Dan is available for hire

Dan Allen

Verified Expert in Product Management

Product Manager

Location

Marshall, VA, United States

Toptal Member Since

June 1, 2020

Dan has over 30 years of technology leadership experience in product management, agile coaching, agile project management, software/systems engineering, cloud transformation, and management consulting. Dan is a proven change agent and thought leader with real-world expertise in the application of product management and agile methods for startups as well as large scale enterprises.

Product Management Business Process Automation Product Owner Project Management Minimum Viable Product (MVP)Talent Management B2B B2B Product Management Product Consultant Technical Documentation Process Documentation Software as a Service (SaaS)Product Strategy Consultant Finance Product Manager SaaS Fractional CIO Interim CIO

Project Highlights

Financial Data Service Platform and Products

Led the design and development of a financial data services platform which includes three products: a mobile app for portfolio management, financial data widgets for investor relations portals, and data services APIs for direct data delivery.

Investor Portfolio Management Product with Machine Learning

Led the agile development team in the design and implementation the product MVP.

WiseWorks Virtual CTO/Agile Coach/Scrum Master/Product Manager

Developed and launched an SaaS-based business process modeling product.

Expertise

Agile Product Management Agile Project Management New Business Ventures Product Delivery Product Management Project Management Startups Technical Product Management

Work Experience

Senior Project and Product Manager | Agile Coach | Scrum Master

2019 - PRESENT

Toptal Projects

Project-managed the design and development, including DevOps of a product that allows high net worth individuals to build and optimize investment portfolios using machine learning.
Served as the product and project manager for three financial data services products: a data services platform, a mobile app for investors, and plugins for customer websites.
Acted as the project manager and scrum master to develop an ATM and branch locator service for a large bank holding company. The locator service conforms to the JSON API standard.

Executive Consultant

2016 - PRESENT

Alakai Solutions, LLC

Provided strategic go-to-market leadership, agile coaching, and agile project and DevOps management of the product team and an outsourced international development team (product and project manager, scrum master).
Provided technical leadership in selecting a new hosting platform and hybrid offshore development vendor for a custom home builder co-op portal solution.
Led the agile transformation initiative as an agile coach to implement agile processes for platform renovation and business transformation.
Served as a member of the board and chair of the technology committee for a privately-funded online builder-supplier eCommerce venture.

Executive Consultant

2013 - PRESENT

Newbold Advisors, LLC

Performed an IT service delivery assessment to improve client demand management, stakeholder engagement, and service quality. Integrated findings into recommendations for metrics and KPIs for inclusion in an executive-level monthly business report.
Worked with the technology leadership team to create a comprehensive strategic plan and roadmap in support of its wholesale banking and mortgage sub-servicing business.
Implemented a program and project portfolio management framework and tool using Innotas to facilitate portfolio management, resource management, and status reporting on roadmap execution. Established standardized tracking and reporting processes.
Developed a change management plan and target state design to restructure operational service delivery processes to drive the transformation of its technology platform, effectively respond to market demands, and rapidly increase business volume.
Provided virtual CIO, CTO, and CISO technology leadership for a startup venture providing oversight and guidance for IT strategy and planning, systems and software architecture, technology selection, information security, and program management.
Analyzed business processes, created a SWOT analysis, and provided observations and recommendations for process improvements and organizational redesign to improve quality, performance, and manage complexity for mid-Atlantic health insurance provider.
Provided multiple clients with advisory services related to the analysis of regulatory compliance issues to develop technical requirements, plans, and measures for IT solutions and compliance management.

Vice President for Enterprise Architecture

2010 - 2013

Fannie Mae

Established an enterprise architecture organization of 145 people with an annual operating budget of $24 million to drive target state architectures, technology standards, application rationalization, and IT roadmaps.
Worked with FHFA, enterprise risk, and leadership to remediate regulatory fundings (matters requiring attention) for enterprise architecture deficiencies in less than 12 months.
Secured $20 million of strategic funding to build centers of excellence for five enterprise shared platforms: business process management, business rules management, service-oriented architectures, enterprise architecture, and reconciliation.
Established a portfolio rationalization framework for applications and technology across the enterprise to prioritize investments, reduce costs, and drive architecture alignment, saving $15 million over three years.
Drove technical enterprise program governance to provide project assessments, enforce prescriptive guidance, evaluate technology construction permit criteria, and drive technology mandates.
Briefed the board of directors, senior executives, and regulators on portfolio rationalization, target state architecture, and infrastructure complexity.

CTO | Vice President of Technology Services

2005 - 2010

InterImage, Inc.

Transformed a technology organization from a low-margin tech staffing business with modest projects ($100,000 to $300,000 range) into an enterprise solutions provider with multimillion-dollar projects.
Grew the backlog from $8 million to more than $75 million through successful technical proposals, competitive pricing, and successful program execution–on schedule, in scope, and at or above target margins.
Improved profitability, increased annual revenue by 300%, and managed a 34-member technology team across five concurrent programs.
Created the vision, strategy, and tactics to align capabilities with current and future business opportunities.
Determined the optimal software and systems engineering processes to mitigate risk, speed development, and minimize time-to-value for solution delivery as well as obtain CMMI Level 2 certification.
Marketed capabilities through technical presentations at conferences and leadership in technical user communities.
Designed and delivered case management web application for US Naval Criminal Investigative Service to support 20,000 users worldwide with 99.9% availability. Implementation included the migration of business logic from legacy AS400 minicomputers.

Senior Manager

2004 - 2005

CACI, Inc.

Led software development process integration for the joint acquisition of AMS by CACI and CGI. Worked with leadership to divide software source code assets for product portfolio between organizations.
Implemented Rational Unified Process based tools, asset repositories, processes, end-user training, and software development standards.
Supported a team of 250+ developers building three government off-the-shelf (GOTS) products.

Vice President of Technology

2002 - 2004

Chelsea Interactive, Inc.

Rescued the launch of a $60 million multi-vendor eCommerce platform for Polo.com, Timberland.com, Maidenform.com, Elisabeth.com, ColeHaan.com, Ulta.com, Intershoe.com, and LizLange.com.
Restructured and led software engineering, operations, and QA teams to improve service delivery, reduce costs, manage vendors, and generate $40 million in annual sales.
Drove maintenance and enhancement of technology platform consisting of 15 production Broad Vision 6.0 application servers utilizing Oracle 9i RAC database servers.
Led the development of storefronts (client and server-side JavaScript) shared eCommerce platform components (C++ and Java), data warehouses, and business intelligence reports (micro-strategy).

Senior Scientist

2002 - 2002

CACI Technologies, Inc.

Served as the technical lead for the development of a helper tool library in support of electronic countermeasures (SIGINT) project.
Developed J2SE Swing object models and class libraries (JDK 1.3) for use by the project team.
Trained the development team on the use and extension of tools library.

Chief Technical Architect

2000 - 2002

Digex, Inc.

Led a 6-member enterprise integration team with a $2.1 million annual budget in the design and development of an enterprise application integration framework.
Developed enterprise application integration framework using for Siebel, PeopleSoft, Clarify, Remedy, Infranet, and numerous custom applications using webMethods.
Deployed MVP and trained technology teams on the use and extension of the platform for commercial and custom applications.

Director of Application Development

1999 - 2000

Clara Vista/CMGI Solutions, Inc.

Transformed the development capabilities from Microsoft ASP to n-tiered object-oriented solutions running on scalable platforms.
Implemented software design and development best practices and tools. Leveraged new capabilities to win a $2.4 million contract.
Led a 10-member team to design, develop, and deploy a cyber threat KBMS, workflow and an alerting system (ATG Dynamo Application Server, JHTML, Oracle 8i RAC) for a startup venture which was later acquired by Symantec.

Deputy Director of Information Technology

1998 - 1999

Mail2000, Inc.

Led a 15-member IT team with a $2.0 million budget in IT operations and infrastructure management for a startup venture.
Supported and enhanced a custom solution to consume mainframe print streams for financial statements to generate new digital mail pieces, segmented by delivery zip code, for printing at remote regional printing centers.
Built a mail processing system that enabled the optimal delivery of first-class mail using a distributed computing architecture to achieve lower postal rates and overnight mail delivery for 90% of its volume. It was subsequently acquired by UPS.

Principal Associate, Senior Software Engineer

1985 - 1999

CACI, Inc. – Federal

Provided technology innovation and thought leadership that transformed bleeding edge technology concepts into successful and profitable projects totaling more than $30 million in revenue.
Served as chief architect and technical lead for design, development, and deployment of 17 production applications.
Provided tooling and process integration for Requisite Pro, Rational Rose, and SQA Suite to enable the first CMM Level 3 certification for the firm.
Led a 10-member project team in the design and delivery of the global status of resources and training system (enhanced) input tool (GSORTS-E) for the joint chiefs of staff.
Migrated COBOL processing logic from US Army IBM mainframe to Windows PC Visual Basic application and SQL server database. Utilized 3rd party libraries to wrap IBM 3270 interfaces as a back end data for Visual Basic applications.

Project History

Financial Data Service Platform and Products

The financial data services platform focuses on capturing and standardizing financial and market information for companies listed on stock exchanges in the middle east. This data is then used to feed a mobile app for portfolio management, graph and table widgets for investor relations portals of the listed companies, and data delivery APIs for financial services institutions.

Investor Portfolio Management Product with Machine Learning

Led the agile development team in the design and implementation the product MVP.

Agile product and manager of a global team for the design and development (including DevOps) of product that allows high net worth individuals to build and optimize investment portfolios using machine learning. Investment models utilize machine learning to analyze financial and market data streams to identify optimal portfolio constituents to achieve investor objectives (Angular, Python, TensorFlow, Postgres, Google Cloud Platform).

WiseWorks Virtual CTO/Agile Coach/Scrum Master/Product Manager

Developed and launched an SaaS-based business process modeling product.

Provided strategic go-to-market leadership, agile coaching, agile project management, and DevOps management of the product team and outsourced international development team (product/project manager, scrum master) for https://www.wisedesign.net/. Cloud-hosted SaaS business modeling product launched in May of 2019.

Education

1995 - 1999

Master's Degree in Business Administration

Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA

1987 - 1991

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Marymount University - Arlington, VA

Collaboration That Works

How to Work with Toptal

Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.

Share your needs

Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.

Choose your talent

Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.

Start your risk-free talent trial

Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.

Top talent is in high demand.

Start hiring