
Cristian Ureche
Product Manager
Cristian is a technical product manager with experience shipping tech products in more than 30 countries. He later became an entrepreneur and built an award-winning IoT startup pioneering PropTech and smart access technologies. He was invited out of 2,000 entrepreneurs to join the French Tech Ticket program in Paris for one year. Besides possessing expertise in AI, Cristian is well versed in the end-to-end product development cycle with an active and influential leadership style.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Health & WellnessInternational GrowthJiraResource SharingSmart CitiesValidationWireframingEducation
Select Certifications
Work Experience
Product Management Consultant
STRIML
- Helped business executives and startup founders transform their visions into pragmatic product initiatives.
- Determined product requirements and solution architectures for minimum viable product (MVP) experiments and growth stages.
- Contributed to building teams aligned with the company's objectives and supervised delivery.
- Defined customer discovery and validation strategies, prioritizing four types of customer interviews: exploratory, validation, satisfaction-oriented, and efficiency.
- Set competition analysis procedures focusing on the product team, customer base, design, brand, and speed of execution.
- Established growth, retention, engagement, user happiness, and revenue metrics.
- Conceived feedback loops to control the strategic direction of product development.
Senior Product Manager
Gartner (via Toptal)
- Started zero-to-one product development processes for the digital markets division's new initiatives.
- Led product enhancement initiatives by driving cross-department projects.
- Defined and prioritized product roadmaps in line with business objectives.
- Advised on recommendation engines using artificial intelligence.
- Proposed the A/B testing hypothesis for conversion rate optimization.
- Aligned stakeholders from different departments and divisions to meet business objectives and project timelines.
Senior Product Manager
LeadsPedia (via Toptal)
- Led B2B product development initiatives for next-generation performance marketing platforms.
- Advised on product suite enhancements based on industry trends and customer feedback.
- Helped the team migrate internal workflows from Kanban to Scrum.
Founder | Chief Product Officer
Parking+plus
- Defined and built a complete software suite, including mobile apps, a website, and a back office, sold in seven countries on four continents.
- Built a team of 15 talents and an ecosystem of more than 20 suppliers, including third-party software systems and hardware providers.
- Raised funds from investors and opened and managed business accounts in Latin America, the US, Europe, and the Middle East.
- Spearheaded three acceleration/incubation programs in Poland, Romania, and France.
- Won the Best IoT Startup for Business award in Romania in 2015.
- Received an invitation—out of 2,000 worldwide startups—to join the French Tech Ticket program in Paris for one year.
Member of the Innovation Group
Cluj IT Cluster
- Developed smart specialization strategies for cities in Romania and evangelized and framed open-data methodologies.
- Strengthened the positioning of Cluj-Napoca as a leading tech hub in Europe by involving in international conferences and events, delivering keynotes or acting as a panelist on topics related to smart cities and the automotive industry.
- Conceived educational curricula for ITC undergraduate students in Romania aligned with the market needs and technological trends.
Country Ambassador
Revolut
- Helped the company with its go-to-market strategy implementation in Romania, evangelizing the amazing product that made Revolut a unicorn.
- Collected market feedback and curated it in line with the company protocols.
- Attended company events and strengthened collaboration with other ecosystem stakeholders.
Presales Engineering Manager | Client Executive | Delivery Manager
PitechPlus
- Improved the bid-to-win ratio of the company by 20% and helped the sales team close a total of $15 million in contracts in three years.
- Managed a selective portfolio of strategic customers—including Publicis Groupe, Renault, Adecco, World Customs Organization, and TF1—on fixed-price and Agile contractual frameworks.
- Led a delivery unit of 35 technical talents, coaching talents on Agile methodologies.
- Drove handover procedures for projects of different sizes and stages, successfully ramping up new engineering teams.
- Supervised the successful transition of several projects from Waterfall to Scrum.
Assistant Professor
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
- Taught software engineering fundamentals and object-oriented programming principles using Java.
- Combined insights from the tech industry with the best theoretical practices to give students meaningful examples and project ideas.
- Mentored and coached graduate students concerning their software engineering career paths.
Software Developer
Business Logic Systems
- Built enterprise software platforms for mobile telecommunication operators such as Vodafone and Telstra.
- Participated in the conception of highly-scalable platform architecture design. The team was in charge of the largest Microsoft SQL database in the world at that time.
- Developed an enterprise product based on workflow engines.
Project History
NEOM Smart City
https://www.neom.com/Worked with the tech and digital sector of NEOM, a Saudi city being built in Tabuk Province in northwestern Saudi Arabia. It is planned to incorporate smart city technologies and function as a tourist destination.
Parking Plus
Led the product roadmap strategy and development of a B2B software platform for the parking industry launched in seven countries.
• French Tech Ticket Laureate, Paris 2017 – Selected out of 2,000+ worldwide startups
• Smart City Industry Awards, Bucharest 2016 – Best Mobility Solution
• Silicon Valley Open Doors, Dublin 2016 – Invited European Startup
• Best IoT Startup for Business, Bucharest 2015
• Panelist and Moderator for Smart City conferences, workshops, and exhibitions
Capterra Software Review Platform
https://www.capterra.com/Led product development from zero to one by coordinating product initiatives in collaboration with product design, tech, content operations, analytics, and branding teams.
Cristalco
http://cristalco.com/en/Led a business consultation for a CRM or ERP system recommendation.
Mntrni
Led product-market fit initiatives and the migration to a new software team, managing the product development and the lifecycle retention framework.
I handled product road mapping and planning and managed the transition between different engineering teams, addressing technical depth. I also proposed a retention lifecycle framework optimization and customer journey enhancement.
Filae (formerly Genealogie)
http://www.filae.com/Led the database redesign and data migration toward a modern normalized SQL structure.
Cluj-Napoca Brained City
https://www.clujit.ro/Led the mobility vertical of the first Romanian smart city project developed and implemented in Cluj-Napoca.
Smart Access Box
Led the product design and development of Smart Access Box devices and the software platform.
Education
PhD in Image Processing Using Optimization Algorithms (AI-style)
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca - Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Bachelor's Degree in Telecommunications and Digital Networks
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca - Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Certifications
Inbound Sales
HubSpot Academy