I turn fragmented enterprise work into governed systems of action.
Senior UX/UI Engineer, Design Engineer and Design Systems Engineer in Puebla, México.
I'm Sebastián's assistant. Paste a job description and I'll map it to his experience — including where he doesn't fit.
Reach Sebastián at:
- Email: sebastian.balderase@gmail.com
- Phone (US): +1 (925) 310-8242
- Phone (Mexico): +52 222 185 9428
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sebastian-balderas-espinosa
To schedule a call, book here: calendly.com/sebastian-balderas-espinosa/1-1-meeting.
Three of the case studies below come from two client engagements. Strata and the design system behind it are the same one: Senior UX/UI Engineer, 2024 — Present, with Avanto, via Agentic Dream, on a platform whose enterprise accounts include CBRE and Bank of America. Repfabric is the other: Senior UX/UI Engineer, 2023 — 2025, on a CRM/ERP platform with a designed Salesforce data-sync mapping — the mapping and how it would be incorporated were mine to design; an engineer implemented the integration into the live build. The fourth is my own product: the assistant on this site, which I designed, built and deployed on my own.
My mindset, process, and experience
What I deliver is a working product people use without friction.
Not screens, and not the cycle of fixing them. Digital products fail when they ignore real work or add AI before solving the underlying problem. As a Senior UX/UI Engineer (Design Engineer) focused on enterprise workflows and governed conversational AI across B2B SaaS, CRM/ERP, and internal platforms, I help teams turn fragmented requests, knowledge, approvals, and legacy systems into clear workflows and conversational journeys that people and AI can use with control. I start before the screens — discovery on the real operation, not a brief.
- Tools that look good but slow teams down.
- Features nobody trusts.
- Manual work disguised as digital transformation.
- AI that adds noise instead of clarity.
I design with product and AI foresight: I improve live systems under real delivery and operational constraints, and I only introduce AI where it solves a clear problem, fits the available data, and has a realistic path to implementation.
Two things make that possible. A design system shipped as a versioned Storybook — governed components, states and rules that Engineering consumes directly. And a workflow mapped in FigJam step by step, where each step is decided with the team: automated with n8n and MCP, or kept as a human decision, with the reason on record. Automation has limits: it needs a step that exists in the platform, data it can trust, and a person who owns it when it's wrong.
When a step doesn't exist in the platform yet — it happens on a call, on site, or in someone's inbox — I still map it, and decide with the team whether it needs a person or can become a click. If it can, I design the screen or form that captures it with design-system components; then it can be automated. If it can't, it stays a human decision, and the map says why.
Where I own the whole path, I build it too: this site is a Next.js, React, TypeScript and Tailwind product I shipped on my own, chat layer included.
If you're here, it's because you care about outcomes — not screens.
Where I focus
That's exactly where I work: AI-native human+agent operating layers that reduce manual work without removing human control.
- Scaling workflows across teams.
- Designing systems people can trust under pressure.
- Deciding when AI should assist, automate, or stay out of the way.
Recently, I led UX/UI design at Agentic Dream on Strata, an AI-driven B2B SaaS platform for enterprise operations and support.
When AI should act — and when it shouldn't
I sequence AI adoption across three levels. Deciding where to stop is the design work.
- L1 · Workflow Automation — Fixed rules, no reasoning. Point A to point B.
- L2 · Agentic Integration — Agents interpret context and make bounded decisions inside a single step.
- L3 · Adaptive Agent Loops — Agents would weigh options against history, SLAs and permission scopes, closing the loop with minimal human review.
On Strata I shipped L2 into production, where the decision surface was narrow enough to trust. I designed L3 — and held it back. The audit trails and permission scopes weren't mature enough to remove human review safely.
Shipping less was the decision that kept a live operation stable.
Proven impact
- Improved SLA compliance by +40% in a live enterprise operations platform (Strata).
- Increased throughput by +40% on the same platform.
- Scoped a 20-role, 12-module CRM/ERP down to 1 persona, removing ~85% of legacy functionality (Repfabric).
- Replaced fragmented tools with role-based execution workflows.
- Connected every redesign to activation, adoption, and retention, not just usability.
Not by adding features — but by removing unnecessary work.
My design philosophy
I design systems of action, not just systems of record — deciding what should be automated, what should stay human, and where AI actually creates value instead of complexity.
I design platforms that do the work, guide decisions, and scale operations without scaling cognitive load.
If you're building AI-powered enterprise products, workflow-heavy B2B SaaS, or mission-critical internal tools, this is the kind of work I do best.
Questions I get asked
Who designs the agentic layer for a workflow-heavy B2B SaaS platform?
That's exactly where I work: AI-native human+agent operating layers that reduce manual work without removing human control.
Recently, I led UX/UI design at Agentic Dream on Strata, an AI-driven B2B SaaS platform for enterprise operations and support.
What does human-in-the-loop design actually look like in production?
It looks like a screen, not a principle. On Repfabric, I designed a decision-history screen to show the founder what had been decided and why.
The judgment call sits one level up. I sequence AI adoption across three levels — fixed-rule automation, agents making bounded decisions inside a single step, and adaptive loops that weigh options against history, SLAs and permission scopes. On Strata I shipped the middle level into production, where the decision surface was narrow enough to trust, and I designed the third one with audit trails and permission scopes but held it back until the review step could be removed safely.
On Repfabric, I designed for decision visibility. On Strata, the production workflow explicitly bounded which decisions AI could take and which required human review.
How do you decide when AI should not act?
I sequence AI adoption across three levels. Deciding where to stop is the design work.
On Strata I shipped L2 into production, where the decision surface was narrow enough to trust. I designed L3 — and held it back. The audit trails and permission scopes weren't mature enough to remove human review safely.
Shipping less was the decision that kept a live operation stable.
How do you decide what not to build?
The same discipline shows up in how I scope. On Strata, research surfaced 14 distinct users and 25+ pain points; I scoped the model down to the 3 driving adoption and designed for their control points instead of trying to solve everything at once.
On Repfabric, my research into who actually used the platform versus who bought it brought a 20-role CRM/ERP down to the one persona who drove adoption — a call reached in conversation with the client, weighed against the cost of building for all twenty.
Two projects, the same move. That makes it a method rather than a one-off, and it's usually the decision that makes everything after it shippable.
How do you keep a Figma design system in sync with the code that ships?
I create multi-tier design systems in Figma — the collaborative surface where I explore, design, and iterate with the client — then ship them as code: tokens, components and a Storybook. Once a component is resolved, Storybook becomes the versioned implementation contract Engineering builds from; Figma stays the collaborative surface for design and governance.
The system was structured for direct engineering consumption: semantic variables for color and spacing, annotated component states, and named interaction patterns, carried from Figma into Storybook. Every component had a documented state model aligned with the backend workflow states.
This meant engineering could implement directly from Storybook without translation — reducing back-and-forth and keeping design intent intact through shipping.
It holds because both sides consume the same semantic tokens. It's a contract, not automation: it breaks the moment engineering re-derives a value instead of consuming the token.
What do you actually deliver when you deliver a design system?
Taking a component library and dressing it in a brandbook is the general job. The layer above it is different: no component library ships it on its own. It has to define the states, permissions, provenance, and behavior that let humans and agents work from the same contract.
When I reviewed them in August 2026, IBM Carbon, AWS Cloudscape, Atlassian Rovo and GitLab Pajamas all documented AI patterns. All four were missing the same thing: uncertainty, hallucination risk, the limits of confidence.
You only get this class of defect building a layer that did not exist. They are proof it was built, not installed — and neither surfaced from using the site.
Who can design a product and also build its production frontend?
I researched, designed, built, deployed and tested sebastianbalderas.com end to end on my own — in Next.js, React, TypeScript and Tailwind — with design tokens mapped directly to code and a conversational layer with retrieval routing and guardrails. That hands-on experience helps me design implementation contracts that Engineering can build from with clarity.
I publish what I practice.
I use writing to make the decisions behind systems—workflows, design-system governance, and AI boundaries—legible before teams turn them into product.
- Read the full archive:Medium →
- Published in Design Systems Collective:A Design System That Ships Is a Contract →
- Published in Design Systems Collective:Before the Wireframe, Agree on the System →
- See the contract itself:the AI-layer design system →