Dirk Wilfling
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
Toptal member since May 20, 2020
Dirk brings a wealth of experience in LLMs, such as Amazon Alexa and modern agentic products, as well as regulated markets, such as MedTech and fintech. Having worked extensively as an interim head of product, chief product officer, and chief operating officer, he has honed his ability to deliver high-quality, time-sensitive projects while rapidly integrating into new teams. Dirk also has experience in big data and API management.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- APIs
- Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT)
- International Expansion
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Product Vision
- Strategic Planning & Execution
- Two-sided Marketplaces
- Virtual Assistance
Work Experience
Head of Product
Self-employed
- Co-created an app collaborating with a distinguished psychologist designed to transform the behaviors of individuals dealing with obesity. This application nurtures positive changes in subconscious choices, leading to healthier eating habits.
- Spearheaded the development of a unique coaching platform, integrating extensive language models to generate a virtual coach bot. This bot mirrors the expertise and abilities of a real-life individual, offering personalized guidance and support.
- Built ProductVault, a large-language model (LLM)-based app that provides a comprehensive strategic plan by submitting a name, short description, and target industry.
- Acted as fractional CPO at Kapwork, a fintech startup focussing on factoring.
Owner
ProductVault
- Built Productvault.de from end to end. This includes the back-end Python app, the API integration with OpenAI, SendGrid, and AWS, database management, prompt engineering, and web hosting.
- Learned and mastered LLM APIs like ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc. Spent excessive time mastering prompt engineering to understand the output behavior of large language models.
- Built out Google Ads campaigns and email campaigns as a lead magnet.
Chief Operating Officer
MAXIS Medical
- Hired for and successfully led the change of all company processes and policies of a founder-led company to be ready for an M&A deal with a P/E firm.
- Increased the top line by 36% and the bottom line by 67%.
- Led the development and implementation of an innovative product strategy, crafting a unique service offering for startup clients that consistently outperformed traditional competitors.
- Played a key role in integrating regulated data handling processes, aligning with GDPR/HIPAA and ISO 13485.
- Conducted a full-scale operational audit across departments, uncovering inefficiencies that led to a 20% reduction in turnaround time through AI-driven process redesign.
Chief Product Officer
Pynk
- Led the entire product team, including junior product managers, developers, designers, and community managers.
- Worked as a part of the global leadership team, guiding Pynk strategically and operationally to set the organization up as a product-driven company and for growing ARR/ARPU.
- Participated in the leadership team, we led Pynk through the regulatory process with the UK FCA to successfully get an investment license for the app.
- Created gamification economics model and reward incentivization structure to reward users for in-app activities through a currency/tokenization strategy.
- Led an effort for an in-app timeline AI, which increased user engagement by 1848% through surfacing personalized in-app activities.
- Designed a regulatory-approved user experience to lead users from the unregulated gaming side to the regulated investor wallet side of the application.
CEO | Co-founder
Algoly.com
- Ideated, planned, and executed the product vision, including developing new technology to support our complex data management and API connection requirements.
- Built the entire development team from product managers, designers, developers, and researchers.
- Closed and integrated partner deals with a dozen data brokers; sourced, closed, and integrated multiple B2B customers.
- Built, for our no-code platform, a topology to translate a very technical topic into something a person who cannot code can understand and use.
- Led the successful fundraising of $250,000 from angels and venture capitalists.
Freelance Head of Product
Cloudmade
- Set the vision of their smart assistant product, which was meant to be showcased at CES 2019.
- Created, managed, and prioritized the roadmap to achieve the tight timeframe of six months in coordination with the expected requirements from leadership.
- Managed the scrum-organized development team of 15 people (PMs, designers, and engineers).
Head of Product Alexa Germany
Amazon
- Managed the introduction of 25+ product features, such as the Alexa calling function or frictionless Bundesliga (European football) live-streaming.
- Owned the CX, roadmap, and KPIs of the German Alexa, including working with teams to improve automated speech recognition, natural language understanding, entity resolution, and voice design.
- Authored and implemented the international Alexa BI strategy, including KPI creation, BI processes/tooling definition, and the subsequent scaling of the BI team.
- Managed, as part of the international executive team, all international rollouts by authoring the launch processes and best practices.
- Led the Alexa for kids effort, including COPPA and GDPR-compliant user interface, child-specific features, and parental settings.
Senior Product Manager
Amazon
- Managed and built two analytics products. Rolled it out from being used in one business unit in Germany to become a worldwide Amazon standard within all retail business units.
- Created a marketing plan to promote products, motivate tech teams, and get top management buy-in across multiple Amazon locales.
- Improved product success by continuously analyzing its performance via data mining, gathering user feedback, and managing the feedback loop with tech and business teams for further improvements.
Project History
Product Launch of Alexa Germany and UK
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=17934671011Led the successful user experience and local product development of the German and UK English-speaking Alexa (voice assistant).
I was the PM hire number 2 in Europe and hired a team of UX researchers, UX designers, QAs, and so on to develop it. We worked closely with speech scientists to develop the UK English and German voice and user experience. I was also part of the executive team to give the final go-to-market decision.
Post-launch, we delivered a 4+ star product rating and scaled the product from 0 to millions of users.
From Concept to Go to Market with Algoly.com
Ideated and executed the concept of Algoly as the startup's co-founder.
I created the concept, built a team around it, raised funding for it, and executed the product vision to market and initial commercial success.
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree in Business
Hult International Business School - San Francisco, CA, United States
Bachelor's Degree in Business
University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management - Frankfurt, Germany
Skills
Tools
Jira, Trello, Confluence, Atlassian Suite, Atlassian, ETL, Tableau, Slack, Zoom, GitHub, Sublime Text, HubSpot, Asana, AWS IAM, SendGrid
Paradigms
Agile, Scrum, Agile Product Management, Marketplace Platforms, B2C, Gamification, HIPAA Compliance
Industry Expertise
High-tech Startups, Automotive
Platforms
Heroku, Google Ads
Other
Strategic Planning & Execution, Product Vision, Market Fit, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Virtual Assistance, eCommerce, Product Management, Business Strategy, Digital Strategy, eCommerce Platforms, eCommerce Management, Strategy, Technology, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), API Integration, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), SQL, Distributed Team Management, Big Data, eCommerce UI, Two-sided Marketplaces, Web & Mobile Applications, Web Applications, Roadmaps, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Technical Product Management, Cost Estimation, Healthcare Software, Chief Operations Officer (COO), Automation, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), B2B, Go-to-market Plans, Go-to-market Strategy, Software, Software Design, APIs, API Design, Location-aware Technology, Business to Business (B2B), Microsoft Excel, Excel VBA, Creative Tech, Creative Strategy, Creative Thinking, Launch Strategy, Product Launch, Product Ownership, Company Strategy, Pricing Strategy, Onboarding, User Onboarding, Product Roadmaps, Partner Management, B2B Partnerships, Data Strategy, Data Structures, Process Design, Process Documentation, Data Processing, Digital Product Design, International Expansion, Technical Business Analysis, Voice of the Customer (VoC), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Adobe Photoshop, Miro, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Business Operations, Finance, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Seed Fundraising, Project Discovery, B2B Sales Management, Leadership, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Large Language Models (LLMs), Offshore Team Management, API Management, Machine Learning, Product Marketing, Amazon, Amazon DynamoDB, ChatGPT, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Midjourney, Prompt Engineering, Python 3, HTML, CSS, Team Building, Regulated Industries, Product Strategy, FDA & EPA Regulations, Medical Devices, Medical Product Manager, Accounting, Business Analytics, Reporting, Global Product Management, COPPA, Pyschology, Coaching
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