Senior Product Designer· Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Saumya Agarwal
Ten years turning enterprise banking and marketplace complexity into interfaces people actually trust.
Currently redesigning Customer Due Diligence with AI-agentic UX at Emirates NBD, Dubai.
10+ Years
of Experience

University of Toronto
Visual Design, 2022

HFI CUA™
#2019-7544
Design Quotient
DQ Score

Why UX?

My biggest strength turned out to be an unglamorous one: I empathise easily. In UX design that's the whole job - understanding a person well enough to design for them before they've explained the problem to you. Paired with a fairly relentless need to get to the bottom of things, it's what pulls me toward the messiest, most cross-functional problems rather than away from them.
Ten years of end-to-end design across enterprise banking and consumer marketplaces - with a proven read on how business goals and product metrics should shape a design roadmap, not just follow it.
Mentoring budding UX designers since 2018, and occasionally invited to universities and workshops worldwide to talk about why UX matters.
Education

University of Toronto
Visual Design, Design & Visual Communications
2022
Uttarakhand Technical University, Dehradun
B.Tech, Computer Science
2011 – 2015
Toolbox
- Figma
- Sketch
- Adobe XD
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
Experience
Senior Product Designer
Jan 2025 - Present
Emirates NBDDubai, UAE- Leading UX for API Souq, a self-serve API marketplace for corporate banking clients.
- Automating cheque encashment and QMS flows to move corporate branches toward paperless banking.
- Redesigning Customer Due Diligence (CDD) with AI-agentic UX - human oversight built into every automated step.
API DesignProcess AutomationAgentic UXSenior Product Designer
Jan 2025 - Present
Emirates NBDDubai, UAE- Leading UX for API Souq, a self-serve API marketplace for corporate banking clients.
- Automating cheque encashment and QMS flows to move corporate branches toward paperless banking.
- Redesigning Customer Due Diligence (CDD) with AI-agentic UX - human oversight built into every automated step.
API DesignProcess AutomationAgentic UXLead UX Designer, Advanced Analytics
May 2024 - Jan 2025
MashreqDubai, UAE- Facilitated a series of collaborative journey mapping workshops to assess and refine the existing customer journey, aiming to develop a more user-centric design strategy.
- Led a series of collaborative sessions with senior stakeholders to elevate the role of design and streamline existing processes, resulting in better alignment between the product, design, and research teams.
- Introduced new processes to the design system team to effectively manage localization requirements and rigorously test all new components prior to production. This has led to greater efficiency and consistency across the product.
Problem FramingB2B DesignWorkshop FacilitationLead UX Designer, Advanced Analytics
May 2024 - Jan 2025
MashreqDubai, UAE- Facilitated a series of collaborative journey mapping workshops to assess and refine the existing customer journey, aiming to develop a more user-centric design strategy.
- Led a series of collaborative sessions with senior stakeholders to elevate the role of design and streamline existing processes, resulting in better alignment between the product, design, and research teams.
- Introduced new processes to the design system team to effectively manage localization requirements and rigorously test all new components prior to production. This has led to greater efficiency and consistency across the product.
Problem FramingB2B DesignWorkshop FacilitationProduct Designer II
Nov 2021 - May 2024
MeeshoBangalore, India- Ran user research and usability testing that directly informed design strategy and the broader user journey.
- Advocated for user-centered design principles org-wide - empathy, research and iteration as the default, not the exception.
- Facilitated cross-functional workshops across product, engineering and business stakeholders.
Customer JourneysWCAGUsability TestingProduct Designer II
Nov 2021 - May 2024
MeeshoBangalore, India- Ran user research and usability testing that directly informed design strategy and the broader user journey.
- Advocated for user-centered design principles org-wide - empathy, research and iteration as the default, not the exception.
- Facilitated cross-functional workshops across product, engineering and business stakeholders.
Customer JourneysWCAGUsability TestingSenior User Experience Designer
May 2020 - Dec 2021
OracleHyderabad, India- Set design strategy across thirteen NetSuite verticals for enterprise customers.
- Partnered closely with the user research team to keep customer insight embedded in the roadmap.
- Built strong cross-team collaboration between design, product and engineering.
Customer JourneysWCAGCross-functional CollaborationSenior User Experience Designer
May 2020 - Dec 2021
OracleHyderabad, India- Set design strategy across thirteen NetSuite verticals for enterprise customers.
- Partnered closely with the user research team to keep customer insight embedded in the roadmap.
- Built strong cross-team collaboration between design, product and engineering.
Customer JourneysWCAGCross-functional CollaborationProduct Designer
Jan 2020 - May 2020
BerkadiaHyderabad, India- Owned usability testing and user research for a user-centred redesign.
- Managed and collaborated closely with business stakeholders across the project.
Customer JourneysWCAGUsability TestingProduct Designer
Jan 2020 - May 2020
BerkadiaHyderabad, India- Owned usability testing and user research for a user-centred redesign.
- Managed and collaborated closely with business stakeholders across the project.
Customer JourneysWCAGUsability TestingUX Designer
Jan 2016 - Jan 2020
Cognizant Technology SolutionsHyderabad, India- Represented and advocated for UX, turning feedback into action proactively rather than reactively.
- Defined a design system and prepared UX estimates for delivery planning.
- Ran customer-feedback-oriented, iterative design across four years of delivery.
Customer JourneysWCAGDesign SystemsUX Designer
Jan 2016 - Jan 2020
Cognizant Technology SolutionsHyderabad, India- Represented and advocated for UX, turning feedback into action proactively rather than reactively.
- Defined a design system and prepared UX estimates for delivery planning.
- Ran customer-feedback-oriented, iterative design across four years of delivery.
Customer JourneysWCAGDesign Systems
Where it started
Summer Intern
Jun 2014 - Aug 2014Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd · Dehradun, India
Built a library management system with a team of four, handling the front end and database work for cataloguing, issuing and tracking books and journals.
Summer Intern
Jun 2014 - Jul 2014Forest Research Institute, Indian Military Academy · Dehradun, India
Designed the golf course layouts for FRIMA using Adobe Photoshop.
Community & impact
Mentoring, speaking and organizing - the work I do outside the day job.

Design Mentor
ADPList & ImaginXP
What started as informal mentoring in 2018 with ImaginXP grew into open 1:1 hours on ADPList a few years later - portfolio teardowns, mock interviews, and the harder conversations that don't fit neatly into either: how to negotiate a raise, when to leave a role, how to rebuild confidence after a layoff. That's the part I care about most - helping someone actually get unstuck, not just critiquing the work.
View my ADPList profile
Speaker & Workshops
Dubai & India
I run and speak at design workshops across Dubai and India, something I've been doing for years - from intimate meetups to conference stages. Recently: a guest session at DDX'25, a Design Thinking talk for the 1% Club platform, Pearl Academy and CNBC-TV18's "What's Next" panel, and jury duty at Vivekananda Global University.
See workshop videos
Mentor, Topmate
1:1 Mentoring
Alongside ADPList, I run 1:1 office hours on Topmate for designers navigating portfolio reviews, mock interviews and career pivots - the same empathy-first approach from the day job, pointed at one person's career instead of one product's roadmap.

Dubai City Ambassador
ADPList - Meetups Lead
As Dubai's ADPList City Ambassador, I organize the local meetups that bring the region's design community into one room - the kind of low-key gathering where a hallway conversation solves more than a webinar ever could.

Advisory Board Member
Digital Influx
I sit on the advisory board at Digital Influx, weighing in on curriculum and industry direction for the next generation of designers coming up through their programs.
Featured Projects
From AI-assisted compliance to a self-serve API marketplace - the work behind a decade in enterprise banking and consumer product design.
Emirates NBDJan 2025 – PresentRedesigning CDD with AI-agentic UX
Turning a manual, document-heavy compliance process into an AI-assisted flow that still keeps a human in control of every decision.
PROBLEM
Customer Due Diligence (CDD) for corporate onboarding was slow and document-heavy, with compliance officers repeating the same judgment calls across near-identical cases.
PROCESS
Mapped the end-to-end CDD workflow with compliance stakeholders to separate genuinely judgment-based steps from repetitive pattern-matching ones that AI could safely assist with.
SOLUTION
Designed agentic UX patterns where AI surfaces a recommendation with its reasoning, and the officer approves, edits or overrides - never a silent automatic decision on a compliance case.
OUTCOME
Now piloting with the CDD team ahead of a phased rollout - early feedback points to less time spent re-verifying cases AI already flagged as low-risk, freeing officer judgment for the cases that actually need it.
Emirates NBDJan 2025 – PresentAPI Souq - a self-serve API marketplace
Giving corporate clients and partner banks a discoverable, self-serve way to explore and integrate Emirates NBD's banking APIs.
PROBLEM
Corporate clients and partner banks had no self-serve way to discover or evaluate available banking APIs - every integration started with a manual sales conversation.
PROCESS
Designed the information architecture for a developer-friendly API catalog: browsable by use case, with documentation-first flows built for a technical audience evaluating integration fit.
SOLUTION
A self-serve marketplace where partners can browse, read docs and request access to APIs without waiting on a relationship manager for the first step.
OUTCOME
Rolling out to early partner banks - replacing a multi-week, relationship-manager-led onboarding with a catalog partners can evaluate on their own timeline.
MashreqMay 2024 – Jan 2025Unifying Advanced Analytics UX
Bringing a consistent analytics experience to a corporate banking product that had grown inconsistent across teams.
PROBLEM
Advanced Analytics for corporate banking had fragmented UX patterns across features, built by different teams at different times - hurting adoption and consistency.
PROCESS
Ran a series of journey-mapping workshops with senior stakeholders to align product, design and research on one customer journey, then introduced localization and component-QA processes so new patterns stayed consistent before shipping.
SOLUTION
A shared analytics design language plus a lightweight governance process - new components get tested and localized before production, not after.
OUTCOME
The design language and QA gate shipped org-wide, and the workshop series was recognized internally with an "Appreciated for H1'2024" note from leadership for the cross-team alignment it produced.
MeeshoNov 2021 – May 2024Meesho Balance & reducing order cancellations
Cutting platform-level order cancellations at consumer scale by making selection feel more deliberate, before it becomes a support problem.
PROBLEM
Order cancellations were hurting NMV/GMV at scale, and most support demand was voice-only - expensive to run and slow for sellers waiting on resolution.
PROCESS
Usability testing and research to find where casual, low-intent ordering was driving cancellations, alongside a competitor scan showing peers offering chat, email and self-serve support where Meesho only had voice.
SOLUTION
Meesho Balance nudged more conscious order selection at the point of intent, while a self-serve chat bot deflected the most common support queries away from voice.
OUTCOME
Shipped alongside the self-serve chat bot, giving sellers a faster resolution path than voice-only support and nudging buyers toward more deliberate ordering at the moment of intent - the kind of small intervention that compounds at marketplace scale.
OracleMay 2020 – Dec 2021Enhancing the Project Management Experience for NetSuite
Redesigning NetSuite's project management and project-accounting workflows so delivery and finance teams could track budgets, time and progress without fighting the tool.
PROBLEM
NetSuite's project management module was doing double duty for two different jobs - day-to-day delivery tracking and project-level accounting - and neither workflow was built with the other in mind, pushing enterprise customers into workarounds.
PROCESS
Partnered closely with Oracle's user research team to study how project managers and finance teams actually used the module day to day, then worked across design, product and engineering to reconcile the two workflows into one coherent structure.
SOLUTION
A redesigned project management experience that treats project accounting as a first-class part of the workflow - budgets, time tracking and delivery status live in the same place instead of two disconnected tools.
OUTCOME
Shipped as part of NetSuite's core project management module - used by enterprise customers across Oracle's thirteen NetSuite verticals to manage project-based accounting alongside day-to-day delivery.
Skills
Ten years of craft, leadership and domain depth - organized the way I actually use them, not just listed.
Core UX
- User-Centred Design
- User Research
- Usability Testing
- Prototyping
- Information Architecture
- Customer Journey Mapping
- Design Strategy
- Problem Framing
- Co-creation
Leadership
- Mentoring & scaling design teams
- Cross-functional facilitation
- Stakeholder alignment
- Design-system governance
- Public speaking
Domain
- B2B / enterprise banking UX
- AI-agentic UX
- Consumer e-commerce UX
- Localization
What people say
"I had the privilege of managing Saumya, one of the most talented and driven UX designers I've had the pleasure to work with. She consistently dives deep into every aspect of design - from user flows and wireframes right through to micro-interactions and final polish. She absorbs new information with impressive speed: whether it's emerging design patterns, user research findings, accessibility guidelines or business requirements, she internalizes them and weaves them seamlessly into her work.
What's truly inspiring is that when she talks about design, you can literally see her eyes light up - she brings genuine enthusiasm and curiosity to her craft. She doesn't just execute; she asks thoughtful questions, challenges assumptions and actively seeks opportunities to elevate the user experience.
Saumya also consistently impressed her colleagues: she collaborated with cross-functional teams, shared her insights generously, and helped elevate the collective design quality. Her peers often remarked on how thoughtful her contributions were, and how she brought clarity and focus to complex design challenges.
She takes proactive steps to expand her knowledge: exploring new tools, seeking feedback, staying current with trends and always striving for better. In collaborative settings she's a strong partner - she communicates her thinking clearly, engages stakeholders meaningfully and brings others along on her vision. At the same time, she holds herself to high standards and cares deeply about the details - from visual consistency to interaction logic to how the user feels at each touchpoint.
In short: Saumya is someone who not only gets things done, but consistently raises the bar. She's a designer who brings creativity and discipline, curiosity and rigor - and anyone fortunate enough to work with her will benefit from her mindset, her skill, and her collaborative spirit."
Mayr Budny
Head of Product Design · Berkadia
1 of 8 recommendations
Companies I've designed for
Ten years across enterprise banking and consumer marketplaces.

Open Finance & AI-agentic banking UX

Advanced Analytics & design-system governance

Consumer marketplace UX at scale

Open Finance & AI-agentic banking UX

Advanced Analytics & design-system governance

Consumer marketplace UX at scale

Open Finance & AI-agentic banking UX

Advanced Analytics & design-system governance

Consumer marketplace UX at scale

Enterprise NetSuite design strategy

Usability research & user-centred redesign

UX design systems & delivery

Enterprise NetSuite design strategy

Usability research & user-centred redesign

UX design systems & delivery

Enterprise NetSuite design strategy

Usability research & user-centred redesign

UX design systems & delivery
Awards & certifications
Recognition
CTO Summit Cup
Won the CTO Cup representing a team of 42 designers during the quarterly summit.
Xtra Mile Award
Cognizant · Oct 2018
Got appreciated for the incredible contribution to project delivery.
Invited as a Speaker
IxDA (Interaction Design Association) · May 2018
Invited to share experience and knowledge about UX and Heuristic Evaluation with about 40 designers.
Spot Award
Cognizant · Feb 2018
Received the Spot Award for Performer of the Month.
Certifications
500 Mentorship Minutes
ADPList · Jun 2022
Certified Usability Analyst (CUA™) #2019-7544
Human Factors International (HFI) · Sep 2019
Adobe XD Essentials
Adobe · May 2019
UX Designer
ImaginXP · Sep 2016
Design Thinking 101
Cognizant

Let's connect
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