Thousands of support tickets taught me where payments break. I design ones that don’t.
How I work: I ask the awkward question in the kickoff, write specs people actually read, and volunteer before the silence gets uncomfortable. Someone has to keep product, engineering, and compliance moving in the same direction, and I like being that someone.
~60%YoY rise in merchant go-lives, Q1 2025
48hfastest merchant go-live
3×partner growth, no added Operations headcount
300%+over support quota at Lightspeed
200%over Shopify sales objectives
1000smerchant conversations behind the work
Support desk first, design tools second. In that order, on purpose.
2012 – 2016
The scenic route
Taught English in Beijing, au paired in the Netherlands, untangled domains at Tucows, and ran live events for thousands. I learned to explain complicated things to every audience imaginable.
2017 – 2019
Shopify
Started on the merchant support desk, helping thousands of businesses launch and grow online. Every design instinct I have traces back to those conversations.
2020 – 2024
Lightspeed
Three years of technical support for online stores, then go-to-market operations. I learned how commerce actually works, from the storefront code to the contract.
2024 – now
ValPayNow
Joined to lead customer success, moved into product design, and now pair design with program delivery: roadmaps, sprint planning, and release cycles across product, engineering, and compliance, plus an onboarding redesign that cut go-live to as fast as 48 hours.
Tools, systems, and platforms.
Design & systems
Figma
Framer
Design systems
WCAG accessibility
Payments
Stripe
Adyen
Fiserv
Merchant onboarding
AI workflow
Claude
ChatGPT
Gemini
Vercel v0
Project & delivery
Jira
Confluence
Notion
Asana
Platforms
Shopify
Salesforce
Magento
WordPress
Things I've helped build.
A few themes I keep coming back to.
ValPay
Payments product design
End-to-end UX for payments: discovery, wireframes, prototypes, specs, and dev handoff.
Figma · Magicpath · Claude
Product operations
AI-accelerated delivery
I use Claude and v0 to go from prototype to production faster, while keeping decisions grounded in real customer data.
AI · Product · Delivery
ValPay
Merchant onboarding
A self-serve onboarding redesign that supported a ~60% YoY rise in merchant go-lives, with go-live as fast as 48 hours.
Onboarding · CS · Ops
Systems improvement
Quieter support queues
Workflows, documentation, and automation that took real pressure off customer-facing teams.
Automation · Process · Support
Lightspeed
Go-to-market operations
Connected sales, finance, and legal workflows so deals moved faster with fewer errors.
Salesforce · Compliance · Ops
Shopify
Merchant-first foundations
Thousands of merchant conversations and technical fixes. The foundation everything since is built on.
Shopify · HTML/CSS/JS · Zendesk
Non-profit
Canadian Artisan Dairy Alliance
Volunteer program work: reduced infrastructure costs, migrated to Google Workspace, built a new website, and implemented fundraising with Zeffy.
Google Workspace · Zeffy · TechSoup
Projects I've built.
Two recent internal products, taken from problem to working prototype.
Behind the build.
Longer looks at how these shipped: the decisions, the trade-offs, and what building with AI actually changes.
Deskly · Internal product
Designing a desk for everyone, when there weren't enough desks
Turning a space crunch at ValPay HQ into a ten-second booking, and why presence mattered more than the booking form.
Read ↗
Perks · Valsoft
One portal for perks that lived in spreadsheets
Replacing scattered sign-up sheets with a single portal, and getting the unglamorous admin half right.
Read ↗
Proof I'm a person, not just a portfolio.
Montréal, year-round
Home base through every ice storm and construction season. Poutine opinions available on request. Strong ones.
Dymond, the rescue
My Husky/Shiba Inu mix arrived with a page-long disclaimer: anxiety meds, destructive, “trouble housebreaking.” Two weeks in the right home and he was off everything and thriving. Environment is everything: true for dogs, true for products.
Perpetual AI experiments
Always tinkering with Claude, v0, and whatever shipped this week. Half the experiments make it into my workflow. The other half make good stories.
Volunteer, raw milk division
I help the Canadian Artisan Dairy Alliance, champions of raw milk, with websites, infrastructure, and fundraising. Compensation occasionally arrives in dairy form. I do not object.
First aid, tested
Certified since my Air Cadet days, thanks to an instructor whose intensity I only understood twenty years later, the day the training kicked in. Take a course. Seriously.
Ten days of silence
One ten-day Vipassana retreat: no phone, no talking, no eye contact. Harder than any incident review, and the best perspective reset I know.
Don't take my word for it.
Pulled from LinkedIn recommendations, lightly trimmed. Real people, real quotes.
When Kristian started he was already exceeding expectations, in quality and quantity. Consistently top solver of the month, and always willing to do overtime to help the team.
Tatiana Abi Nader
His team lead, then manager, at Lightspeed
I had the privilege of hiring Kristian, and he's been a fantastic addition, dedicated to customer satisfaction, and consistently going above and beyond to keep clients happy.
David Desrosiers
Hired Kristian at Lightspeed
Working with Kristian keeps you alert, on your toes and challenged. This is very refreshing.
Laurence Turgeon-Di Stefano
Head of Operations EU, Lightspeed
Authenticity, action-oriented mindset, and strong execution skills. He is genuine in his communication, building trust through transparency.
Samuel Jobin-Morissette
Managed Kristian at ValPay
Kristian dominated a project with our enterprise sales team that was ambiguous, acted like an owner and took charge when he saw opportunity to add value.
Matt Hyde
Managed Kristian at Shopify