What I do
Leading design strategy and staying hands-on in the work.
I'm leading a small team doing big things in the Australian and New Zealand payments space.
I design payments products and lead the team shaping them. Designing experiences on the payment terminal to dashboards and everything in between.
I work with our product, engineering and delivery teams to define how we work and how design fits into the flow.
I'm evolving the systems and standards that let design grow with the business.
SELECTED PROJECTS
Work
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Background
A pragmatic and hands-on UX and Design Leader with deep experience in payments and fintech.
I started my career in sales and business analysis; spreadsheets, reporting and translating technical requirements while always tinkering in creative side projects outside of work. My brother suggested I look into UX as a way to combine my technical and creative sides and I made the switch in 2015 after studying UX. For the last 10+ years, I've felt grateful that my job is getting to solve complex problems creatively while working and learning alongside great teams.
Throughout my career I've worked closely with cross-functional teams to research, design and deliver products across telco, automotive, finance and payments. I've also had the opportunity to collaborate with teams from companies including Telstra, Optus, Ford, Genesis, Mastercard, CBA and Westpac.
Outside of work, I'm a mum, a BJJ black belt and a creative generalist. I love all things summer, sunshine and the beach.
What I'm doing now
I'm still on the tools every day, designing and shipping with the team while shaping how design fits into the way we build products.
I am currently the Head of Digital & Design at mx51, a fintech scale-up that raised 32.5m (AUD) in our Series B round. I've been at mx since 2019 and I like to think I'm both partly responsible and partly to blame for the design and experience of every product we ship.
I'm still deep in the weeds every day, designing in Figma and Claude Design, setting quality standards through my own work, growing the team around me, and ensuring the experiences we ship meet a high bar for both customers and the business.
Alongside day-to-day product work, I help define our ways of working, strengthen collaboration with product and engineering, and evolve the systems that allow design to scale.
What I focus on
UX & design first
My day-to-day is still hands-on design, refining requirements with the team and making sure we deliver
Building systems that scale
I'm exploring how AI is changing the way we work, testing new tools and workflows, and helping my team adopt the ones that make designing and collaborating easier.
Growing people alongside products
Leading a team means more than delivering projects. I work with my team to set goals that develop their skills and create clear pathways for growth.
Improving the way we work
I work closely with product, engineering, and delivery to identify friction, improve process and make it easier for everyone to build great products together.
Experience
Nice words
“Jess is really one of a kind. She took on the role of an IC plus managed my progress at mx51. With such a short and bootstrapped design function we were able to produce and provide so much value. Jess is compassionate, outspoken, and always drives the design function head on with very logical and compelling reasoning. We had such a great working relationship and I would love to work with her again one day.”
– Ee Yern Ng, Design Lead at IR
Selected work · 2014 – Now
Work
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