Headline

Product Designer & Full-Stack Engineer | AI Products | UX & Accessibility | React, FastAPI & Node.js

About

I am a product designer and engineer with about four years of experience building digital products, primarily for early-stage startups. My work combines interaction design, information architecture, usability testing, accessibility, and full-stack product development. At Our Ability, I owned four products from problem definition and interaction design through backend implementation and release. I built a job-matching engine for a pool of 2,000 candidates, designed and engineered conversational SMS engagement for an initial cohort of 250 candidates, architected a multi-source disability Q&A RAG pipeline and standardised exports across six ATS platforms. At Techstars-backed PlatePost, I was the sole designer and engineer on a three-person team, shipping the marketing site, VideoMenu application and Creator Program. I launched a white-label VideoMenu system for more than 15 restaurant clients. A four-week pilot generated 5,798 QR scans and $946 in incremental revenue at Kei Coffee House; WYWH Coffee reported a 15% sales increase. My Syracuse University work includes a mobile shift-scheduling application that reduced swap time from more than 30 minutes to under 30 seconds for over 200 workers, and an accessible job platform that reached WCAG 2.1 AA compliance and improved task completion from 50% to 100% across five usability tests. I work across Figma, Figma Make, Framer, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, FastAPI, Node.js, Express, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, with applied experience in OpenAI API, Anthropic API, RAG pipelines, GPT-4o-mini, Claude Code and APScheduler.

Location

Chennai

AI stack

antigravity

claude code

claude

cursor

notebooklm

Firecrawl

Work experience

Product Designer at Our Ability, Inc., Jan 2026 - Jul 2026 · 7 mos, Sunnyvale, California, United States, Owned four products from problem definition and interaction design through backend implementation and release at an early-stage AI-powered disability employment platform. Defined the SOC code classification system and candidate-ranking logic for a pool of 2,000 candidates, then built the job-matching engine in FastAPI with GPT-4o-mini running through two cron-scheduled jobs. Designed an eight-question branching SMS survey for an initial cohort of 250 candidates and engineered it in Twilio with per-phone-number state tracking, response classification, profile enrichment and A2P 10DLC compliance. Defined content structure and topic guardrails for a disability Q&A application, then architected a RAG pipeline spanning AskJAN.org, 10 ADA regional sites and proprietary content; validated it in a sandbox, with dashboard integration in progress. Researched integration requirements across six ATS platforms, standardised vendor export formats and designed one normalisation schema mapped to Our Ability's candidate data model.

Product Engineer at PlatePost, Apr 2024 - Jan 2026 · 1 yr 10 mos, Sunnyvale, California, United States, Served as the sole designer and engineer on a three-person team and shipped the marketing site, VideoMenu application and Creator Program to production. Designed and launched a white-label VideoMenu template system for more than 15 restaurant clients, built interfaces in Framer and developed features through AI-assisted workflows in Claude Code. Generated 5,798 QR scans and $946 in incremental revenue over four weeks at Kei Coffee House; WYWH Coffee reported a 15% sales increase after rollout. Prototyped a video-based restaurant discovery experience in Figma Make to evaluate browsing and recommendation flows before engineering began. Worked directly with restaurant operators on site, identified workflow problems early and shipped fixes within days through weekly feedback cycles.

User Experience Designer at iConsult Collaborative at Syracuse University, Mar 2023 - Mar 2024 · 1 yr 1 mo, Syracuse, New York, United States, Designed and prototyped a mobile shift-scheduling application from scratch, reducing swap time from more than 30 minutes to under 30 seconds for over 200 student workers and replacing a paper-based process that required supervisor involvement. Replaced email, group chats and supervisor visits with an in-app messaging flow linked to shift actions. Validated the swap flow through moderated usability testing with eight student workers and achieved 100% unguided completion.

UI/UX Designer at CASE at Syracuse University, Mar 2022 - Jan 2023 · 11 mos, Syracuse, New York, United States, Redesigned an accessible job platform during a 12-week sprint and brought it to WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, including an 8.08:1 primary-text contrast ratio and keyboard navigation for all interactive elements. Increased task completion from 50% to 100% across five usability tests by redesigning the dashboard, job-search filters, match-percentage badge and application flow.

Education

Master of Science - MS, Information Systems, Syracuse University School of Information Studies

Software Engineering Certificate, Springboard

Public links

github: https://github.com/mmanohar24

manoj.studio: https://manoj.studio/