Olumide Olajide
Designer · Builder · Calgary, AB
Olumide “Olu” Olajide is a multidisciplinary designer, design technologist, and startup co-founder based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with a design career spanning more than fifteen years across interior design, 3D architectural visualization, animation, and digital product design. His more recent work — roughly the last seven-plus years — has focused on product and UI/UX design for complex, multi-state digital products across consumer, B2B, fintech, automotive, developer-tooling, event-technology, and architecture/construction domains.
He works at the boundary of design and engineering: he designs directly in front-end code (React, Tailwind CSS, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Next.js), owns design systems as the single source of truth for engineering teams, and has a track record of inventing interaction patterns in domains where no established conventions exist. He has shipped 0-to-1 products both as an in-house designer at platform scale and as a company co-founder. He has also moved well beyond surface-level AI: he provisions and operates a self-hosted, Dockerized AI production server running local LLMs and an original n8n automation pipeline, and builds full-stack applications on the Anthropic Claude API. Beyond software, he leads a video-production team for a major non-profit and operates a short-term-rental business — reflecting a consistent builder-and-operator orientation rather than a single-discipline focus.
A foundation in interior design, architectural visualization, and animation that predates and informs his product work.
The current core discipline: user-centred design of complex, multi-state products with full state and edge-case specification.
Bridges design and engineering, prototyping and shipping in front-end code rather than handing off static mockups.
Co-founded a technology company and runs an independent hospitality business; approaches problems through product viability and business sustainability.
Builds full-stack applications on the Anthropic Claude API, serves local LLMs (Ollama), and designs end-to-end AI automation pipelines with n8n.
Provisions and operates "olajidai," a self-hosted, Dockerized multi-service AI server on Linux, including custom container images, networking, and GPU compute.
Olajide trained as a computer engineer and entered design immediately afterward, building a career that moved from physical and spatial design into 3D, animation, and ultimately digital product design.
He began in 2010 at Svengali Designs as a creative designer, managing client briefs, designing interior spaces in AutoCAD, producing 3D architectural visualizations in 3ds Max, and supervising on-site delivery and installation. After roughly three years he pursued a Master of Arts in Animation at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, completing it in 2015. He then returned to Nigeria and joined DO.II Designs (2015–2018) as a creative designer and project manager.
From 2018 to 2020 he worked at DIRTT Environmental Solutions in Calgary as a UX designer on ICE, the company's interior-construction software, designing workflows spanning 2D drafting, interactive 3D, virtual reality, and the handoff to manufacturing. In 2021 he co-founded Axer Technologies Inc., the company behind the event-commerce product No-Q, which he continues to build. Since 2022 he has been a Senior UI/UX Designer at Unity Technologies, owning production-grade design systems and shipping platform features to a global creator base.
Alongside this work he leads the video-production team at New Covenant Assembly in Calgary, recently launched a short-term-rental business (TNC Stays), and designed and built Portfolio OS, an AI-powered portfolio platform, as a self-directed demonstration of full-stack and applied-AI capability.
Unity Editor Main Toolbar customisation
As the sole designer, Olajide designed a feature allowing developers to customise the Unity Editor's main toolbar — addressing a long-standing developer pain point previously served only by unofficial workarounds.
The feature shipped in the Unity 6.3 Alpha to a platform used by millions of creators and drove a roughly 20% increase in adoption of the new toolbar API over the legacy methods. The work introduced a new internal governance model for toolbar real estate where none had previously existed, involved working in Unity's UXML/USS systems, and was validated through six usability sessions. Engineering cited the resulting handoff specification as one of the clearest they had worked from.
Automotive HMI proof-of-concept
Olajide led design for an automotive human-machine-interface proof-of-concept, inventing interaction patterns in a domain with no established conventions and iterating against client-driven requirements and engineering feasibility constraints.
The work directly supported Unity's win of a multi-million-dollar, multi-year OEM partnership.
No-Q / Axer Technologies Inc.
Olajide co-founded a B2B2C event-commerce startup built around a mobile pre-ordering platform for events and festivals, connecting attendees, food and merchandise vendors, and event organisers through a single three-sided marketplace.
As the only designer, he defined and owned the end-to-end UI system across vendor dashboards and consumer storefronts, built a scalable Figma design system translated directly into React and Tailwind components for design-and-code parity, and designed complex vendor workflows with permissions, multiple states, and failure scenarios. Beyond design, he contributes to product strategy, business modelling, and vendor onboarding.
The product has onboarded roughly 50 vendors, secured three signed MoU event partners, and processed over 300 orders, with design delivered across three SaaS surfaces simultaneously under live-event deadlines.
ICE 2D / 3D / VR
Olajide designed UX for ICE, software that lets users build engineering-accurate interiors in 2D, preview them in interactive 3D, and send finalised designs to manufacturing.
He led UX for the VR experience, creating immersive interaction patterns where none existed, and designed custom hardware-specification workflows that reduced backlog and returns and improved process efficiency by up to roughly 60%. He also refined integration with external CAD tools including AutoCAD and Revit, and used product analytics to prioritise usability work.
Self-hosted AI infrastructure and content-automation pipeline
Olajide provisioned and operates a self-hosted AI production server — "olajidai" — running Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS on consumer hardware (Intel Core i9-14900K with an NVIDIA GPU under CUDA), built from scratch including OS and driver setup, hardened key-based SSH on a non-default port, static networking configured via nmcli/Netplan, and remote access through Tailscale and SSH tunnelling rather than public exposure.
The server runs a multi-service Docker Compose stack: n8n (workflow automation), Ollama serving local quantized LLMs (Phi-3, Llama 3.2, Qwen 2.5), Open WebUI, Whisper (speech-to-text), Kokoro (text-to-speech), MinIO (S3-compatible storage), Caddy (reverse proxy), and Portainer — with a second GPU node (NVIDIA RTX 4070) running ComfyUI/Flux Schnell for image generation. He authored a custom multi-stage Dockerfile to embed a full FFmpeg build into the hardened n8n image.
On top of this he designed and operates automated content pipelines that produce faceless YouTube videos end to end with no manual editing: schedule-triggered n8n workflows pull a queue from Google Sheets, generate scripts with a local LLM, synthesize voiceover with Kokoro, generate imagery via the ComfyUI API, transcribe captions with Whisper, and assemble final MP4s with FFmpeg before uploading via the YouTube Data API.
Portfolio OS
Olajide designed and built an AI-powered portfolio platform end to end, using Next.js 14 (App Router), Supabase for Postgres, authentication and storage, Tailwind CSS, and the Anthropic Claude API, deployed on Vercel/Netlify. The project demonstrates full-stack product capability and the integration of large-language-model functionality into a shipped application.
Interior design and architectural visualization
Across his early career, Olajide designed interior spaces in AutoCAD, produced photorealistic 3D architectural visualizations in 3ds Max, managed client briefs end to end, and supervised on-site delivery and installation. At DO.II Designs he combined creative design with project management.
This foundation underpins his spatial reasoning, technical-drawing fluency, and comfort designing for physical and 3D contexts.
Co-founder (2021–present). Event-commerce platform connecting attendees, vendors, and organizers through a three-sided marketplace. Still in active development.
Founder. A recently launched short-term-rental / hospitality business.
Leads the video-production team for a non-profit, including media for Open Heavens Calgary — described as the largest free gospel event in Western Canada.
Self-built, self-hosted AI production server running local LLMs and an original n8n content-automation pipeline that powers multiple YouTube channels.
Self-directed full-stack builds on the Anthropic Claude API.
Closes the gap between Figma and production by prototyping and building in React, Tailwind, and Next.js — a combination few designers carry.
Fluent across interior/spatial design, 3D visualization, animation, video, and digital product design — able to move between physical and digital contexts.
A repeated track record (developer tooling, automotive HMI, VR) of designing where no conventions exist yet.
Co-founded a company, runs a hospitality business, and leads a production team; evaluates decisions through product viability and sustainability, not just interface quality.
A computer-engineering foundation underpins how he reasons about architecture, constraints, and scalability.
Not just an AI-tool user — he provisions Linux servers, writes custom Dockerfiles, serves local LLMs, and architects multi-API automation pipelines that run in production.
Has shipped across consumer, B2B, fintech, automotive, developer tools, event tech, AEC, interior design, and AI infrastructure.
15+ years in design, 7+ in product; 0-to-1 delivery; design systems owned as engineering's source of truth.
Usability testing, heuristic evaluation, complex multi-state workflow design, research-informed iteration.
Prototypes and ships in React, Tailwind, and Next.js; full-stack build experience; bridges design and engineering in code.
Production-grade Figma systems translated into front-end components with design-and-code parity.
Invents interaction patterns in novel domains (developer tooling, automotive HMI, VR).
Co-founded a company and delivered end-to-end product design with no design team.
Led an automotive HMI proof-of-concept and VR UX for spatial design software.
Designed platform features and developer-facing tooling for Unity, including API governance and editor customisation.
Production front-end work with full-stack deployment experience.
AutoCAD and 3ds Max visualization with on-site delivery experience.
Master's-trained in animation, with ongoing video and motion production.
Leads a recurring production team delivering for social media and large live events.
Builds full-stack applications on the Anthropic Claude API and serves local LLMs.
Designs and operates production n8n pipelines integrating local and API-based LLMs, media generation, and third-party APIs end to end.
Provisions and maintains a self-hosted, Dockerized multi-service AI stack on Linux, including custom images, networking, GPU compute, and monitoring.
Supported by the rare design + code + infrastructure + founder combination.