Hi, I’m Sandra. I’ve spent 17 years in software design, starting out as an engineer before moving into UX and eventually design leadership, without ever stepping away from the craft. I’ve built design organizations and design systems down to the details, and led product for a core platform team. I feel equally at home as a manager or an individual contributor.
Shaping product direction through the UX process: UX research, interviews, prototyping and testing, with systems thinking that finds the connections underneath.
Building design teams and the processes around them, and facilitating the workshops that move a cross-functional group to a decision.
Setting up the tokens, components and accessibility with enough care that every product team moves faster for years after, without rebuilding the basics.
One continuous role through an acquisition and a merger rebrand. I brought separate teams into one cohesive design culture and drove design through strategic initiatives. Throughout: directing the design process and design ops, building the design system toward usability, accessibility and engineering craft, and serving as Product Lead for the core platform (customer dashboard) and the enablement team behind the frontend architecture and internal tools.
Eleven years, from web designer to co-head of the UX Office. I founded the office in Skopje, recruited for it, and led it as a manager and career-path mentor while continuing to work as an individual contributor. UX strategy and DesignOps, research, stakeholder workshops and usability testing, alongside hands-on component-based frontend work: design systems in Figma with Angular and React implementations, documentation and governance. Mostly complex administrative systems for payment security, international transport and healthcare.
I founded UXplore in 2023 with people from my teams, past and present (once a team, forever a team!). It is a community-driven organisation for raising the level of UX and UI practice in Macedonia, running full-day conferences alongside smaller workshops and meetups. I curate the programme, work with the speakers, and steer the direction.
I started at university as a lab assistant in web design, and I had found a passion of sharing knowledge. I have mentored my teams throughout their careers, and still say yes when invited to speak anywhere.
Thesis: “Marketing in the semantic web” - with a coded prototype for improving social media advertising from user input and sentiment detection.
Graduated 9.8/10. Active in IAESTE Macedonia throughout both degrees.
“[…] she has made strong progress getting designers to build overall better & easier products, and not just “make them pretty”.
Sandra is incredibly strong in UX design. Our editorial dashboard couldn’t be in better hands, which is crucial as we have seen and will see constant change with new product directions and acquisitions of companies.
[…] She is making sure all the work gets done in the dashboard and across the various frontend teams. She’s on top of key bugs and improvements and not shy to direct engineers outside her team.”
“She’s still one of the best feedback-givers I know. She strikes a perfect balance—knowing precisely when to provide direct feedback and when to subtly guide in a supportive manner that you might not even realise you’ve received feedback until later! […]
Sandra actively engages in company-wide projects, contributing wherever her attention is needed in a form of a small design decision, product management (e.g. Core Experiences), researching big unknown project or polishing intra-team and cross-team communication and conflicts. By doing this, she’s helping the designers when they’re stuck, and consequently, elevating the product and the company.”
“[…] Aleksandra Hristov and Mihaela Vodeb for being the driving forces behind the new Design System which is already paying dividends in our designs. These two have pushed us so far forward technologically on the design team and have guided us to build a component library with the craftsmanship of a Swiss pocketwatch.
It’s incredible to watch them work on the fly to field feedback from engineers and refine the components […]”
“[…] You encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone (presenting and leading workshops lol) and it has only made me realize that I have so many more skills that I need to tap into. You have taught me to be a more confident designer and we all know how hard it is to shake that imposter syndrome.
You did something that a lot of leaders struggle with, YOU brought this team together after a huge blow and created a beautiful team culture.”
“Sandra remains the best UX architect I’ve ever worked with. She approaches every problem with deep empathy for the customer, seamlessly bridging the gap that often exists between design and frontend engineering. Because of her ability to connect the dots, engineers elevate their understanding of UX, and customer needs are well understood by everyone on the team. We collaborated closely on the RailNet Europe projects, and I learned so much from her. Each time I think about how customers might struggle using what I create, I try to think like her.”
Product sense, design systems, design leadership, and the messy space between design and engineering - always happy to talk about any of it.
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