Churn, Activation Analysis
- Event Tracking & Instrumentation
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar (behavior analysis)
- Freemium & Tiered Pricing
- Success Journey Mapping
- A/B Testing
- Product Discovery
- Roadmap Prioritization
- Agile · Scrum
Languages
Portuguese
Native
English
Fluent
Italian
Fluent
Education
Escola PM3
Product Leadership
UNIESP
Bachelor of Design
CTI
Technical Course in Computer Science