Robert Tan
Verified Expert in Engineering
Data Science & Product Manager Developer
Toronto, ON, Canada
Toptal member since October 3, 2018
Robert has 3+ years of experience as a product manager and 7+ years as a data scientist for Fortune 500 firms. He has served clients such as Pearson Airport, Cadillac Fairview, and Oxford Properties and developed expert insight into B2B SaaS. He is now the founder and CEO of High Point, helping leaders in B2B SaaS understand their data, customers, and data systems to make high-conviction decisions.
Portfolio
Experience
- Data Science - 10 years
- SQL - 10 years
- Marketing Analytics - 8 years
- Product Management - 4 years
- Redshift - 3 years
- R - 3 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 2 years
- RStudio Shiny - 1 year
Preferred Environment
Git, Linux, MacOS, Windows, RStudio, Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The most amazing...
...thing I've done is securing seed financing from Elon Musk!
Work Experience
Founder/Chief Data Scientist
High Point Insight
- Performed market research for a successful Canadian founder looking to disrupt midmarket CPA firms with AI Agents.
- Partnered marketing team to advise on visualizing public product benchmark metrics.
- Partnered with the CCO and CEO of a PE-backed US firm to conduct customer churn prediction.
- Partnered with the president and CEO to conduct customer segmentation for a B2B SaaS.
Marketing Data Strategist
Asset Panda LLC - Marketing
- Identified and defined distinct customer segments based on how they utilized the product.
- Pinpointed several key industries with significant untapped market potential to inform future growth strategies.
- Discovered that the most common use cases were not always the most valuable, revealing that more specialized applications led to stronger customer loyalty and business impact.
- Analyzed the relative value of each segment, highlighting which groups demonstrated greater long-term value and higher retention rates.
Data/AI Product Manager
Wave Apps
- Led the 0-1 product vision, strategy, and roadmap of data/AI products. Identified and prioritized 18 AI product use cases across eight functions (e.g., bookkeeping and knowledge copilots).
- Won the executives' buy-in and collaborated with 11+ cross-functional stakeholders across marketing, sales, engineering, and design and got buy-in from C-suite, directors, and VPs across core business lines and functions such as P&C and engineering.
- Identified and prioritized four highest-value use cases through analyzing JTBD, launching surveys, interviewing executives and vendors, analyzing industry players, and leveraging 14 years of financial and firmographic data.
- Partnered with machine learning engineers to drive strategic build/buy decisions with vendors like Google Vertex and AWS, focusing on viability and feasibility.
Product Manager
Wave Apps
- Led a team of 15 engineers, designers, and operations to grow a SaaS business by $2 million in annual recurring revenue.
- Spearheaded the discovery and delivery of an independently identified new product opportunity that amplifies user growth by 20% annually.
- Directed key recommendations and negotiations for directors and VPs over a $15 million deal.
Senior Data Insights Analyst
Wave Apps
- Proactively identified growth opportunities and persuaded the CEO to change the definition of the business's target customer (R, SQL). Guided product to improve product engagement and increased retention from low to mid 90%.
- Recognized as the subject matter expert and tapped by the VP of product to consult product and marketing teams over strategic efforts to identify leading indicators of user success and failure.
- Drove recommendations over amplifying revenue growth by 20% annually through business modeling of proactively identified opportunities.
Senior Data Analyst
Aislelabs Inc.
- Identified the opportunity to raise net profits by 1.54% ($17 million NPV) for Pearson Airport by mathematically optimizing flight-gate assignment to place affluent passengers closer to luxury retail.
- Pioneered microtargeting marketing for 31 malls (on average, $764 million sales and 14 million visitors) by developing customer-level data dashboards and presented this capability to marketing executives.
- Served as the sole analyst using the R statistical language to mine insights for Oxford Properties ($45 billion), Cadillac Fairview ($29 billion), and Pearson Airport (top 0.1% busiest airport).
- Supported the account management team with ad-hoc data manipulation to increase team efficiency.
- Developed data dashboards for large property management firms.
Consultant | Analytics
Various
- Led recommendation and advisory for Queen's University (Top 1 University in Canada). Guided the dean of medical school and department heads over a go/no-go decision for an eight-figure deal.
- Spearheaded the creation of an exit strategy directly with the CEO of a city's top 10 largest property management firm.
- Backtested financial trading algorithms on 4700 equities in collaboration with back-end Java developers and improved trading effectiveness by 17%.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Commerce - Marketing
Queen's University - Canada
Certifications
Data Science Specialization
Datacamp Inc.
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Ggplot2, Tidyverse, Google Maps API, NumPy, TensorFlow
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite, InVision, Adobe Photoshop, Plotly, ChatGPT, Claude, GIS, Tableau, Google Bard, Git, Jira, Microsoft Copilot, Claude Code
Languages
CSS, SQL, R, Python, JavaScript, Bash, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
Frameworks
RStudio Shiny
Paradigms
Functional Programming, Anomaly Detection, Automation, Business Intelligence (BI)
Platforms
RStudio, Windows, MacOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gephi, Linux, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Vertex AI
Industry Expertise
Applied Statistics, Healthcare
Storage
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redshift
Other
Data Analysis, Marketing Analytics, Data Mining, Data Processing, Machine Learning, Business Strategy, Data Science, Software Development, Product Management, Data Scraping, Data Analytics, Analytics, Data Manipulation, Reporting, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Acquisitions, SaaS Product Management, Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, Pricing Strategy, Product Launch, SaaS, Training, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Competition Research, Competitive Analysis, Competitive Intelligence, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Market Research, Market Research & Analysis, Market Research Analyst, Data Strategy, Customer Experience, Data Visualization, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Performance Metrics, Product Consultant, Product Strategy Consultant, Data Analysis Consultant, Data Analytics (Marketing), Business to Business (B2B), Software as a Service (SaaS), Marketing Analytics, Data, Statistics, Supervised Learning, Time Series, Time Series Analysis, AI Model Training, Model Validation, Predictive Maintenance, Time Series Data, Customer Discovery, Use Case Analysis, Leadership, Data Analytics, Financial Modeling, Data Engineering, Forecasting, Predictive Analytics, Network Visualization, Neural Networks, Predictive Modeling, Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Coaching, Workshops, Product Strategy, User Experience (UX), Market Opportunity Analysis, AI Consulting, AWS Cloud Architecture, Project Management, Agile Product Management, Data Governance, Data Stewardship, Gemini, AI Product Management, OpenAI, AI Strategy Development, AI Integration, Optimizely, Mathematics, Unsupervised Learning, Statistical Methods, Sensor Data, Monte Carlo Analysis, OpenAI, Image Analysis, Performance Marketing, Product Management, B2B, Customer Interviews, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Validated User Research, Pricing Strategy, Team Leadership, Pricing Models, Dashboards, Business Intelligence (BI), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Bayesian Inference & Modeling, OpenAI GPT-4 API, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Recommendation Systems, Llama 3, AI Agents
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