Brad Allen
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Oakland, CA, United States
Toptal member since May 16, 2022
Brad is a product leader specializing in eCommerce and building data products for Fortune 500 companies. He has worked with Uber's machine learning infrastructure team and Shopify's machine learning product team. Brad also spent three years in leading roles at BCG's GAMMA AI practice. He has built numerous zero-to-one products and infrastructures and his products are generating hundreds of millions in value. Brad's commercial success is backed by an MBA from Stanford University.
Expertise
- Apache Spark
- Core ML
- GitHub
- Machine Learning Operations (MLOps)
- Python 3
- Scikit-learn
- Taxonomy
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager
Shopify
- Developed the vision, strategy, and 2022 investment plan as the product manager for the 17-person product understanding team focused on generating controlled, structured metadata for workflow automation and cross-merchant use cases, such as search.
- Led the global release of the Shopify Product Taxonomy into desktop and mobile (iOS, Android) applications and Admin API. Within one quarter, 500,000 merchants labeled 18 million products, enabling improved tax collection and marketplace discovery.
- Launched the first external use case for LinNet, an image and text embedding-based product classification algorithm. ML feedback led to a redesign expected to increase coverage by 40% and enhance internal trust and safety in recommender products.
Senior Product Manager
Tecton
- Consulted for a Sequoia and A16Z-funded ML data management startup founded by the team that created Michelangelo, Uber's ML platform.
- Created Managed Free Trial, a product that allows potential customers to test the platform. Product-led sales decreased customer conversion time by 50% and increased the conversion rate five-fold, from 13% to around 65%, while revenue tripled.
- Built market research and signals into the product strategy, go-to-market, and sales as the company scaled from stealth to a Series B raise.
Data Product Manager
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
- Customized a CRM application for a United States commercial bank that reduced churn by 8% and increased profit by around $35 million per year. Development involved ML practices, including model deployment, validation, and monitoring.
- Led a 12-person team to scale an ML-based clearance pricing algorithm in a price optimization application for a global retailer serving ten markets in three continents. Improved pricing and workflow are expected to create a $50 million annual profit.
- Developed a campaign targeting application for a global telecom that personalized marketing campaigns for third-party offerings, resulting in a 300% lift in the purchase rate and a $10+ million increase in revenue per year.
Project History
Launched the Shopify Taxonomy
https://shopify.dev/changelog/introducing-standardized-and-custom-product-types-to-graphql-admin-apiLed the global release of the Shopify Product Taxonomy into desktop and iOS and Android applications and Shopify Admin API.
Product-led Sales Motion for MLOps Company
Launched Managed Free Trial, a product that allows potential customers to test the Tecton platform, a feature store for production machine learning.
Developed Machine Learning Product Course at Stanford
Created From Insights to Applications, a two-credit course on how to create value from data in business.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Stanford University - Stanford, CA
Skills
Tools
Slack, GitHub
Other
Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Apache Spark, Scikit-learn, eCommerce, Google Meet, Core ML, Python 3, Taxonomy, Teaching, Machine Learning
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