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Lily McCarthy

Senior Product Designer

London, UK·lilymccarthy23@gmail.com·linkedin.com/in/lily-mccarthy-·lilymcc.com

Experience

Lab49 — London

2021 – Present

Senior Product Designer

Lab49 is a financial technology consultancy serving global investment banks, trading firms, and financial institutions. Worked across capital markets, FX, and front-office workflows.

FX Client Portal — Multi-currency trading application

2025 – Present

End-to-end design ownership across regulated payment workflows used by the clients of institutional banks. Working alongside 2 designers, 2 PMs, and 3 engineering pods of 4–5.

  • Built a coded prototype with 7 user-testing tasks in 2 weeks (vs. an estimated 8–10 weeks in Figma), enabling user testing without delaying the planned Q3 go-live.
  • Designed and coded an analytics tool on top of the prototype to capture click, hover, and behavioural data, feeding quantitative insights into the design alongside qualitative observations.
  • Presented design work in two executive leadership reviews and to the CTO of the client's Markets Division.

Enterprise CRM Platform — Global investment bank

2024 – 2025

End-to-end design ownership for a Salesforce-based CRM platform used by client-facing teams at a tier-1 investment bank.

  • User research surfaced that the bank's CRM workflow was spread across four different applications, with relationship managers managing client lists in Excel and uploading them to external email tools - meaning most CRM data was being captured outside the CRM itself.
  • Designed an integrated platform that gave relationship managers a single source of truth for client intelligence: historical interactions, interests, contact details, and notes — addressing each of the workflow fragmentations identified in research while delivering MVP scope.

Trading Blotter — IOI creation for sales traders

2023 – 2024

End-to-end design ownership for a front-office application enabling sales traders to create indications of interest (IOIs) at a tier-1 bank. Combined multiple data sources into a single workflow for traders working under time pressure.

  • Before: traders received suggested IOIs in a spreadsheet, viewed historical data on a separate dashboard, and manually copy-pasted into the order management system. Start-of-day setup took 30–60 minutes and introduced errors.
  • After: a single application surfaced suggested IOIs, data analytics, and direct IOI creation in one view. The same task took minutes — freeing traders to focus on client relationships rather than copy-pasting.

Trading Dashboard — Sales trader workspace

2022 – 2023

Designed a dashboard for sales traders that unified multiple data feeds into a single interface, reducing context switching and supporting decision-making in time-sensitive trading conditions.

Leadership

Design Ops Manager — Lab49 Global Design Practice

2022 (6 months)

Ran design operations for a 24-person design team across three continents. Worked alongside design leadership to elevate the designer experience and grow the practice.

  • Redesigned the global design hiring process, codifying the interviewer perspective and improving candidate experience.
  • Created a mentorship programme matching practitioners with skill gaps to those with relevant expertise, boosting cross-regional upskilling and networking.
  • Supported the discovery of new design service offerings including a usability assessment, a white-labelled design system, and a research panel offering.

Earlier Experience

ION Group — New York — Leadership Development Programme — Rotational Analyst

2019 – 2021

A graduate programme rotating through three six-month roles across ION's core capabilities.

  • UX/UI Design Analyst (Rotation 3). Identified UX inconsistencies across two SaaS treasury products and designed wireframes to drive consistency as part of a high-visibility alignment initiative. This rotation led directly to my placement as a product designer at Lab49.
  • Sales Analyst (Rotation 2). Project-managed strategic approvals (resourcing, commercial, legal) for treasury and commodity product pitches, supporting bids on contracts that brought new business to the firm.
  • Client Services Analyst (Rotation 1). Supported the implementation of a digital commodity-trading platform. Travelled onsite to an oil company in Texas to train users and configure the client's system.

FactSet — Boston — Consulting Intern

2018 (3 months)

Rotated through business development, sales implementation, and analytics. Delivered product demos, a mock investment portfolio, and an M&A presentation as part of the rotation.

The Character Lab — Philadelphia — Design Research Intern

2017 (3 months)

Used design thinking and human-centred design to study high-school student motivation for standardised tests. Designed and ran an intervention to help students become more motivated to study — work that has shaped my interest in behavioural design ever since.

Selected Side Projects

EdTech Startup — Onboarding redesign for AI SAT prep tutor

2025

An interview design exercise for an ed-tech startup. Redesigned the onboarding and study-planning experience to apply self-determination theory: students set their own goals using a SMART framework, then received tailored study plans broken into manageable tasks. The work led to an offer of a UX consultant contractor role.