Bogdan is available for hire
Hire BogdanBogdan Paun
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Location
Bucharest, Romania
Toptal Member Since
March 16, 2021
Bogdan is a technical product manager with diverse hands-on and strategic leadership expertise. With 11+ years of experience in the software industry, his roles progressed from support engineer, developer, and technology evangelist to the head of product and product strategy consultant. While most of Bogdan's experience is in B2B and enterprise applications and platforms, he also works with startups and established companies to define nimble product strategies and execute them efficiently.
Project Highlights
Online Course Authoring SaaS (via Toptal)
Led a newly formed team of developers and testers that enhanced the security of the product across both primary personas: course creators and course consumers. Also worked with the platform/infrastructure team to refine their backlog and roadmap.
Employee Engagement and Team Culture Social Network
Led a two-week product discovery and design project that ended with a prioritized feature backlog, including user experience suggestions and task estimations.
Fashion eCommerce Website
Developed an eCommerce website from scratch in 3-4 months, using Ruby on Rails, vanilla JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, MySQL, and Git.
Expertise
Work Experience
Product Strategy, Design, and Development Consultant
2015 - PRESENT
Self-employed
- Worked with small and medium-sized companies to define and refine their product strategies in the fields of human resources, productivity and business applications, eCommerce, insurance, wellness, and mental health.
- Enrolled and coordinated design and development partners on different projects.
- Spoke at product, design, and innovation events and meetups.
- Created a trusted brand for my consulting practice.
Principal Technical Product Manager
2019 - 2020
Axway
- Launched an e-invoicing and e-procurement product line from ideation to design of functional specs and oversight of MVP development in approximately three months.
- Improved customer satisfaction through better backlog prioritization and the introduction of a more efficient feature definition and development process.
- Doubled development velocity by actively addressing technical debt.
- Coordinated the planning, development, and testing of a new cloud-based product usage metrics system.
Director of Product
2018 - 2018
SpringCM
- Hired a team of two product managers, two UX designers, and one technical writer.
- Mentored three cross-functional product teams and integrated strategy into day-to-day research and development activities.
- Built a partner integration strategy that led to the company being acquired.
Head of Product
2016 - 2017
Ajusto
- Reached operational breakeven less than six months into starting the project from scratch through tight collaboration between product and marketing.
- Expanded the project with an overseas spin-off within nine months and performed dozens of user interviews.
- Interviewed, hired, and managed a team of four external engineers.
- Assisted with technical and product due diligence for an acquisition.
Product Manager
2015 - 2016
Oriel Ventures
- Built engaging and concise investor and sales pitch decks.
- Researched and developed a product pricing strategy, taking into consideration the competition and customer dynamics.
- Led the design of several landing pages and onboarding tutorials for new features.
Cloud Developer Evangelist
2014 - 2015
Oracle
- Quickly learned the core Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Oracle Cloud Platform offerings.
- Wrote articles and tutorials, showcasing the capabilities of Oracle products.
- Presented products and features at technology conferences and meetups.
Full-stack Software Engineer
2012 - 2013
Newsroom AI
- Built an SMS payments system within three months of starting the job.
- Improved the existing Braintree payments integration.
- Refactored and repurposed older software modules in Python, Django, and Angular.
Technical Support Engineer
2011 - 2012
Microsoft
- Rapidly integrated an experienced and highly technical team.
- Quickly grew competencies and responsibilities beyond initial expectations.
- Mentored new employees and worked on important customer accounts.
Escalation Group Engineer
2010 - 2012
Axway
- Assisted in resolving complex technical and situational problems as an escalation from previous levels of support.
- Collaborated with engineering to troubleshoot and debug delicate production issues.
- Mentored support teams on best practices and the technical intricacies of Axway software.
- Built a knowledge base with best practices and self-help information for Axway's customers and partners.
Project History
Online Course Authoring SaaS (via Toptal)
http://elucidat.com/Led a newly formed team of developers and testers that enhanced the security of the product across both primary personas: course creators and course consumers. Also worked with the platform/infrastructure team to refine their backlog and roadmap.
Elucidat is an eLearning authoring tool that lets course authors create dynamic and interactive courses for the healthcare, finance, and manufacturing industries. Its core features are tailored toward B2B and enterprise companies looking to create mainly internal training material.
Remote Employee Engagement App Prototype (With Teams, Slack, and HipChat Integrations)
Performed research, brainstorming, MVP requirements definition, and feasibility analysis, and built a working prototype in less than one week.
The app was meant to showcase how employee engagement on Slack, Teams, and other similar tools could be improved through the use of scheduled interactive messages, such as polls, health checks, and funny games. Along with a partner, I built a working prototype in a few days and showcased it to the customer.
Mobile Music Therapy App (Including Back-end Business Logic)
https://wavepaths.com/Researched, brainstormed, and defined the entire back-end logic and mobile application requirements, including development estimations and detailed UX designs, in less than 10 days.
The Wavepaths mobile app provided a complex and adaptive therapeutic music experience backed by extensive neuroscience research. The entire product management workload was less than 10 days, and it involved heavy research and system design along with constant communication with design, business stakeholders, and engineers. The end result was a product requirements document complete with UX design and engineering estimations. The most difficult task was to define the adaptive feedback and automated music customization algorithms.
Employee Engagement and Team Culture Social Network
https://cv30.co/Led a two-week product discovery and design project that ended with a prioritized feature backlog, including user experience suggestions and task estimations.
The platform was aimed at companies looking to strengthen their internal team cultures and employee engagement and job seekers looking for the perfect cultural fit. I stepped in when the owner of an existing employer branding business was looking for a way to grow their business and quickly assembled a team to work on this sprint-like design and strategy effort. The deliverables were high-fidelity mobile and desktop app mockups, estimates, and prioritized user stories.
Fashion eCommerce Website
https://aerwear.com/Developed an eCommerce website from scratch in 3-4 months, using Ruby on Rails, vanilla JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, MySQL, and Git.
When Shopify wasn't the default solution for small eCommerce websites (2012), I built an entire designer/fashion online shop, including a custom shopping cart, while learning Ruby on Rails. The site was live and stable until the owner switched to Shopify two years ago.
Education
2006 - 2010
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Polytechnic University of Bucharest - Bucharest, Romania
2006 - 2007
Coursework Toward Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Engineering
National Institute of Applied Sciences - Rouen, France
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