CV — Cosme Faé

COSME FAÉ

Design Leader · Product Designer · Design Systems
hellofae.com/portfolio · cosmefm@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/cosmefae
Based in LatAm · EU Citizen · Remote-first

Summary

20+ years making complex products usable — fintech, insurtech, enterprise. Led brand overhauls for international expansion, shipped products that didn't exist before (a chronic-risk simulator for insurance, the world's first crypto ETF), built design systems that stuck. The boring stuff is what I actually care about: handoff discipline, component governance, team rituals that survive headcount changes.

Experience

Freelance / Design Consulting

Designer & Indie Hacker · Remote · Present

Designing for AI, fintech, and automation startups — early-stage product work, from positioning to UI.
Mentoring founders and designers on AI agents and design-to-code workflows.

Hashdex — Global Crypto Asset Manager

Design Manager · Remote · Apr 2021 – Aug 2024

Brand redesign for US/EU expansion. Hashdex was entering the US and European markets and needed a brand that worked globally. Led the redesign end-to-end: new identity, 150+ assets (web, mobile, decks, marketing), adapted for regional contexts. Internal tracking showed ~30% lift in aided brand recall across target markets.
ETF product launches, including HASH11. Designed the experience for 5 ETF launches. HASH11 was the world's first crypto ETF — marketing materials, product docs, in-app flows. The hard part: making crypto legible to traditional investors who didn't care about blockchain.
AI tooling for product squads. Introduced AI agents across 8+ squads for design, sales, content, and compliance workflows (2022-2023, early). Cut iteration time roughly in half for repetitive asset work.
Design system with real adoption. Built a Figma-based system: 100+ presentation templates, 50+ web pages, 20+ educational primers, one ops platform. 90%+ component usage across the team. Before the system, a deck that should take a day took a week.
Team of 6 across time zones. Ran design for BR/US/EU. Weekly critiques, async handoff rituals, review gates — consistency without funneling every decision through me.
Production efficiency. Cut average asset turnaround ~40% through automation and component libraries. Trained the team on the workflows; adoption mattered more than the tooling.
Website redesign. Restructured the site's information architecture (product pages were buried three clicks deep). Retention up ~25%, time-on-site up ~35%.

WinSocial — Insurtech Scale-Up (Brazil)

Head of Product Design · Founding Member · Hybrid · Aug 2016 – Mar 2021

Research-driven product decisions. 50+ user interviews, 15+ focus groups — all with people who couldn't get traditional insurance due to pre-existing conditions. The research showed our first model was too complex. Pivoted based on those findings; opened up the addressable market significantly.
Chronic-risk simulator. Designed a tool that let users with chronic conditions (diabetes, hypertension) see their insurability in real time. First of its kind in Brazilian insurtech. Lead conversion jumped ~75% after launch. It became the company's flagship product.
Co-creation with diabetes influencers. Partnered with 10+ major diabetes influencers — not for marketing, but to run validation workshops with their communities. Built personas and tested features with real users before any line of code.
Insurance management platform. Led design of the ops platform (most profitable product in the portfolio). 98% feature adoption, 4.8/5.0 satisfaction, and support ticket volume dropped sharply after launch.
Design culture from zero. No design process when I joined. Built critique frameworks, research methodology, component library from scratch. The company grew 400% in valuation during my time there.

Petrobras — Oil and Gas (Brazil)

Senior Product Designer · Brazil · Aug 2011 – Aug 2016

Enterprise dashboards for oil rig operations. Internal tools for rig operators and supervisors — people working in high-stress, error-prone environments where a confusing interface is a real risk. Simplified key workflows; ~20% efficiency gain in operator tasks.
Field research. 25+ usability tests, 8 focus groups, some on-site at the platforms. Watching someone use a dashboard on a rig teaches you things a meeting room never will.
Prototyping and front-end. Built interactive prototypes and did front-end work myself, which shortened the feedback loop with engineering and cut the "that's not what I meant" cycles.
5+ internal tools at scale. Systems used by 500+ people across distribution, logistics, and platform management. Designing within Petrobras's bureaucracy, safety requirements, and approval cycles was the real constraint.

Skills

Design & Product: Figma, Framer, Design Systems, Design Ops, Product Strategy, Brand Strategy, Design Sprints, OKRs/KPIs
Research: User Interviews, Usability Testing, Focus Groups, JTBD, Accessibility (WCAG), A/B Testing
Technical: HTML, CSS, Prototyping, Design Tokens, Component Libraries, Design Handoff
Analytics: Google Analytics, Hotjar, Conversion Tracking, Retention Analysis
Leadership: Stakeholder Management, Team Building, Agile, Cross-timezone Collaboration
AI & Automation: AI Agent Implementation, Design Automation, LLM Integration, Workflow Optimization

Education

Australian Pacific College — Sydney
General English · 2015

Instituto Infnet — Brazil
Bachelor of Technology in Digital Graphic Design · 2008 – 2011
Capstone: Social Commerce, UX Design, and Design Thinking

Languages

English (Fluent) · Portuguese (Native)

Portfolio

hellofae.com/portfolio — Case studies include Hashdex global brand redesign.

What I care about

Product strategy, AI-assisted design, design systems that actually get used, making regulated industries less painful for users, building teams that ship.

Last updated: June 25, 2026