Halving time to first expense report for a spend tool
Rebuilt the first-run experience of an expense tool so new finance admins reach their first approved report in one sitting, not three.
Product designer for B2B SaaS and fintech
Two project slots open from January 2027
Leila Haddad
Your onboarding is losing customers. Let's find where.
I'm Leila Haddad. I redesign activation flows, admin tables and card controls for SaaS and fintech teams, and I measure what changed. Recent work doubled first-week activation for an expense tool.
- designing B2B and fintech
- 13 yrs
- products and features built
- 40+
- clients at a time, at most
- 2–3
Selected work
Case studies with the numbers left in
Six projects from the last four years: the problem, the research, the decisions I'd make again and the ones I wouldn't, and what changed afterwards.
Card controls people can find in a panic
Freeze, spending limits and merchant blocks for a mobile bank, designed for the anxious minute after someone realises their card is gone.
A pricing experiment that lifted paid conversion by a fifth
Three rounds of tests on a product analytics company's pricing page, including the round that lost, and the plan structure that finally made sense to buyers.
A design system built from a freight platform's densest screen
Tokens, components and an adoption model for a freight platform built by four teams, with 41 button styles and six separate tables.
Taming a 40-column admin table for payroll specialists
Redesigned the internal table payroll specialists use to review thousands of employee records before every pay run, cutting review time and missed errors.
An accessibility overhaul for an invoicing and payments app
Took a payments app from 212 WCAG failures to a clean AA re-audit, and fixed the flows that screen reader and keyboard users depend on.
Clients
- Tallyway
- Haulmark
- Larkspur Bank
- Payfold
- Signalpost
- Quayside Pay
- Orchard HR
- Brindle Capital
About me
Product design for software people use all day
I'm Leila Haddad, an independent product designer. For more than a decade I've worked on B2B and fintech products where screens are dense, mistakes cost money and users are busy professionals who notice every extra click.
- 2021–nowIndependent product designerSelf-employed
- 2018–2021Head of designPennant Payments
- 2015–2018Senior product designerGridfield Analytics
Kind words
From the people I made things with
04 notes · scroll →
Leila Haddad asked for our support tickets before asking for a brief. Two weeks later we had a ranked list of fixes, and the top three paid for the engagement within a quarter.
Elena VargaHead of Product, Orchard HRA rare designer who is as comfortable in a spreadsheet as in a usability session, often on the same afternoon. Our engineers asked to keep the decision log format.
Tobias BrandtEngineering Manager, Brindle CapitalWe hired for a pricing page and got a clearer plan structure, a simpler sales story and an honest write-up of the test that failed.
Grace MwangiCEO, SignalpostThe accessibility work was meticulous, but what I remember is how Leila Haddad brought engineering along. Nobody felt audited; everyone felt taught.
Rafael CostaProduct Lead, Quayside Pay
Services
Four ways to work together
Fixed-scope engagements with clear deliverables and a price agreed up front. Every project starts with your existing data and ends with a written handover.
Product design audit
A two-week review of one critical flow: analytics, support tickets, five user interviews and a heuristic pass. You get a ranked list of problems with evidence, effort and expected impact.
From $7,500
Embedded product design
I join your product team for three to six months, own a problem area end to end and ship with your engineers. Best for onboarding, activation, complex workflows and data-heavy screens.
From $14,000/mo
Design system foundations
Tokens, core components and documentation built with your engineers, starting from your densest screens so the system holds up where your users spend their day.
From $28,000
Accessibility review
A WCAG 2.2 AA review of your key flows with fixes your team can ship, plus usability sessions with disabled participants when you need more than a checklist.
From $9,000