Pooya Malek🇩🇪

About Pooya Malek

Experience Design Lead · Mentor · Helping designers grow into seniority at Eurowings Digital (Lufthansa Group)

I believe seniority is not a title. It is the ability to see systems: product systems, team systems, business systems, AI systems, and your own behavioral systems. I help designers build that lens and turn it into visible proof.

For 14 years, I’ve designed products people use every day, from booking flights and finding homes to buying things online and managing their businesses.

I helped grow the design team from 5 to 15+ people, shipped systems adopted across multiple product integrations, and spent years learning what senior-level design work actually requires.

What I kept noticing along the way: Many strong designers do good work, but struggle to explain their impact. They are close to senior, but do not know how to demonstrate it. They are not stuck because they lack skill. They are stuck because they lack clarity. That is the work I focus on now.

If you are a product designer trying to level up, or a company building a design function in a B2C product, let’s connect.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pooyamalek/

Mentoring: adplist.org/mentors/pooya-malek

Writing: https://substack.com/@pooyamalek

Expertise

Sessions with Pooya Malek

• Intro & Career Check (30 min): You do good work. You get positive feedback. You're still not moving. If that sounds familiar, this session is for you. In 30 minutes, we find out why. I'll ask about your role, your last performance conversation, and how you present your work. Then I'll tell you what I see: whether the gap is in your portfolio, how you frame your impact, how you operate day to day, or how you think about the next level. Most designers I mentor are stuck on clarity, not skill. The goal here is to name your specific gap, not to give you generic advice. You leave with one clearly named gap, one concrete next step you can act on this week, and an honest recommendation on whether further coaching would help you or whether you can close the gap on your own. Come with a specific situation if you have one. Come with "I don't know what I'm missing" if you don't. Both work.
• Portfolio & Resume Sprint (50 min): A portfolio review tells you what's wrong. This sprint fixes it with you. The pattern I see in most mid/senior-level portfolios: strong work, weak story. Ten screens per case study and no visible decisions. A resume that reads like a task list. Hiring managers and promotion committees don't evaluate your output. They evaluate your judgment. This sprint rebuilds your materials to show it. Session 1: I review your portfolio, resume, and LinkedIn the way a hiring manager would, and tell you honestly what they say about your level. You leave with a prioritized rework plan. Between sessions: you rewrite. I'm not doing it for you, because the thinking is the point. You'll have my written notes to work from. Session 2: we go through your reworked case studies and resume together. Line by line where needed. We sharpen the framing until the decisions and impact are visible. Session 3: final pass, plus how to talk about the work. The materials get you the conversation. This session prepares you to hold it. You leave with a portfolio and resume that read as senior, and the language to back them up in interviews and promotion conversations.
• 1:1 Focused Session (55 min): One session, one question, one clear answer. This is for moments when you don't need a program, you need a decision. Good topics for this session: a promotion conversation coming up and you don't know how to make your case. An offer on the table and you're unsure how to evaluate or negotiate it. Two career paths and no way to choose. A difficult dynamic with your manager or team that's blocking your growth. A specific case study you need to present next week. How it works: you send me your topic and any relevant context when you book. I prepare before we meet, so we spend the full 60 minutes working, not catching up. We go deep on your one topic and build your answer together: the argument, the plan, or the decision, depending on what you brought. Within 48 hours you get a written summary of what we decided and your next steps, so nothing gets lost after the call. This works best when your question is specific. If you're not sure what your actual problem is, book the free "Intro & Career Check" first and I'll help you find it.
• Interview Prep Sprint (45 min): Interviews are a separate skill from design. Strong designers fail them every week, not because their work is weak, but because they present outputs when the interviewer is listening for decisions. This sprint is for product designers with interviews scheduled or expected soon. Session 1: a full mock interview based on the role you're targeting. Portfolio walkthrough, behavioral questions, and the questions that actually separate mid-level from senior candidates: why did you make that call, what would you do differently, how did you handle the disagreement. I've sat on the hiring side of these interviews, so we run it like the real thing. Then we break down what worked, what didn't, and why, with written feedback after. Session 2: we rerun the weakest parts. Not a new mock, a targeted second pass on the answers that didn't land, until they do. We also prepare your questions for them, which candidates underestimate and interviewers remember. You leave with tested answers to the questions you'll actually face, honest feedback on how you come across, and a repeatable structure for every interview after this one.
• The Senior Path: 90-Day Coaching Program (60 min): For mid-level product designers with some years of experience who are good at execution and stuck before senior. You've had the vague feedback: "keep doing what you're doing," "you're almost there." This program replaces vague with specific, and specific with a plan. We work in three phases over 90 days, six sessions of 60 minutes every two weeks, plus async support between sessions. Phase 1, Diagnosis: we map exactly where you are against what senior actually means in your context. Not a generic ladder. Your company, your domain, your gaps. Phase 2, Execution: we close the gaps. Depending on your diagnosis, that's reframing your work around decisions and impact, rebuilding your portfolio and promotion case, or changing how you operate with stakeholders day to day. You do the work between sessions; I keep it honest and on track. Phase 3, Application: we turn the work into outcomes. A promotion case your manager can act on, or applications and interviews for senior roles, depending on your path. You leave with a clear promotion case or a senior-ready application, and something more durable: the ability to explain your own value, which is the actual difference between mid-level and senior.

What mentees say

“In our session, Pooya shared some really thoughtful advice and a few great nuggets to think about. I really appreciated his perspective on continuing a design career in Europe.”

“I had several sessions with Pooya for interview questions, my case study presentation and my portfolio. He changed the way I see interviews and taught me how to understand the questions and explain my answers better. He also showed me how important it is to ask my own questions. His detailed portfolio feedback motivated me to improve it.”

“I came to Pooya from within a fog and our first conversation already started clearing it fast. He's very easy to talk to, pragmatic and hands-on. He was able to identify the issue and understand my goals, ask the right questions and finish the chat with actionable insights. I would definitely suggest him and consider having a long-term mentorship with him.”