Marina is available for hire
Hire MarinaMarina Kostina
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Copenhagen, Denmark
Toptal member since July 7, 2020
Bio
Marina has been working as a product manager for more than 10 years in large companies (Yandex, Aeroflot, Kayak) and startups. She has wide expertise in the travel/airline/aviation industry with both web and mobile products. She enjoys making the user's life better while accomplishing the company's business goals. She has experience leading cross-functional teams and direct reports up to 12 people.
Project Highlights
Aeroflot Website and Apps Redesign
Led the project to redesign Aeroflot website and mobile experiences from ideation until launch.
Photo Contest Mechanism for Yandex.Photo
Redesigned photo contests on Yandex.Photo to eliminate direct impact of network size on votes and add sponsorship as a monetization option for the service.
Client's Account for Eviterra.com
Managed requirements and led design and development for the client's account for Eviterra.com, including purchase history, price alert management, and travel documents storage.
Expertise
- A/B Testing
- B2C
- Mobile Apps
- Product Management
- Product Roadmaps
- Requirements
- Travel
- User Experience (UX)
Work Experience
Product Manager
2019 - 2020
Kayak
- Aligned brands (Kayak, Momondo, Swoodoo, Checkfelix, Mundi, Cheapflights) in terms of the technical platform to allow features rollout across all brands as PM for portfolio brands.
- Developed a roadmap for EMEA-specific features for metasearch brands as EMEA PM. This required extensive research of industry stats, users’ behaviors, and data analysis as no market specifics were readily available.
- Led building CO2 sorting for flights vertical. Researched data sources, scoped the feature based on a design sprint, user testing, data available, business and market requirements, managed data integration, and development.
- Assigned as PM to Car Rental and Packages verticals.
- Led product and design work on a new travel planning UX.
Head of Product
2014 - 2019
Aeroflot
- Led a team of 12 people including product managers, product analysts, and account managers for ancillaries, payment, and metasearch systems.
- Initiated and successfully launched a project to redesign the front page and navigation of the whole website and mobile apps from ideating the concept through building and defending the business case, research, design work, and development to launch.
- Reorganized the product development process to consolidate all the UX and UI work with one design team. Before that, each project was done by a separate team without common guidelines.
- Initiated, led, and launched projects to redesign major parts of the website - booking, check-in, etc.
- Launched and iteratively grew revenue from ancillaries sales in the booking funnel and post booking.
Product Manager
2013 - 2014
Eviterra.com
- Designed and launched to beta-testing client’s personal area. The area stored passengers' data to speed up booking process; historical flight itineraries (purchase history) to lower the number of support cases and price alerts to improve retention.
- Launched a white-label hotel booking service integration.
- Performed continuous enhancements of the UI to improve the conversion rate and lower average booking time.
Product Manager
2010 - 2013
Yandex
- Led a cross-functional team of about 10 people for the development of web service and mobile apps of photo storage.
- Increased the advertisement revenue of the product by 60%.
- Improved users’ involvement by 40% both for participants and viewers by launching a new version of users’ contests with a new concept and sponsored themes, which became a new way of monetization for the service.
- Launched another source of monetization - a photo guide.
Project History
Aeroflot Website and Apps Redesign
Led the project to redesign Aeroflot website and mobile experiences from ideation until launch.
Aeroflot's website consisted of separate systems each with its own outdated design, same for apps and mobile web. We redesigned major systems as separate projects but changing the front page meant changing the navigation through the whole website. We also wanted to align the UX between the web, mobile web, and apps. That required a lot of persuading of stakeholders, a large budget, and huge technical work.
The project included user research, prototypes, user tests, and a business case that was defended at the board of directors meeting, all before the project took off.
The design and development required a lot of coordination between teams and the timeline for the project has shrunk when it was approved from approximately one year to five months. Nonetheless, the project was successfully developed and launched.
The project included user research, prototypes, user tests, and a business case that was defended at the board of directors meeting, all before the project took off.
The design and development required a lot of coordination between teams and the timeline for the project has shrunk when it was approved from approximately one year to five months. Nonetheless, the project was successfully developed and launched.
Photo Contest Mechanism for Yandex.Photo
Redesigned photo contests on Yandex.Photo to eliminate direct impact of network size on votes and add sponsorship as a monetization option for the service.
Contests were always popular with photo users, but there was a problem of votes being directly impacted by the number of friends a contestant had. Also, contests were purely a way of community management with no way to add revenue to the service. I led the team to redesign the voting mechanism to eliminate that impact and bring customization for the advertisers to make a themed and sponsored contest. The voting mechanism change brought a raise in both contestants and voters and sponsorship became another revenue source for the product.
Client's Account for Eviterra.com
Managed requirements and led design and development for the client's account for Eviterra.com, including purchase history, price alert management, and travel documents storage.
Created detailed requirements and wireframes for the design and development of the client's account for an online travel agency. The account had three major tabs:
- Purchase history (including split bookings, exchanges, and refunds)
- Price alert management (flexible subscriptions to price changes on a specific route within desired dates and price caps)
- Travel documents (local and international passports for the account owner and their family/friends)
- Purchase history (including split bookings, exchanges, and refunds)
- Price alert management (flexible subscriptions to price changes on a specific route within desired dates and price caps)
- Travel documents (local and international passports for the account owner and their family/friends)
Education
2001 - 2006
Specialist Degree in Applied Informatics in Economics
Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics - Moscow, Russia
Skills
Tools
Slack, Zoom, Trello, Jira, Google Workspace
Paradigms
B2C, Agile, Agile Product Management
Industry Expertise
Aviation
Other
Product Management, Backlog Grooming, Requirements, Business Cases, Travel, User Requirements, Business Requirements, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Product Roadmaps, Product Ownership, Project Management, Mobile Apps, A/B Testing, Stakeholder Management, User Research, User Experience (UX)
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