Heshan Galahitiyawa
Senior Product Design & Strategy Lead | Design Systems
Salary / Daily rate
Brussels, Belgium
Freelance
Skills
Languages
About me
Intro
Strategic Design & Product Lead with 10+ years bridging UX, operations, and business. Former Design System Owner at Proximus and Lead Product Designer at Optimy, specializing in DesignOps, design systems, and scaling SaaS platforms for enterprise clients. I transform complex workflows into user-friendly solutions that drive measurable business impact and team efficiency.
Work experience
Product/Design Strategist
Cebir - Smarter Hiring Decisions
Aug 2025 - Present
11 months
Brussels, Belgium
Digitalizing messy real-world manual workflows and integrating them into Cebir's self-service SaaS platform.
Design System Owner / DesignOPS
Proximus
Oct 2022 - Jan 2025
2 years 4 months
Brussels, Belgium
Member of the Design Operations team at the leading telco network provider in Belgium. Product Owner of the Proximus design system. – Proximus design system roadmap, deliveries & budget (Wireframing kit, Figma UI kit, Design system website, CMS components) – Design knowledge hub implementation – Design Chapter Area way of working optimization – Backlog management – Agile ceremonies management – Design system business case – Design system evangelization – Design system governance (process optimization & documentation) – Design system mentoring for the UX team – Figma & plugin administration (contract management | budget | admin) – Figma structure standardization – Figma community management – Accessibility
Consultant
Movify
Oct 2022 - Dec 2024
2 years 3 months
Brussels, Belgium
Design system owner @ Proximus
Lead Product Designer & Product Owner
Optimy
Apr 2020 - Oct 2022
2 years 7 months
Brussels, Belgium
Leading product design at a large-scale, distributed SaaS offering used by more than 260 corporations worldwide to optimize and measure their corporate social responsibility efforts. – Directly responsible individual (DRI) for user research, and the delivery of wireframes, user flows, process flows, site maps, UI designs & prototypes – Product owner Design System & Submission Platform – Design & research strategy/roadmap – Design thinking workshop facilitation – Product management – Accessibility standards implementation - WCAG 2.1 – Hire, lead and mentor design team members – Offshore design team management – DesignOps (Design operations)
Co-Founder
PurpUX
Sep 2021 - Jun 2022
10 months
Brussels, Belgium
At PurpUX we want to help design teams focus on actual design and research rather than struggling with boring excel sheets. That's why we're building the ultimate UX KPI dashboard.
Napoleon Games
Mar 2018 - Apr 2020
2 years 2 months
Belgium
Design Manager - Team leadership & product strategy
Jul 2019 - Apr 2020
10 months
Belgium
Leading the product design team as a senior member of the Tech-Management team reporting to the CPO. – Own the delivery of new products & features from concept to design to development handoffs while working closely with product owners – Manage design & research strategy and roadmap - Mobile apps (iOS/ Android), Web-apps & Websites – Hire, lead and mentor design team members – Manage product design department budget – Responsible for the delivery of wireframes, user flows, process flows, site maps, UI designs & prototypes – SEO strategy management – Manage external design/development/SEO contractors Achievements: – Implemented OKRs for the design team – Introduced & improved design success metrices/KPIs – Introduced enhanced business, design & development collaboration workflows
UX Lead & Product Owner
Mar 2018 - Jul 2019
1 year 5 months
Belgium
The first UX Designer to join NG. Leading the UX strategy, and collaborating with various departments on strategic long term enhancement projects. Managing the budget and delivery of small, quick & smart product enhancements. – Lead and coach UX/UI team members – Manage the budget and delivery of small, quick & smart product enhancements – Facilitate design thinking workshops – Co-managing the GDPR implementation – Work closely with multiple stakeholders (Marketing, Customer support, Product, Tech & CXOs) to define the economic feasibility & technical practicality of new products and features – DRI for user testing, information architecture, user-flows, wireframing, UI design & usability testing – Product management – Occasional Front-End development (HTML/CSS) Achievements: – Built the product design team from ground up – Initiated and led the development of the 1st ever design system at Napoleon while working side-by-side with a talented team of UX designers, UI designers, graphic designers, front-end developers and functional analysts – Drafted design guidelines and pattern libraries – Introduced design and UX processes into the company – Improved registration & checkout conversion rates
Visiting Lecturer
SLIIT Academy
Feb 2019 - Feb 2019
1 month
Demystifying UX - Introduction to User Experience
Front End Architect
Green Island
Mar 2016 - Mar 2018
2 years 1 month
Brussels, Belgium
– Front-end development: - HTML, CSS (BEM Architecture), JQuery, React – Define information architecture & user-flows – Deliver wireframes & UI designs – Design system implementation
Lead UX/UI Designer - End-to-end project management
ODDLY
Aug 2014 - Mar 2018
3 years 8 months
Sri Lanka
ODDLY (Pvt.) Ltd. is an offshore subsidiary of ODDLY LLC, USA. It is an end-to-end digital strategy firm which specializes in user experience (UX) engineering, web designing, mobile app development & online marketing. – Lead and mentor design & development team members – Facilitate and participate in design thinking workshops – Design and develop prototypes – Conduct user research & usability testing – Define information architecture & user-flows – Deliver wireframes & UI designs – Front-end development
Founder
Pixelystic
Apr 2013 - Mar 2018
5 years
Sri Lanka
Creative digital agency. – Web & Mobile app design/development – Search engine optimization – Online advertising
UX Engineer
Insight Software Solutions Pty Ltd
Feb 2014 - Apr 2016
2 years 3 months
Insight Software Solutions is an offshore subsidiary of Red Rock Software Pty Ltd, an Australian company specializing in industrial ERP software development. – Supported delivery of ERP product features through interface design and front-end development – Delivered information architecture, user-flows, wireframes & UI designs
SEO Analyst & Junior Web Developer
VpsWebServer
Apr 2012 - Apr 2013
1 year 1 month
VpsWebServer is a Virtual Private Server hosting provider which utilizes two of the most well-known, highest-regarded datacenters in Chicago and Philadelphia. – Business lead generation – Creative writing – Copy writing – PHP web development – Web designing – Link building
Customer Service Agent
Brands International (Pvt.) Ltd / Travelvisa24 (UK) Ltd.
Feb 2011 - Apr 2012
1 year 3 months
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Education
University of Leuven
Master of International Business Economics and Management (MIBEM), Business Administration, Management and Operations
2015 - 2017
2 years 1 month
SLIIT
BSc in Information Technology, Interactive Multimedia Technology
2008 - 2014
6 years 1 month
Dharmaraja College - Kandy
G.C.E A/L, Maths
1995 - 2008
13 years 1 month
Licenses & certifications
Design Sprint Masterclass
Issued: –
Duolingo French Fluency
Issued: –
Using AI in the UX Design Process
Issued: –
AdWords Certification
Issued: –
The AI-Driven Project Manager: 10X Your Productivity with Generative AI
Issued: –
Portfolio
