I no longer work at Vouchsafe.
It’s technically been more than two years since I joined. In October 2024 I was brought in on a freelance basis as a designer. At this time I was going through a career crisis; I felt toothless as a designer, unable to affect the product outside of my wireframes and Figma, and I longed to build the systems people interacted with.
So a few months later Jaye and Chloe hired me permanently as their first design engineer. It was a win-win. They had someone experienced to redesign the app, and I finally got a chance to build what I’d designed.
I was so lucky to have Khadija and Nkechi to guide me as I learned the ropes of full stack development. Just watching them work and picking up small things from them has been so helpful. Also very grateful that I could make mistakes without feeling too silly about it; in my first month I accidentally reset the demo database instead of my local one.
I’m also very happy with the things I did outside of work. I gave talks in public and sat on panels, recorded podcasts, and made video blogs. As a company we hosted multiple events ourselves, with dozens of guests from the KYC and fraud industries. For a team as small as ours I felt like we were punching well above our weight when it came to this sort of thing.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that I did the best work of my life at Vouchsafe. I’m honestly so proud of how much I learned and grew, and the effect that had on both the company and the people in it. I also feel like my experience has been very unique: I started here before AI coding tools were ubiquitous, which has given me a nice grasp of where automation works and where it doesn’t.
And I have had so much fun. Nothing makes you work better than being surrounded by kind and generous people, and they’re the part I’m going to miss the most.
What now?
Job searching. Obviously!
I’ll be available for new work from November 30th and I’m looking to do mostly the same things I was before; designing and building out components and patterns that the whole company can use together. If you (or someone you know) are looking for a design engineer you can find me on LinkedIn or download my CV.
But this isn’t all I’ll be doing. Looking for work is a crushing experience. I haven’t had to do it in a while, but every time it’s been easy to fall into doom spirals and overpicking. So this time I’m going to keep myself busy with other projects too.
Over the next couple of months I want to:
- Visit an art gallery
- Run lunchtime livestreams
- Type up some of my projects
- Get my thigh gap back (stress eating is a nightmare, honestly!)
I also want to sleep. Spend time with my family and friends. Reconnect with folks I haven’t seen in a while. Meet new people. Go on lots of chilly walks. Cosy up with my hobbies and a Bailey’s Irish coffee.
There’s a lot I haven’t had the mental space to give to myself. And now that I have this gap it feels like a good time to seek them out again.