Ahmad is available for hire
Hire AhmadAhmad Al-Shagra
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Location
Muscat, Muscat Governorate, Oman
Toptal Member Since
July 22, 2022
Ahmad is a serial entrepreneur and growth product manager, offering 10+ years of industry success in bringing products to market. He creates value by evolving ideas into digital products through innovation, developing the product to achieve product-market fit, and then growing the impact of the product to the largest possible audience. Ahmad enjoys helping organizations with innovation, growth, and product.
Project Highlights
Saudi.codes
Delivered a program to train one million Saudi Arabians how to code within 100 days, including program design and technical program management.
Nawasi (TMS)
Led the positioning and pre-sales process, including business and functional requirements gathering, Agile design, and development implementation.
Intajy
Founded a product-centric startup in the edtech SaaS vertical targeting B2C, B2B, and B2B2C, achieving 40x growth within two years.
Expertise
Work Experience
Principal Consultant
2021 - PRESENT
Liminus OU
- Led product strategy for several organizations in social commerce, eCommerce, insurtech, and others, which resulted in consistent double-digit month-on-month growth.
- Facilitated complexity for multiple stakeholder groups, resolving general organizational strategy conflicts.
- Developed go-to-market strategies for high-growth eCommerce startups.
Product Management Nanodegree Session Lead
2021 - PRESENT
Udacity
- Delivered training sessions and mentorship for PMND students in KSA.
- Designed and developed role-playing scenarios with different nano degree session leads using the ADDIE framework.
- Performed mentoring and coaching for cohort students on job applications and how to develop a presentable and relevant resume for successful graduates.
- Maintained a 5/5 star rating throughout the program.
Mentor | Advisor
2018 - 2022
Flat6labs
- Trained and mentored several education technology early stage startup founders on setting OKRs.
- Led strategy facilitation sessions with the founding team on GTM and Business Development.
- Trained and mentored early stage startups on product management.
Freelance Product Lead
2021 - 2021
Sehteq
- Collaborated with the board and senior management to design a digital transformation strategy.
- Facilitated several successful value chain and strategic mapping sessions for the leadership team to identify investment opportunities.
- Interviewed product and engineering teams to map organizational artifacts, skills, heuristics, experience, and natural abilities for the recruitment drive.
- Managed handover of major telco projects, from customer major conflict post-launch to redesigning roadmap and communication plan.
- Partnered with the leadership team to design a financial model during capital raising activities.
Co-founder and Product Growth
2017 - 2020
Intajy
- Led a project team for 1+ million Saudi Arabians on how to code in 100 days.
- Drove product marketing for core SaaS business that delivered steady MoM growth for 10+ million lessons, 4+ million quizzes, and 700,000 courses to date.
- Shipped and scaled blended learning platform on three infrastructures and four platforms, resulting in 84% market growth.
- Achieved around $800,000 in sales within 12 months of launch.
- Launched three new products in two years, resulting in a 30% increase in sales YoY.
- Led the design and implementation of Intajy LMS B2C funnel and nurtured automation feature resulting in a 400% increase in leads YoY.
- Owned product marketing strategy, including go-to-market plans, positioning, and messaging.
- Led the product conceptualization, ideation, discovery, delivery, and validation.
- Implemented the HEART and JTBD-driven product management and marketing.
- Launched Rafid, a K12 and higher education Arabic blended learning management system in two markets.
Co-founder and Product Growth Manager
2014 - 2019
Nadrus
- Managed a successful acquisition of Nadrus by an industry leader.
- Took idea from a concept and led two internal teams and one partner team to bring B2B product to the market.
- Acquired 60% of the market share in UAE driving license training within 24 months.
- Grew the user base to 100,000 within one year of the launch using content-driven marketing.
- Performed hypothesis generation and validation for over 70 hypotheses to achieve product market fit.
- Leveraged beta testing with SauceLabs and Optimizely, data analytics with Kissmetrics, and user research through focus groups to improve stickiness by 20%.
Mentor
2017 - 2018
OTF Wadi Accelerator
- Trained and mentored several edtech early-stage startup founders on setting OKRs.
- Led strategy facilitation sessions with the founding team on GTM and Business Development.
- Trained and mentored early-stage startups on product management.
Product Manager
2013 - 2014
Exceeders
- Surveyed more than 5,000 government employees during deployment.
- Conducted customer interviews for hypothesis validation and MVP feature set.
- Championed customer experience through subject matter expert testimonials and communication.
Regional Training Manager
2012 - 2014
Exceeders
- Doubled the training unit revenue in the first 12 months.
- Led the design and implementation of multiple 1-year technical development plans of 12 trainers in various industry standards and certifications.
- Implemented and designed a data-driven trainer income incentive policy, which led to an improvement of 30% in internal and customer satisfaction levels.
- Led the design and implementation of a remote 4-month recruitment program for a full team of 12 engineers for the Baghdad branch.
Product Manager
2012 - 2012
Exceeders
- Improved 10x on core pre-sales KPI velocity in delivering simple proposal and complicated proposal categories, maintaining consistent internal SLA.
- Contributed to a 40% revenue increase within implemented units over a 12-month period.
- Led the ideation, design, prototyping, and implementation of MVP for an internal product.
Trainer
2010 - 2012
Exceeders
- Delivered 5-10 week training programs to 15 groups of 150+ people with a 9/10 or higher acceptance rate.
- Redesigned a part of the training program to accommodate entry-level .NET developer backgrounds.
- Delivered SQL Server environment health checks for several customers.
Editor for Middle East Region
2010 - 2011
TheNextWeb
- Planned, coordinated, and revised material for publication across TNW ME and TNW global blog.
- Set TNW ME content development strategy and measure success KPIs.
- Contributed to several exclusive interviews and breaking events, such as the launch of Wamda.com.
- Established TNW ME as the leading tech blog on Middle East startups as verified through investor monthly board mentions.
Product Specialist
2009 - 2010
Business Optimization Consultants
- Participated in two major company product roadmaps.
- Researched, designed, and presented a pitch for stakeholders on toosal.com, an early low-cost carrier flight search engine, which led to them investing in the project.
- Coordinated pre-sales and delivery activities on several projects across sales, design, and development teams.
Project History
Saudi.codes
https://twitter.com/i/events/1094604350834511872Delivered a program to train one million Saudi Arabians how to code within 100 days, including program design and technical program management.
Saudi.codes is an educational initiative designed to teach people computer programming in an accessible and relevant way. It taught 1,025,971 Arabic speakers in Saudi Arabia and 139 in other countries to code in three programming languages—JavaScript, Python, and MakeCod—over the span of 100 days.
As the technical product manager, I worked with the engineering team to facilitate predictable releases in a highly scalable Azure production environment supported by distributed services running on AWS.
The project included the platform's first introduction of social learning in a blended learning model, partially synchronous. It received global accolades and multiple national awards within Saudi Arabia.
Key activities
• Gathered requirements and documentation.
• Performed customer development and created JTBD documents for features.
• Carried out the QA of learning content according to instructional design
• Defined the project KPIs.
• Designed and implemented part of the data visualization dashboards using Metabase.
• Worked with the engineering to improve DevOps and the Azure team to scale.
• Collaborated with the customer marketing team to define and deliver features to increase retention, growth, and engagement.
As the technical product manager, I worked with the engineering team to facilitate predictable releases in a highly scalable Azure production environment supported by distributed services running on AWS.
The project included the platform's first introduction of social learning in a blended learning model, partially synchronous. It received global accolades and multiple national awards within Saudi Arabia.
Key activities
• Gathered requirements and documentation.
• Performed customer development and created JTBD documents for features.
• Carried out the QA of learning content according to instructional design
• Defined the project KPIs.
• Designed and implemented part of the data visualization dashboards using Metabase.
• Worked with the engineering to improve DevOps and the Azure team to scale.
• Collaborated with the customer marketing team to define and deliver features to increase retention, growth, and engagement.
Nawasi (TMS)
Led the positioning and pre-sales process, including business and functional requirements gathering, Agile design, and development implementation.
Nawasi is a blended education training and learning management system with the following modules:
1. Instructional collaboration workflows
2. Content management
3. Virtual and physical learning event management
4. Internal faculty and student calendar
5. Facility utilization and allocation management
6. Online learning management system
7. Learning management interface's cross-platform for mobile, tablet, and web
Key activities
• Designed business requirements elicitation process and procedures.
• Reviewed and edited 225 business BABOK-formatted requirements from 54 interviews of 12 different user roles.
• Managed the cross-functional project with a partner, customers, internal team, and third-party contractor.
• Led the technology stack selection analysis and selection on mobile and desktop.
• Delivered the Agile Three Amigos meetings for UX mapping approval sessions internally and externally.
• Led the platform branding conceptualization, design, and implementation.
1. Instructional collaboration workflows
2. Content management
3. Virtual and physical learning event management
4. Internal faculty and student calendar
5. Facility utilization and allocation management
6. Online learning management system
7. Learning management interface's cross-platform for mobile, tablet, and web
Key activities
• Designed business requirements elicitation process and procedures.
• Reviewed and edited 225 business BABOK-formatted requirements from 54 interviews of 12 different user roles.
• Managed the cross-functional project with a partner, customers, internal team, and third-party contractor.
• Led the technology stack selection analysis and selection on mobile and desktop.
• Delivered the Agile Three Amigos meetings for UX mapping approval sessions internally and externally.
• Led the platform branding conceptualization, design, and implementation.
Intajy
Founded a product-centric startup in the edtech SaaS vertical targeting B2C, B2B, and B2B2C, achieving 40x growth within two years.
Intajy is a leading Arabic e-learning SaaS service on the web, tablet, and mobile. It empowers Arabic-speaking educators and organizations to deliver high-quality online training courses synchronously, asynchronously, and blended.
Key activities
• Led the proto-persona building process.
• Supervised the building of the product roadmap.
• Set the company strategy.
• Acted as the product manager for SaaS automated deployment sales funnel.
• Designed and implemented product-driven lead generation for growth that led to 80% of leads.
• Led omnichannel sales strategy generating $800,000 within 12 months of launch.
Key activities
• Led the proto-persona building process.
• Supervised the building of the product roadmap.
• Set the company strategy.
• Acted as the product manager for SaaS automated deployment sales funnel.
• Designed and implemented product-driven lead generation for growth that led to 80% of leads.
• Led omnichannel sales strategy generating $800,000 within 12 months of launch.
Education
2004 - 2007
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems Engineering
University of Sunderland - Online
Certifications
MAY 2021 - PRESENT
Product Management Nanodegree
Udacity
Collaboration That Works
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
1
Share your needs
Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2
Choose your talent
Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3
Start your risk-free talent trial
Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring