Vlad.Holoborodko.Available
CV

From a small Vue.js education startup to a global developer education company. I was there for all of it.

  • EdTech · Developer Education
  • 2018–2023
  • Product Designer
  • Web
BitterBrains

01The invite

I joined the team when the company was still VueSchool, a small but ambitious group of developers and educators building the best place to learn Vue.js on the internet. I was the first and only designer on the team, brought in to bring structure and craft to a product that had been built entirely by developers.

02What followed

As the company grew, so did the scope of what needed to be designed. New products were launched, conferences were created, certifications were introduced, and business services were added, each requiring its own design thinking, visual language, and product experience.

03The outcome

In almost five years I helped grow VueSchool into BitterBrains, a developer education company with 15 products and 4 global conferences. Today it has a community of 500,000 developers, over 200,000 students, and 1M+ users a year.

Product Designer

I joined as a UX/UI Designer and grew into a Product Designer over almost five years, becoming the person responsible for the design of every product, conference, and brand touchpoint the company produced.

I worked across every function: product, marketing, engineering, and content. From designing platform UIs and course experiences to creating conference brands, social media assets, and physical event materials, if it needed to look good and work well, it came through me.

What I owned

  • Platform UX & UI
  • Design Systems
  • Brand & Visual Identity
  • Conference Experience Design
  • Certification Product Design
  • Marketing & Campaign Design
  • Cross-Product Consistency

With whom

  • Engineering
  • Marketing
  • Content & Education
  • 1 Designer
  • Video Designers
  • External Partners

How I worked

  • End-to-end product design
  • Brand & visual identity
  • Cross-functional collaboration
  • Marketing design
  • Conference experience design
  • Iterative delivery
BitterBrains products
Vue School platform
Certificates.dev
BitterBrains conferences
BitterBrains business services

Educational Platform

Vue School was the foundation everything else was built on. I designed and continuously evolved the platform experience, from course pages and lesson players to onboarding flows, subscription management, and the overall product UI, as the library grew to 1,500+ lessons serving developers worldwide.

  • Full platform UI design across multiple product iterations
  • Course discovery, lesson player, and learning progress experiences
  • Subscription and plan management flows
  • Onboarding experiences for new developers
  • Mastering Nuxt, the only official Nuxt.js course platform
  • Mastering Pinia, built in partnership with the creator of Pinia
Building the foundation everyone else stood on

Certifications

BitterBrains became the only official certification partner for Vue.js and Nuxt. I designed the full product experience for Certificates.dev, the platform that lets developers earn industry-recognized credentials trusted by companies worldwide.

  • Certificates.dev: full product UI for certification exams and credential management
  • Vue.js and Nuxt official certifications trusted by companies worldwide
  • Angular and React certification products added to the platform
  • Certification landing pages and marketing experiences
  • Career-focused product flows from purchase to credential delivery
  • Vue Bundle: bundled product offering with dynamic pricing UI
Turning skills into credentials the industry trusts

Global Conferences

BitterBrains runs four global developer conferences: Frontend Nation, Vue.js Nation, Nuxt Nation, and Vue.js Forge. I designed everything, including the conference websites, speaker and schedule UIs, live event experiences, social media campaigns, and physical materials for in-person events. What started as an online-only education product became something developers now travel and log in to be part of.

  • Frontend Nation: conference website, branding, and event UI
  • Vue.js Nation: annual online conference design across multiple editions
  • Nuxt Nation: dedicated Nuxt community conference experience
  • Vue.js Forge: live coding event brand and digital experience
  • Social media campaigns and visual content for all four conferences
  • Physical event materials: badges, signage, printed collateral
Taking the community off the platform and into rooms

Business Services & Scale

As BitterBrains matured, it launched business-facing products, including InstantDev, LevelUp, and developer hiring services, moving the company from pure B2C education into B2B territory. I designed these products from scratch, translating almost five years of consumer-facing product thinking into services built for companies rather than individual learners.

  • InstantDev: product design for developer services platform
  • LevelUp: business service product UI and experience
  • Developer hiring service flows and landing experiences
  • Consistent brand application across B2B and B2C products
  • Marketing design supporting product launches and growth campaigns
Moving from teaching developers to hiring them

AIDD & What’s Next

As AI began reshaping how developers write and ship code, BitterBrains launched AIDD, an AI-Driven Development learning path designed to help developers build faster and smarter using AI tools. I designed the full product experience from scratch, positioning it as the company’s first product built for what comes after traditional courses, and a signal of where the platform is headed next.

  • AIDD: AI-Driven Development hands-on learning path product
  • Multi-module course experience with progressive skill building
  • Designed to help developers operate like a team 20x their size
  • Product UI, onboarding flow, and marketing landing page
  • Positioned as BitterBrains’ entry into the AI education space
Designing for how developers will work, not just how they learn today

Almost five years of design work that helped turn a small Vue.js education project into a global developer education company, one product, one conference, one experience at a time.

  1. 15

    Products designed

    From Vue School and certifications to conferences and business services, every product touched by design.

  2. 500K

    Developer community

    Plus 200,000+ students and 1M+ users a year across educational products and certifications.

  3. 4

    Conferences branded

    Frontend Nation, Vue.js Nation, Nuxt Nation, and Vue.js Forge, online and in-person.

  4. 5

    Years of growth

    From a small startup with a handful of people to a team of 30+.

  1. Being the first designer at a growing company means you don’t just design products. You build the design culture, the visual language, and the standard that everything after you is measured against.

  2. Designing for developers taught me that the people who notice every detail the most are also the most appreciative when you get it right. Technical audiences reward craft.

  3. When you work across 15 products over almost five years, consistency becomes your most important design skill. Not visual consistency, but conceptual consistency. The same thinking, applied everywhere.

Next case

The same desk at night, the chair pushed back and the screen left on.

vlgolo1996@gmail.com

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