Context
MainStreet found and claimed government tax credits for startups: R&D credits, payroll offsets, the stuff most small companies leave on the table. Multi-step, regulated at every stage, and the software files on your behalf, so mistakes cost real money. In March 2021 they closed a $60M Series A led by SignalFire at a reported $500M valuation. Headcount, funding and product scope were all growing at once.
The Design Director brought me in on contract, January to May 2021. He needed a permanent team and didn’t have one. The system was half-built: decent foundations, no governance, screens that looked assembled rather than designed. Engineering shipped ahead of design because there was no design to wait for.
Contribution
This was a hiring job first, so I ran it like one. Six senior roles in four months, a lot of first-round calls and a lot of portfolio reviews. The rule that shaped the team: hire for the problem, not the logo. Every candidate had to have shipped a multi-step, form-heavy workflow in a regulated or financial product, because that is the entire product. It slowed the pipeline. I passed on several strong consumer designers.
The system work was scoped to what the new team would inherit. I didn’t try to finish it. I formalized what was there: token names, component ownership, a contribution process, and docs for everything that touched the claim flow (forms, status, confirmation and error states). When your software files a tax claim, an inconsistent error state is a trust problem, so that came before anything decorative.
Developer-led orgs don’t trust a new designer until they see something. I shipped a pass on the dashboard, the claim status view and onboarding early, the three screens with the most traffic, and put a lightweight design review in front of engineering decisions.
Outcome
Six senior designers hired and onboarded in four months. The team the company ran on after I left was the one I staffed, on the system I formalized.
