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ZA
Open to opportunitiesDubai, UAE

ZA\B AZHAR
I make complex products feel obvious.

Senior Frontend EngineerUI/UX Lead

Product-minded senior frontend engineer and UI/UX leader with over ten years across travel, commerce, SaaS and enterprise. I work at the seam between experience strategy and production engineering.

Years designing and building for the web
10+Years designing and building for the web
Platform acquisition contributed to
$30MPlatform acquisition contributed to
Faster release cycles delivered
30%Faster release cycles delivered
Increase in team velocity
40%Increase in team velocity
Engineers and designers mentored
8Engineers and designers mentored

01Profile

Design decisions and engineering decisions are the same decision.

I lead the part of a product where design decisions become engineering decisions. That means user flows, wireframes and prototypes on one side, and design tokens, component architecture, accessibility and performance budgets on the other — held together so neither side drifts.

Most of my work has been in domains where the underlying complexity is unavoidable: multi-product travel booking, commerce personalisation, enterprise workflows. The interface is where that complexity either becomes navigable or becomes the user’s problem. My job is to make sure it is the former, at scale, in multiple languages, in both reading directions.

Alongside the craft, I build the conditions for it: component governance, documentation, design-to-code review, and mentoring engineers and designers so quality survives the next twenty releases.

02Capabilities

What I am brought in to own.

  • 01

    Experience Design

    User flows, wireframes, prototypes and responsive patterns, shaped by UX heuristics and pointed at conversion rather than decoration.

    • User flows
    • Wireframing
    • Prototyping
    • UX heuristics
    • Conversion
  • 02

    Design Systems

    Design tokens, atomic composition, component libraries and the governance that keeps them coherent across white-label products.

    • Design tokens
    • Atomic design
    • Component libraries
    • Governance
    • Theming
  • 03

    Inclusive and Global UX

    WCAG-conformant interfaces, multilingual and RTL layouts, and iterative optimisation driven by A/B testing and real behaviour.

    • WCAG
    • Multilingual
    • RTL
    • A/B testing
    • Heatmaps
  • 04

    Design-to-Code Leadership

    Figma-to-production workflows, UI review standards, frontend architecture and the mentoring that makes all three stick.

    • Figma to production
    • UI review
    • Architecture
    • Mentoring

03Experience

A decade in domains where the complexity is real.

  1. Jun 2024 — Present

    Lead Front-End Architect & UI/UX Strategist

    Travel WingsDubai, UAE

    Own the architecture and UX evolution of multi-product booking experiences, reducing complex flight, hotel and ancillary journeys to intuitive interface patterns.

    • Introduced modular components, design tokens and atomic-design principles across multilingual and white-label products.
    • Lead cross-functional squads spanning design, engineering and product, contributing to a 30% faster release cycle.
    • Mentor six frontend engineers and two UX designers, lifting team velocity by 40%.
  2. Aug 2020 — Jun 2024

    Senior Front-End Developer | UX Owner, Commerce & Personalisation

    AETHERDubai, UAE

    Owned frontend modernisation and end-to-end UX consistency across a commerce platform built on Vue 3, the Composition API and Pinia.

    • Designed a white-label theming engine, component governance model and documentation workflow that scaled client onboarding.
    • Improved mobile conversion and performance, contributing to the platform’s $30M acquisition.
    • Established the accessibility and UI review standards adopted across the engineering organisation.
  3. Aug 2016 — Jul 2020

    Front-End Developer, Travel Domain

    AlmosaferDubai, UAE

    Designed and built responsive search, results, dynamic-pricing and checkout experiences for one of the region’s largest travel platforms.

    • Shaped booking flows using customer feedback, heatmaps and A/B testing.
    • Delivered multilingual UX for Arabic and English audiences, including right-to-left layouts.
    • Built design-operations practices connecting product, design, development and QA.
  4. Mar 2015 — Jul 2016

    Front-End Engineer | UI Systems Specialist

    IBM Middle EastDubai, UAE

    Contributed to enterprise design systems and internationalisation-ready UI foundations on global engagements.

    • Translated designs into pixel-accurate, production-ready interfaces.
    • Built rapid prototypes that validated interaction patterns before implementation.
    • Championed modular CSS architecture and accessibility as a default, not a retrofit.

05Toolkit

The tools, grouped by the job they do.

UI/UX and Design

  • Figma
  • Adobe XD
  • Illustrator
  • Photoshop
  • Design tokens
  • Prototyping
  • Interaction design
  • Responsive design
  • WCAG
  • A/B testing
  • Heatmaps

Frontend

  • React
  • Next.js
  • Vue
  • Nuxt
  • Angular
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Vite
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Bootstrap
  • Sass
  • Styled Components

Platform and Quality

  • Node.js
  • REST
  • GraphQL
  • Strapi
  • Sanity
  • Firebase
  • WordPress
  • GitHub Actions
  • Docker
  • Vercel
  • Jest
  • React Testing Library
  • Lighthouse
  • CI/CD

06Beyond work

Photography and digital creative work

Outside product work I shoot and publish digital creative work. Selected images have been featured by India Times and MSN.

07Education and languages

Education

  • Master of Information Technology (MIT)

    Superior University, Lahore, Pakistan

    2010—2012

Languages

English
Fluent
Urdu
Native

08Contact

Tell me what you are trying to make obvious.

zaib@live.com
LinkedIn
in/zaibazhar
Phone
+971 58 890 5389
Based in
Dubai, UAE