Damian Urbaniec
EN PL
Design retainer

Your product designer who ships in code . No hiring.

A monthly retainer for SaaS teams covering product design, the design system and the frontend that ships it. I start in week one and work at your team's pace. This is the same job I do day to day for one of the biggest restaurant SaaS companies in Europe.

  • 2-3 slots
    companies I work with at once, and that's the ceiling
  • From week 1
    no hiring, no onboarding, no trial period
  • Design to code
    mockups end as shipped code, never a handoff
Who this is for

Where this model works best

A retainer earns its keep when the product is alive and there's design work every month. For a one-off project, look at the MVP or website modernization offer instead.

TYPE A

SaaS with no designer

The product keeps growing while developers design screens between tickets. Every new view looks slightly different, and the UX starts costing you in sales calls and support tickets. What's missing is someone who owns design, not another backlog item.

TYPE B

SaaS after MVP

The first version works and people pay for it. Now the UX needs sorting and a design system needs building, before the design debt turns into a rewrite nobody budgeted for.

TYPE C

Product and website under one roof

Marketing waits on a developer, the product waits on a designer, and you're managing three vendors to make it happen. Here one person runs both ends of the SaaS, on one rhythm and one design system.

How it works

What a month of working together looks like

Not a bucket of hours, and not unlimited requests. A steady rhythm with rules you can sustain for a year, leaving assets behind every month.

  1. 01

    A prioritized queue

    You set the order and I keep 1 or 2 tasks active at a time, each one taken to shipped code before the next starts. Nothing sits half-finished.

  2. 02

    A steady communication rhythm

    One 30-minute sync a week plus async Slack, with replies inside 24 hours on business days. No status updates written for the sake of having written one.

  3. 03

    A design system as an asset

    Components, tokens and documentation stay yours. Each month makes the product more consistent and the next change cheaper.

  4. 04

    Shipped code, not a handoff

    I design in Figma and then write the frontend in your codebase, so you're not paying a second time to turn a mockup into something real.

  5. 05

    Metrics and a roadmap

    Results reviewed monthly, UX roadmap set quarterly. You get someone arguing about priorities with you, not just a pair of hands.

  6. 06

    An exit with no penalties

    Pause or stop with a month's notice, and every file, doc and access token comes with you.

Pricing

Two plans, a limited number of slots.

I work alone and hold at most 2 or 3 retainers at once. For comparison, a senior product designer on staff costs €4,200-€6,500 a month, takes 2 to 3 months to hire, and still won't write your frontend.

Product

from €2,300 / month
net · about 2 days a week

Ongoing product design that ends in shipped code. For a SaaS that needs someone owning design.

  • Product design: discovery, UX, UI
  • Design system and documentation
  • Frontend shipped in your codebase
  • Weekly sync + async Slack
  • Quarterly UX roadmap
Full scope

Product + website

from €3,700 / month
net · about 3 days a week

Both ends of the SaaS handled together: the product and the marketing site on one rhythm.

  • Everything in the Product plan
  • Website development: new pages, CRO
  • Technical SEO and speed
  • One design system for product and website
  • Priority in the task queue

Where you land in the range depends on the scale of the product and how much shipped work it needs. Simple websites on a monthly model aren't part of this offer; sitely.pl covers those.

FAQ

Common questions.

Cost, speed and scope. A staff hire runs €4,200-€6,500 a month, takes 2 to 3 months to recruit, and might turn out to be the wrong fit anyway. I start in week one and I ship the frontend as well as design it, which covers the whole path from idea to production. If your needs change, a month's notice ends it and there's no severance.
No layers. At an agency your brief travels through a salesperson and a PM before it reaches whoever does the work, and you pay for each stop along the way. Here you talk to the person designing and shipping it, so decisions happen on a call instead of over a week of email.
Because I work alone and I'd rather do less of it properly. A retainer only works if I know the product deeply, and nobody holds that for ten clients at once. The limit protects the quality; it isn't scarcity marketing.
The queue reorders every week, so short spikes are fine. If the demand turns out to be permanent we move to a bigger plan or agree extra scope at its own price. Nothing appears on the invoice that you didn't approve first.
It starts with a product review: a UX audit, an honest look at the design system, and the worst friction points in your key flows. Out of that comes the queue for the first weeks, mixing quick wins with foundation work. By the end of month one you know exactly what the rhythm feels like.
Everything: Figma files, a documented design system, code already in your repository, and a written list of what was in flight. The whole model is built so each month leaves assets behind rather than making you dependent on me.

Ask about a free slot.

Two or three sentences about your product and where design hurts most. I reply myself, within 24 hours.

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