Illya Bakurov
Camera Lead Design Engineer · Apr 2020 to Sep 2022
I designed and built fully functional native prototypes across Camera, Creative Tools, and Memories, then partnered with production engineering through edge cases, launch, experimentation, and measurement.
I worked where interaction design met real platform behavior. Rather than stopping at static screens, I built realistic native prototypes so teams could experience timing, state, gestures, media behavior, and failure cases before investing in production code.
The work combined Objective-C, Swift, UIKit, product analytics, anonymized logs, controlled experiments, and user research. Production engineers wrote the shipping code; I stayed closely involved through implementation, launch, and measurement.
Selected work
I designed and built the working Objective-C prototype, then partnered with production engineering through launch. Experiments increased filter impressions by 38% on iOS and 10% on Android, and increased Snaps sent with filters by 9% and 5.4%, respectively.
I built functional prototypes for Voice Over, Auto-Caption, Text-to-Speech, Crop, Stickers, Lens Explorer, Lens Carousel, Universal Search, and editing flows. The prototypes made behavior testable in context before the production build began.
I used analytics, anonymized logs, experiments, and UX research to improve creation, engagement, and discovery flows. I also led and mentored three design engineers while partnering with product, design, research, data science, and engineering on strategy and annual roadmaps.
Tools and systems
Role boundary: I designed and built the working prototypes. Production engineers wrote the shipping code, and I partnered with them through launch and measurement.
Public artifacts