Jamal Nichols

Some Key Accomplishments In My Career

Built Several Products 0→1, end-to-end, as a senior IC

Careem Quik: Built in 10 weeks, quickly scaled to 100K MAU, later iterations led to 20-30% increase in average order value
Careem Pay: Overhauled the entire peer-to-peer payments flow, leading to 24% increase in completed payments

Built several complex enterprise applications in obscure domains

Fleet management for rental car companies
Enterprise scheduling applications for recruiters
E-Procurement software for governments
AI tax accounting software for businesses

Built an Online Magazine and grew it to 400k MAU in 12 months

Wrote HTML / CSS / JavaScript
Used AI in various capacities to accelerate progress
Handled SEO and Content Strategy
Built and optimized the tech stack

Designed entire hiring pipeline to grow design team from 10 people to over 40

Worked with Recruiting Team to understand their processes
Mentored Design Team to incorporate new interview processes
Decreased time-to-hire by 200%, increased retention of talent by 150%

About Me

I’m just a regular guy, looking for places where I can help build something great and support my wife and kids while doing so. Simple stuff.

I speak German and English fluently. Dual US / EU Citizen.

In terms of design, I’m pretty good at everything, and exceptional in a handful of things:

Product Thinking
How to frame up a problem, what makes products great
Interaction Design
“If you click on this, what happens”
Rapid Prototyping
Building end-to-end prototypes fast to facilitate conversation
Storytelling
Pitch Decks
and Hiring (I’m really good at spotting talent).

I prefer work environments where folks are good communicators and have high emotional intelligence. Grateful to have learned from some of the best in my field.

In my spare time, I mostly spend time with my family and friends, and try to stay fit. I also have recently taken up music production (Ableton) and 3D Animation (Unreal Engine 5).

How I work

When joining new organizations, I start by listening closely to the people I’m working with.

Depending on the complexity of the problem space and previous knowledge I might have about the space, the initial ramp up can take anywhere from a half day for a straightforward C2C app, to 1-2 weeks of iterating on rough prototypes with subject matter experts as I begin to understand the intricacies of a E-Procurement for governments, or german Tax Law.

As mentioned above, I’m good at all parts of the design process, so after I’ve understood the initial context and properly framed up the problem, I adjust on-the-fly which tools I need to get the job done.

I tend to thrive in environments which understand that the conversations around and about the product and its customers are the crux of design work, and the Figma prototypes are merely the outcome of those conversations.

Below: a brief, silent video presentation covering key workstreams I’ve led

P.S.: I’ll turn this into more elaborate case study pages over the next few days. This is just to get something out of the door and give you a rough idea of my work, and how I present work.