Building the Lovable for Hardware: Inside siliXon with the Lead Designer
Sonali, lead designer at siliXon, on turning plain English into circuit boards, designing for beginners and expert engineers, and breaking into hardware without an engineering degree.
Sonali · Lead Designer at siliXon · London · 36 min · 2026-08-20
About this episode
siliXon is a London-based startup turning plain English into manufacturable circuit boards — effectively the Lovable for hardware. Sonali is its lead designer and the only designer on an eight-person team.
She studied design at Goldsmiths, built a robot for dementia patients with no hardware background, and joined siliXon after a cold email about a hackathon she never attended. Her path is a useful example of how non-traditional backgrounds get taken seriously at early-stage startups.
What we cover
- Designing one interface for two very different users: complete beginners and expert hardware engineers
- Why not having an engineering background became her biggest edge rather than a weakness
- Her hybrid workflow: sketchbook first, then Figma, then AI design tools
- How a cold email turned into a role on a tiny team shipping hardware-AI products
Key takeaway
At an eight-person startup, what gets you hired is evidence that you can ship something, not the exact degree you hold.