What is Middleware?
MiddlewareHQ is a commercial SaaS platform and an open-source solution designed for enhancing engineering delivery and productivity for product leaders from diagnosing delivery bottlenecks to providing leadership-ready insights.
It connects with every code delivery and project based tools like Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket and Atlassian along with slack and google calendar.
Who are the users?
Middleware is used by leading tech and product organisations such as Bharatpe, Flexiloans, Qoala, WeWork, Daylight and WeWork.
It has users from all across the globe including United States, Brazil, Middle East, Europe and India.
It truly feels like building for world FROM India.
What's the team like?
Middleware has a pretty lean but smart team, two cofounders, and 5 engineers along with 2 people working in growth. You can read more here
What's different?
Ownership
In companies I had worked at before, design responsibility stopped at problem-solving and shipping a solution. At Middleware, I own the entire arc: the problem definition, the design solution, how it’s implemented with engineers, and whether it’s actually moving the right numbers. It’s equal parts design, product thinking, and accountability.
Designing with Data
Every decision here is backed by data, usage analytics, user sessions. The designs have to speak the user’s language, not ours.
The Smartest People in the Room
Middleware’s team is lean but mighty. Every conversation, whether with an engineer, a PM, or the CTO, is a masterclass. I’ve learned to argue with data, align with logic, and ship with speed. Working here feels like an infinite feedback loop where you’re always learning, not just about design, but about how the business itself ticks.
Design led product
In a competitive environment of tech productivity, the advantage middleware has is - us being a design first company.
No matter how many iterations and hours it take, we only ship the most value packed things for our users. Backed by research, data and domain expertise.
In-Office Collaboration
We sat together to tweak micro-interactions, brainstorm over whiteboards, and sometimes write error states with the devs. The loop between idea → feedback → shipped product was compressed into days, not months.
Sprints would sometime run straight till 5 AM till we ship the feature just before the client call (Not recommended though lmao)
More than design
My current org has always made me strive to more than just design. It started from writing PRDs and presenting new features in client calls, and is currently keeping me engaged in setting up KPIs, understanding user behaviour through session recordings and building weekly report of key metrics.
A Surprising Skill: Foosball
Of course, not everything I learned is strictly design. Somewhere between shipping flows and debating metrics, I picked up foosball. It started with casual games in the office and turned into a surprising obsession. Fast forward a few weeks, I was actually acing matches against the best players on the team. In many ways, foosball mirrors my role here: learn fast, experiment relentlessly, and keep sharpening reflexes.
Recent work
