Hello there!
I'm Akshay Deshpande
Recent Projects
NGINX One SaaS Console
Designing a complete B2B SaaS product from the ground up.
Fungible Datacenter Composer
Building a Design System and Data Center management product
Renteroo
An exploration of AI-assisted design processes
SafeKeep Password Manager
A password management mobile app for older adults.
Achievements
Sole designer, enterprise SaaS
Product ownership- Sole UX designer for F5's NGINX business unit for ~2 years
- Designed and shipped a SaaS MVP in 4 months, solo
- Full design ownership of mutliple products: vision, MVP, and beyond
$12.5M contracts secured
Business impact- Individual deals worth US $12.5 million won expressly due to designed features
- Turned complex enterprise workflows into a frictionless experience
Built design systems end to end
Design systems- Co-created Fungible's first design system, which cut dev cycles by ~30%
- Implemented components in Angular, HTML and SASS
- Wrote design system documentation and developed playground to assist rapid front-end adoption
Established a design-led culture
Governance- Designs became the source of truth for planning across all levels
- Referenced by executives, architects, PMs, and engineers
- Accelerated release timelines and reduced cross-team ambiguity
Engineer turned designer
Engineering fluency- Backend, frontend and UX engineering experience
- UX decisions made as a developer improved App Store downloads and ratings
- Founded a UX community at Tieto; won an employee award for UX workshops
AI Tooling and designing for AI
AI & tooling- Designed an AI assistant into a live enterprise product (NGINX One)
- Documented a full AI design workflow: PRD → Figma MCP → multi-agent critique using Claude Skills
- Currently using Claude Code, Figma MCP, and Figma Make
What people say
Akshay is a phenomenal partner in product design. He is a great collaborator, asking questions others on the team weren't even thinking about. Once he has enough background and context he always delivers high quality designs when he says he will. I highly recommend working with Akshay and hope to do so again some day myself.
I worked with Akshay on the NGINX One Console project at F5 Inc., where he served as the sole designer for most of the product experience. From initial concept to final implementation, Akshay demonstrated a combination of design expertise, technical understanding, and a deep focus on the user.
What stood out to me as a technical writer was how open, collaborative and patient Akshay was throughout the process. He welcomed feedback not just on design, but also on copy and content clarity, always with the shared goal of making the product better for our users.
Akshay's ability to integrate input from across disciplines makes him an invaluable teammate. NGINX One is a better product because of his thoughtful, user-centered design work, and I would gladly work with him again.
Akshay is one of the most talented UX people and professionals I've worked with. Behind his quiet, mild-mannered style is one heck of a UX leader. I enjoyed working with Akshay. He was an active contributor to UX communities and came up with very good, usable solutions. I'd highly recommend Akshay for any type of UX related work.
It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I am writing to endorse Akshay. I have worked closely with him following the best practices of Agile, Scrum and XP like TDD, Pair Programming, peer reviews etc. He has great technical skills with innovative ways to manage development and design. Having a creative bone he was chosen as UX Leader for our team. A good team player with an unorthodox creative nature.
