Mapping Executive Talent in Minutes
MapX turns 20 million leadership profiles and one million companies into market maps that land in under an hour. It was born inside Savannah Group, an executive search firm that decided to build its own talent intelligence. For three years I was the platform's only designer, from the first mockups to production scale.
Role
Sr. UI/UX Designer
Category
B2B SaaS, AI Talent Intelligence
Team
12 People
Year
2022-2025
MapX gives hiring teams executive-search-grade market maps without the wait. One platform holds the research, the scoring and the reporting, built on 20 million leadership profiles.
25%
Increased reach beyond LinkedIn
20M+
Categorized leadership profiles
2-4
Weeks saved per executive search
2min
Stakeholder-ready report generation
Born Inside an Executive Search Firm
Executive search still runs on manual research. Teams spend days cross-referencing profiles and rebuilding the same PowerPoint decks, and hiring leaders wait weeks for a first view of the market.
In 2020 a team inside Savannah Group got frustrated enough to build the answer themselves. Engineers and data scientists started assembling a research platform built specifically for leadership hiring. That platform became MapX.
I joined in 2022, when the product was a set of early mockups. By 2025 it was running live searches across hundreds of hiring scenarios, for clients at the level of a Formula 1 team and a global spirits brand.
A $58 billion industry still runs its research by hand.
The Calls That Shaped It
OUTPUTDesign backward from the deliverable
A researcher's real product is the stakeholder deck. MapX generates an editable, white-label PowerPoint in two minutes, and every screen upstream was designed to feed that report.
SYSTEMOne design system, every surface
I built the brand from the logo up, then the design system behind the product, the website and the marketing surfaces. It kept a 12-person cross-functional team consistent for three years.
INTELLIGENCEInterfaces as
the AI's ground truth
I worked with the ML engineers on screens that double as training signal. What researchers see, correct and confirm feeds the model's learning loop.
Map the Market First
Before anyone searches, MapX answers the feasibility question: do enough of the right people exist. It counts the market against the brief's criteria, shows which companies hold that talent. Hiring plans start from what the market can actually supply.
Search That
Reads the Brief
Once the map says the person exists, the search starts. Fit to Brief scores 20 million profiles against a role brief written in plain language, and sourcing reaches 25% more candidates than LinkedIn alone. Four search modes, a dozen filter dimensions, and every search saved in a per-project history.
From Org Chart to Stakeholder Report
MapX draws the organizational chart of any company, from board to C-1, with diversity, tenure and external-hire rates benchmarked against the industry. Everything a researcher finds lands in an editable PowerPoint, white-labeled in the client's brand, in two minutes. Stakeholder buy-in begins with real data on day one.
Who Runs on MapX
MapX serves very different buyers from one dataset: 20 million leadership profiles and one million companies. An executive TA team, an in-house talent function and a private equity fund all open the same maps. What changes is the decision on the table, and what MapX hands each of them for it.
Executive Talent Acquisition
Goal: Map every market and lead hiring conversations with data.
Executive TA teams lose their week to sourcing, spreadsheets and deck-building, repeated for every role. MapX runs the map on every search, automates the admin and turns the findings into a stakeholder report in minutes.
In-House Talent Teams
Goal: Make build-or-buy calls and senior hires with evidence.
Build-or-buy calls and senior vacancies usually mean guesswork or an external search firm at external prices. MapX benchmarks internal talent against the live external market and puts search-grade insight in-house, ready the day a role opens.
Private Equity
Goal: Proven leaders for portfolio companies, fast.
Finding leaders with real PE and growth-stage experience is slow and opaque. MapX surfaces them from CEO to functional lead and sizes the market before the first outreach.
Designing Trust
Executive search is about people, so MapX could not look like a database. The identity runs on organic palettes and human imagery and reads like a trusted advisor. Precision in the data, warmth in the interface.
Three Years, One System
A 12-person team built MapX: business analysts, front-end and back-end developers, data engineers, ML engineers. I was its only designer, reporting directly to the CEO. Strategy came in through those sessions and went out as flows for the product, marketing and engineering leads.