Austin Wilson, Product Manager in Seattle, WA, United States
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Austin Wilson

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Seattle, WA, United States

Toptal member since October 19, 2021

Bio

Austin has almost three decades of product management and product marketing experience at Amazon and Microsoft. He led product management teams focused on consumer-facing features, including the experience with consumer electronics for Amazon retail, the authentication experience for Amazon customers, and the Amazon Renewed customer experience. Austin is an expert at concise business writing and enjoys working with teams that solve challenging customer problems.

Project Highlights

The Revamp of the Amazon Renewed Customer Experience and Business
Spearheaded the product management team to relaunch the Amazon Renewed brand and business.
The Feature Ownership of BitLocker
Owned product management for BitLocker, the Windows feature that encrypts all Windows disks.
Amazon Consumer Electronics – Customer Experience
Spearheaded product management for the end-to-end CX for consumer electronic devices on Amazon.com.

Expertise

Work Experience

Senior Manager | Technical Product Management

2012 - 2021
Amazon.com
  • Led a team of product managers who built the roadmap to make it easy for Amazon customers to discover, compare, and purchase consumer electronics, such as laptops and mobile phones. Created the 2020 and 2021 plans for a 100-person organization.
  • Spearheaded a team of product managers on the identity team who built the 2019 and 2020 authentication roadmap for all consumer-facing Amazon services, including Amazon.com, Kindle, and Fire TV.
  • Owned product management for the Amazon Renewed business and grew it four times in one year.
  • Headed Amazon home services product management from it being a hypothesis that customers wanted to get trusted assembly and installation services along with their products through the initial experiments and then the 2015 launch.

Director of Product Management

2004 - 2011
Microsoft
  • Led a product management and product marketing team for the Windows ecosystem. The team's purpose was to get external developers to build high-quality software for the Windows operating system.
  • Headed the product management team to drive the business requirements with the Windows 8 engineering and planning teams. Conducted executive reviews for key Windows 8 deliverables, including the vision documents and vision press releases.
  • Spearheaded a Windows security product management team to define features that would make future releases of Windows more secure. Owned a feature definition and naming of BitLocker, the Windows full volume encryption feature.

Managing Consultant

1994 - 2004
Microsoft
  • Led sales engagement for security solutions in Microsoft's US central region, reporting to the vice president of the central region sales. Developed and executed the strategy for getting enterprise customers to a more secure state.
  • Directed sales of security service offerings in the US consulting organization. Supervised security consulting engagements. Drove go-to-market strategy and solution offerings for Windows Server, Active Directory, and exchange in the central region.
  • Managed a team of twelve consultants based in Kansas City, split between infrastructure and application development consulting. Optimized consultant utilization to over 90% and customer satisfaction ratings to a 4+ out of five ratings.
  • Led Active Directory and Novell competitive pre-sales efforts for the US central region. Won the "Win in the NOS Space" National Sales Award. Worked with enterprise customers to sell the Windows 2000 Server platform and Active Directory.

The Revamp of the Amazon Renewed Customer Experience and Business

http://amazon.com/renewed

Spearheaded the product management team to relaunch the Amazon Renewed brand and business.

Renewed products on Amazon give customers the option of choosing like-new products at 20% or more off the list price of equivalent new items. My team owned this business's customer experience (CX) and profit and loss statement (P&L), and it increased four times in one year. I presented a critical insight to senior management: customers wanted to see renewed items shown side-by-side with new ones. There was resistance to this idea, but I managed to get an experiment approved by Amazon's hardlines division's senior vice president. The experiment's success was measured by an increase in conversion versus similar products with no renewed equivalent. Getting approval to launch these features was vital for the business to grow four times in one year.

The Feature Ownership of BitLocker

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/bitlocker/bitlocker-overview

Owned product management for BitLocker, the Windows feature that encrypts all Windows disks.

BitLocker Drive Encryption is a data protection feature for Windows that integrates with the operating system and addresses the threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen, or inappropriately decommissioned computers. It was initially delivered in the enterprise SKU of Windows Vista and is now part of all versions of Windows 10 and 11. I owned product management of the feature when it was under development. I suggested the BitLocker name, which Microsoft trademarked, and it was the anchor feature of the Windows enterprise SKU, which also debuted with Windows Vista.

Amazon Consumer Electronics – Customer Experience

https://www.amazon.com/electronics

Spearheaded product management for the end-to-end CX for consumer electronic devices on Amazon.com.

The team I led was made it easier for Amazon customers to discover, compare, and affordably purchase consumer electronics, such as mobile phones, laptops, and televisions. I had a team of ten product managers who owned features such as comparison widgets in the search experience and on product detail pages. These interstitials help customers find compatible accessories for the product that they are purchasing. In addition, the team owned the delivery of features, including trade-in and financing to make consumer electronic devices more affordable.
1984 - 1988

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Information Systems

Missouri State University - Springfield, Missouri

Tools

Slack, Zoom

Other

Product Management, Team Management, Microsoft Office, Windows, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, eCommerce, Technical Product Management, Writing & Editing, Amazon Chime, Software Development, Product Marketing, Sales Engineering, User Experience (UX), SaaS Product Management, Integration, Finance, Business, Distributed Team Management, Product Strategy Consultant, Go-to-market Strategy

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