Jamie Conklin
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Charlottesville, VA, United States
Toptal member since July 22, 2019
For the past 18 years, Jamie has bridged the gap between users, developers, and leaders to create insightful analytical and educational applications. Jamie has extensive experience working in data science, spatial analytics, software development, program management, and executive leadership in the commercial, intelligence, defense, and educational sectors. A divergent thinker, he readily translates ideas across domains to find innovative solutions to challenging problems.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Big Data
- Data Science
- Education Technology (Edtech)
- Product Management
- Remote Sensing
- Software Engineering
- Technical Product Management
- Technical Program Management
Work Experience
VP of Product
Astraea
- Led implementation of new B2B SaaS that resulted in a Series A investment after only eight months of applying lean startup development methodology.
- Instituted application monitoring to capture product analytics metrics (KPI), test hypotheses, and inform decisions, which reduced exit rates by up to 80%.
- Designed and led the development of eCommerce integration, customer support integration, and part of CRM integration.
- Aligned development efforts to achieve strategic objectives while balancing efficiency, completeness of vision, quality, and speed-to-market to reduce stress on development teams and delivery time by up to two weeks.
- Forged cross-functional alignment using oral and written communication. Employed roadmaps, use cases, business canvases, and other artifacts to document and maintain shared understanding with stakeholders.
- Implemented an early-stage product development process to identify customer needs through interviews and market research, craft value propositions, and design customer experiences. Reduced time to discover product-market fit and implement MVPs.
- Conducted and evaluated user testing studies to understand behavior and identify user experience issues.
- Designed and led the implementation of a suite of geospatial AI platform to leverage the power of satellite imagery to support the energy transition in the US.
- Conducted extensive customer outreach to identify needs and determine how to optimally incorporate those as product features in the roadmap.
- Applied Lean product development methodology, articulated value proposition, structured go-to-market strategy, and fueled commercialization that inspired the remaining Series A investment.
Vice President of Product
Scitent, Inc.
- Designed a SaaS testing product capable of a positive ROI with only two clients in 20 months and drove sales for these clients.
- Analyzed build vs. buy opportunities to save over $150,000 in development costs.
- Developed a new service offering to pair with an in-house learning management system (LMS), resulting in a 3x increase in qualified leads.
- Acquired five new enterprise customers with sales engineering and proposal writing support, doubling the sales closure rate.
Vice President of Operations
Scitent, Inc.
- Spearheaded software/content development and project management.
- Developed a new service offering which opened up over 20 new opportunities to the company and resulted in a major shift in the company’s strategy.
- Aligned technical and non-technical teams by bridging communication gaps.
- Acquired new customers with sales engineering and proposal writing support resulting in a 33% increase in our customer base.
- Slashed annual IT spending by over 35% by reviewing software and hardware spending.
- Reorganized the company and formulated a new budget for more efficient operations at the board of directors' request.
Director of Business Development
Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc.
- Prioritized and coordinated business development activities.
- Served as a high-level product manager for multiple spatiotemporal threat prediction programs.
- Wrote numerous winning proposals winning millions of dollars of research work for the company; many of these programs are still operational.
- Defined and managed internal research and development efforts.
- Collaborated with users to identify needs in the market and translated these needs into proposals and software designs.
Director of Operations
Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc.
- Drove company growth from 6 in 2006 to 115 in 2017.
- Managed a portfolio of 12 contracts worth over $4 million in development services annually.
- Spearheaded strategic planning with company leadership.
- Advocated for and defined a product owner role within the company.
- Led over 200 interviews to grow our teams in support of new work.
- Conducted trade-off studies, selected systems, and implemented numerous software systems smoothly and efficiently.
- Managed hiring and staffing across over 20 projects.
- Led the development of the first cloud-native geospatial database, GeoMesa, now used by the US Government for real-time, global tracking of all maritime and air vessels. Drove productization for commercial offerings and expanded government utilization.
- Led a highly selective hiring process for over 150 engineers, data scientists, and program managers. Fostered a culture of respect, honesty, and technical excellence.
Program Manager | Product Manager
Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc.
- Prioritized the development of features for a second-generation threat-prediction system.
- Deployed a spatial predictive analysis tool to Iraq and collaborated with deployed soldiers to further refine design and feature set to align with operational needs.
- Served as the voice of the customer to the development team helping the design features that met the user's needs.
- Proposed and won new contracts to continue research efforts.
- Applied Agile management techniques to track and manage numerous technical projects.
- Grew threat prediction programs by 40 times and opened up work with several new clients.
Research Scientist
The University of Virginia
- Led the Predictive Technology Lab in crime and threat prediction-based work.
- Delivered crime-analysis tools with spatial-prediction tools to a law enforcement software developer.
Senior Systems Engineer
Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc.
- Designed and developed a web app to predict the location of future asymmetric warfare events.
- Refined prediction algorithms to improve threat prediction performance and identify key predictive features resulting in improved accuracy and reduced processing time.
- Collaborated with users to design a user interface that aligned with the key use cases.
Systems Engineer
The Aerospace Corporation
- Conducted trade studies across multiple advanced technologies.
- Designed enterprise architectures for large agencies.
- Supported the architecture for a future satellite ground system.
Project History
Predicting Insurgent Attacks in Active Warzones
Led the design, implementation, and deployment of a spatial prediction tool that predicted where soldiers would be attacked.
STRIPE was a threat prediction tool deployed to the United States Army to predict IED events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Building upon my company’s predictive algorithm, I designed and built a tool that all intelligence officers—even those with little background in statistics—could use to plan their missions.
As a product manager, I’ve traveled as far as Baghdad, Iraq, to collaborate with end-users in their operational environment. These experiences provided invaluable insights into the specific analytical questions our users were trying to answer and the broader context in which they were working in. As our solutions competed against other tools, my ability to articulate and address the real needs of our users gave us a tremendous competitive edge.
Development-wise, I led our team by defining user stories, teaching the group about the military domain and language, and testing and evaluating the tools to ensure they met user needs.
This tool has been used to support vital military missions and helped save lives by providing essential intelligence information to users in operational, relevant terms and timeframes.
Testing and Credentialing for Professionals
Led the product design of a cutting-edge learning management system, credentialing, and testing platform.
The Propel 2.0 LMS system is designed to be a state-of-the-art commercial learning content management system that’s capable of offering testing, microlearning, and credentialing to associations and certifying boards.
For this effort, I led the design of the platform back-end and content management tools.
I also architected the badging-and-credentialing engine that will support credentialing agencies in the future.
GeoMesa: Managing Big Spatial Data
Led marketing and commercial development efforts for the GeoMesa platform.
GeoMesa is the leading spatial database for big data apps. Designed to support hundreds of billions of spatial data points, GeoMesa provides spatial analytics capabilities on top of HBase, Accumulo, Dynamo, Cassandra, and Google Bigtable.
I served as the program manager for this project, and I initiated efforts to open-source GeoMesa. Once open-sourced, I led the early business development and marketing efforts to provide a suite of services around the system. This included a quick-start package in which we could get organizations started using the tool for a reasonable, one-time investment.
GeoMesa has been adopted by numerous government agencies including the US Army which sponsored the original development. GeoMesa has also been integrated into Google’s Bigtable environment to support cloud deployments.
Education
Master's Degree in Systems and Information Engineering
University of Virginia - Charlottesville, VA, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Systems and Information Engineering
University of Virginia - Charlottesville, VA, USA
Skills
Tools
HubSpot, Basecamp, Jira, Usertesting.com, Tableau, Tableau Desktop Pro, Slack, R, Asana, Trello
Paradigms
Agile Project Management, Scrum, Agile, Agile Product Management, Agile Workflow, Spatial Databases, Design Thinking, Database Schema Design, Data Product Management, Requirements Analysis
Platforms
MacOS, Zendesk
Industry Expertise
Aerospace & Defense, Department of Defense, Military Intelligence, Government, Education Technology (Edtech)
Other
Product Owner, Business Intelligence (BI), Data Visualization, Agile Program Management, Discovery, Customer Discovery, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Planning, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Feature Prioritization, Writing & Editing, Data, SaaS, SaaS Design, Software as a Service (SaaS), SaaS Product Management, Project Management, Technical Project Management, B2B Product Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Small Business, Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Technical Program Management, Product Management, Technical Product Management, Aha!, Business Analysis, Requirements, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, App Product Management, Machine Learning, New Product Development, Geolocation, Satellite Images, Jobs to be Done (JTBD), Conceptualization, Ideation, Sprint Planning, Miro, Roadmaps, User Flows, User Experience (UX), Tech Sales, Dashboards, Dashboard Design, App Integration, API Integration, Integration, Software Architecture, Solution Architecture, Cloud Architecture, Cloud, CRM Systems, Discovery Workshops, Agile Sprints, Data Analysis, Product Operations, New Products, Web Applications, eCommerce, eCommerce Platforms, IT Project Management, Stakeholder Management, Stakeholder Engagement, B2B, Government Contracting, Business to Business (B2B), Data Analytics, Analytics, Business Process Improvement (BPI), Business Process Flow Diagrams, Business, Business Strategy, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Remote Sensing, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL, Big Data, Startup Consulting, Mentorship & Coaching, Coaching, User Journeys, UI Design, Pitch Decks, UX Design, Investor Presentations, Agile Leadership, Startups, User Needs, Outreach, Marketing, Design Sprints, Customer Experience, Customer Support, Customer Success, Customer Journey, User Onboarding, Computational Science, SaaS Product Marketing, WordPress eCommerce, eCommerce Payments, Mobile Apps, Mobile Applications, IT Projects, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Interviews, App Development, B2B Lead Generation, Sales Pipeline Management, Customer Analysis, Business Processes, Business Process Analysis, Business Process Re-engineering, Databases, Sales Pipelines, Software Engineering, Python 3, Data Mining, Social Media Analytics, Design Specifications
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