Greater Toronto Area, Canada
Lead Technical Product Manager focusing on Client Libraries and Developer Experience. Experienced System Architect with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in C#, Ruby, PowerShell, Azure/AWS, and Bash. Strong engineering professional with a Technical Diploma focused in Systems Analysis & Design / Computer Programming from Centennial College.
I transitioned from being the champion of the MongoDB developer experience to the leader and strategist for that experience across an entire product line. While my core mission remained ensuring the most seamless, intuitive, and idiomatic experience possible for developers using technologies like Ruby and JavaScript/TypeScript, my scope broadened from owning all elements (drivers, integrations, tooling) to driving the strategy across multiple parallel projects and modules within the developer experience portfolio. My focus evolved to managing the crucial information flow to and from partners and the community, rather than solely performing the methodical customer research. This allowed me to shift from being the definitive authority on one product's customer/buyer needs to a recognized advisor, someone looked to by engineering managers, senior staff for guidance, and by directors for input on strategic execution and understanding competitive threats. This leadership position required me to translate my expertise as an IC into comprehensive guidance, ensuring that the entire team was aligned on the strategic direction required for product success and positioning. During this time I would also act as a PM overseeing at various times some combination of product portfolios including Java, JavaScript, Ruby and Python.
I got to be the champion for MongoDB within the developer communities I was responsible for, which included Ruby and JavaScript/TypeScript. My core mission was to make sure every developer had the most seamless, intuitive, and idiomatic experience possible when using MongoDB. I owned all elements of the MongoDB developer experience from the core driver to framework integrations like Mongoose, Mongoid, Prisma, and all the associated tooling. My focus was typically outward, with a mission to deeply understand developer needs and trends that transitioned from merely informing basic requirements to becoming the definitive authority on the customer, business drivers, and market trends for the entire product line. This required leveraging lasting relationships built in the community to drive research goals and anticipate product issues, ensuring that the championing of a "seamless, intuitive, and idiomatic experience" is grounded in a continuous, methodical understanding of the market. This expertise was essential for defining the strategic direction that guided the product's success and positioning.
Moving into a Team Lead role resulted in a shift in focus from deep technical domain mastery to a functional leadership and team enablement role. As a Team Lead, the scope narrowed from the broader Product and/or Functional Domain to the direct oversight of a small team, with a primary focus on the team's successful function. I had to still retain sufficient technical knowledge to lead the team of TSEs and know how to help them find answers they don't have. This included a clear mandate to operate as a player-coach, maintaining a 50/50 balance of directly working customer issues (to ensure I stayed connected to the day-to-day challenges and can appropriately empathize with employees on their experience). I grew from an adept IC to someone that could be seen more as a mentor who provides functional guidance, ensures team output, but still maintains an active technical presence.
making your solution dreams a reality using Ruby, .NET, MongoDB and more
Lots of MongoDB cluster administration. Oversaw a team migrating legacy solutions to serverless components in Azure. Plenty of Ruby and .NET. More DevOps than I should have been doing ;)
VB.NET, C#, Flash, Flex, AS3