Ali is available for hire
Hire AliAli Daftarian
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Location
San Francisco, CA, United States
Toptal Member Since
November 9, 2018
Ali has diverse experience working at reputable companies to successfully deliver top-rated mobile applications, engaging web experiences, robust APIs in both B2B and B2C business models. Ali has extensive experience as an agile scrum product owner and has led teams to iteratively deliver at an increased velocity and high quality. Ali exhibits the right balance between being visionary and insisting on the subtle details that delight customers.
Project Highlights
Long Form Mortgage Lead Product
Led a new mortgage lead product from concept to launch that was sold at a premium and helped gain deep customer insights.
Greenhouse
Streamlined deposit allocation flow to provide a better customer experience.
2FA Services
Revamped password reset flow to improve customer conversion.
Expertise
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager
2021 - 2023
Quanata
- Partnered closely with design, research, data science, and engineering teams to develop delightful and impactful mobile app features powering behavior-based auto insurance.
- Leveraged data pipelines and back-end services to provide near real-time driving feedback and insightful stats to customers that resulted in increased user engagement.
- Ran A/B experiments that helped increase customer retention by 3% and reduce the risk of driving by 2%.
- Leveraged Amplitude cohorts and Salesforce marketing cloud to create personalized push and email communication journeys.
Product Management Consultant
2018 - 2020
Wells Fargo
- Helped lead key components of a banking product called Greenhouse, targeting the underbanked.
- Partnered closely with design and mobile engineering teams to develop the deposit allocation feature that helped customers better manage their money and budget for monthly expenses.
- Led cross-functional teams to provide the option for customers to fund new digital accounts using debit/credit cards.
- Partnered with the internal fraud team and CyberSource to implement fraud-mitigating solid controls.
Senior Product Manager
2016 - 2018
Freedom Financial Network
- Reported directly to the VP/GM and led all products of a $30 million mortgage lead generation business (Bills.com), including consumer-facing mobile and websites and APIs used for lead scoring and lead routing.
- Collaborated with UX and led the development of four new mortgage lead gen sites on mobile and web with 1 million monthly visitors, generating 100,000 high-intent monthly leads for mortgage providers.
- Served as a key leader in developing the customer experience and back-end framework to segment consumers into cohorts based on intent and benefit of refinancing into new loan options, resulting in 2x higher prices, maintaining the same lead quality.
- Built and led the ongoing infrastructure management, running 10+ new optimization experiments per month utilizing testing platforms like Optimizely, Intellimize, and in-house tools to increase online form conversion by 30%.
- Managed custom API integrations to securely and reliably send leads to mortgage providers while maximizing revenue and maintaining above-industry-average lead quality. Supported marketing in configuration and spend optimization of pixels in GTM.
Product Owner
2012 - 2016
Western Union
- Led the delivery of high-value features using agile methodologies. Owned the APIs powering consumers to send money through the web and native mobile apps.
- Spearheaded efficiency improvement for an API used for retrieving money transfer services and prices, supporting on average 30 transactions per second and resulting in a 25% faster load time on mobile and web.
- Enriched an understanding of customer behavior that resulted in optimization efforts by leveraging the data derived from monitoring tools and analytics, including SiteCatalyst, Tealeaf, and Splunk.
- Researched and defined business requirements for complex money transfers to reduce friction and provide a fantastic Omni-channel user experience for online and retail customers.
- Helped expand a product for cruise ship employees to receive their salary securely and efficiently, used by Carnival and other notable cruise lines. Helped launch the first native WU app in Australia.
- Was a key leader in building a two-factor authentication system used for customer verification and password reset. This achieved increased revenues of over $2 million annually that were previously lost income.
Product Manager
2010 - 2011
Simplikate
- Managed development and timely delivery of customized mobile apps with integration with content management systems for business clients that included Macerich, Triple Five, and Delivery.com.
- Led an Agile team of developers, quality assurance, and graphic designers and collaborated with the UX team for new feature design and user experience improvements.
- Managed product roadmap development, product milestones, development of functional requirements, technical specifications, and client management to ensure satisfaction.
- Achieved success with the delivery of five customized mobile apps on iOS and Android for small and large eCommerce clients that include West Edmonton Mall, Tysons Corner Center, Delivery.com, The Opp-Guide, and Paul Jr. Designs.
- Developed functional prototypes for pre-sales and diversified portfolios for post-sale opportunities. Phunware acquired the company in June 2014.
Business Analyst (MBA Intern)
2009 - 2009
Stitch Media
- Managed research and analysis on industry and competitors, similar product lines, with financial projects and capital planning.
- Developed a business analysis report that enabled the company to receive $600,000 in funding from the Canada Media Fund.
- Provided financial projections for new product offerings.
Project History
Long Form Mortgage Lead Product
https://youtu.be/6AHNxk2zKvULed a new mortgage lead product from concept to launch that was sold at a premium and helped gain deep customer insights.
Key leader in developing the customer experience and analytics framework to segment mortgage lead consumers into cohorts based on intent and benefit gained from refinancing, identifying the highest value consumers, and enabling the sales team to sell these leads as a premium product at a 2X price.
Greenhouse
Streamlined deposit allocation flow to provide a better customer experience.
Helped build and enhance money movement capabilities of a native mobile app including Zelle, mobile check deposit, and deposit allocation flow.
2FA Services
Revamped password reset flow to improve customer conversion.
I led scrum teams to develop services to support two-factor authentication specifically for revamping the password reset flow. The new flow helped improve customer conversion and save the company millions of dollars as a result of the reduction in drop-offs and few calls to customer support
Education
2008 - 2009
Master's Degree in Business Administration
Saint Marys University - Halifax, NS, Canada
2000 - 2004
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of British Columbia - Vancouver, BC, Canada
Certifications
MAY 2015 - PRESENT
Certified Yoga Instructor
Yoga to the People
APRIL 2015 - PRESENT
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Collaboration That Works
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