Masha is available for hire
Hire MashaMasha Sharma
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Location
Arlington, VA, United States
Toptal Member Since
September 17, 2020
Masha, a fractional product engineering technology executive, specializes in integrations, marketplaces, and SaaS-net technologies. With 20+ years of experience, she has co-founded several successful startups and contributed to others, including Avenue One, where she helped create a unicorn valued at $1 billion. Masha's technical background and leadership skills have been instrumental in driving business impact and fostering innovation throughout her career.
Project Highlights
RealAtom | SaaS-enabled Marketplace for Commercial Real Estate Loans
Led product development of a SaaS-enabled marketplace for commercial real estate borrowers, brokers, and lenders. The product won multiple industry awards, processed over $14 billion in loans, and achieved elite retention rates of over 50%.
Artist Search for Satellite Radio Listeners
Architected and developed a smart search algorithm that searched for artist names and song names against live streaming data and predicted what channel the artist was going to play on next.
Expertise
Work Experience
SVP of Engineering
2020 - PRESENT
Avenue One
- Established a world-class product engineering organization and team to architect/implement a scalable, event-driven serverless platform on AWS.
- Ensured seamless integration with 60+ distinct business events, realizing positive impacts toward a billion-dollar valuation despite significant market and pandemic challenges.
- Restructured the engineering team topology into dynamic, cross-functional pods, dramatically improving delivery efficiency and product evolution pace. Boosted productivity by 25% and uncovered opportunities to advance team functions further.
- Guided the strategy and execution for the state transition event validation engine, increasing knowledge at every opportunity with related technologies.
- Incorporated best practices for standing up the change management process, handling the release management process and PMO development, and established the architecture leadership council framework.
- Established an Agile practice and used DORA metrics to maximize delivery.
Co-founder and CTO
2017 - 2021
RealAtom
- Led a SaaS-enabled marketplace product development and achieved elite 12-week retention rates of 51% to 65%.
- Helped raise $5 million in seed funding to set up platform operations.
- Wrote onboarding sequences, product guides, and product blogs.
- Gained acceptance into the 500 Startups accelerator, an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator with an acceptance rate of 1.5%. It was founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai.
- Was chosen to become a Forbes Technology Council contributor.
- Set up an analytics infrastructure that informed customer conversion and acquisition strategies.
- Delivered a world-class SaaS net platform for commercial real estate lenders.
Batch 21 Alumna
2017 - 2017
500 Startups
- Got accepted into 500 Startups Batch 21 (typical acceptance rate is 1.5%).
- Participated in marketing hell week while running an existing startup.
- Built out a startup product, marketed the product, led the sales effort, and stood up all operational reporting.
Co-founder | Head of Product
2016 - 2017
InteractiveShares
- Collaborated with a co-founder to develop a product roadmap.
- Led the design and development of the company's lending decision engine.
- Conducted customer interviews, then analyzed and extracted insights.
CEO
2015 - 2016
TotalPass
- Built a go-to-market strategy to acquire initial customers.
- Defined the product roadmap along with detailed user journeys and user stories.
- Launched an MVP of the initial product and solicited client feedback.
Founder
2011 - 2016
CitrusWorks
- Served as an interim head of product for a social media analytics company.
- Developed product roadmaps for multiple clients in healthtech, adtech, and consumer tech industries.
- Defined user stories, managed backlogs, and solicited requirements from corporate clients.
Director of Engineering
2011 - 2014
AOL
- Managed and delivered an audience intelligence big data platform that generated $1 million in MRR.
- Trained and mentored 14 product development teams on Agile excellence.
- Project managed key DevOps initiatives to set up continuous integration and continuous delivery processes.
Senior Systems Integrator
2010 - 2011
Department of Defense (DoD)
- Provided engineering support, systems design and architecture, vendor management, and technical expertise to various defense health information management systems (DHIMS) within the DoD.
- Validated system integration specifications, which included hardware and software in-lab installs.
- Collaborated with enterprise architecture teams to ensure that security specifications were put in place.
Software Engineer | Project Manager | Senior Technical Program Manager
2004 - 2008
SiriusXM
- Assisted with the development of the first-of-its-kind streaming media player as a software engineer.
- Defined product roadmaps, scope, and functional requirements. Conducted executive stakeholder briefings and mediated and facilitated approvals.
- Performed gap, functional, technical, and financial analysis to define integration strategies.
- Served on the post-merger planning advisory committee: represented IT for all online web application properties, facilitated the process to define the business strategy and objectives, and oversaw the analysis of overall systems dependencies.
- Defined and managed the strategy for stress and load testing of online products in support of multiple TV marketing campaigns and holiday readiness efforts.
- Developed several products from the ground up, including scope, use cases, user stories, test cases, and product review presentations.
- Received a Webby for the Best Radio award and a Best Radio Website award from the Web Marketing Association.
Software Engineer | Product Manager
2000 - 2004
M23
- Defined product roadmaps for PBS, BBC America, AIDS Marathon, and Riggs Bank.
- Developed a PBS video index search algorithm to help teachers find video segments that were aligned with their teaching plans.
- Built several scalable, data-driven web applications for clients.
Project History
RealAtom | SaaS-enabled Marketplace for Commercial Real Estate Loans
http://www.realatom.comLed product development of a SaaS-enabled marketplace for commercial real estate borrowers, brokers, and lenders. The product won multiple industry awards, processed over $14 billion in loans, and achieved elite retention rates of over 50%.
RealAtom is a modern, all-in-one loan management system designed specifically for the $3 billion commercial real estate lending industry. I interviewed users; built out the roadmap; defined user story maps, flows, and user stories; managed the backlog; and set up analytics to track product KPIs. In addition to the product, I was heavily involved in defining product marketing strategies to grow the userbase and increase retention.
Artist Search for Satellite Radio Listeners
http://www.siriusxm.comArchitected and developed a smart search algorithm that searched for artist names and song names against live streaming data and predicted what channel the artist was going to play on next.
XM Satellite Radio was one of the leading satellite radio companies in the United States, with millions of subscribers, hundreds of radio channels, and thousands of artists whose music was played daily.
My goal was to write a flexible search algorithm that found the artist by name even though, more than half the time, names were being misspelled. The next step was to recommend what channel that artist was going to appear on in the near future. The added challenge was tapping into streaming data to get the artist names and channel appearances.
My goal was to write a flexible search algorithm that found the artist by name even though, more than half the time, names were being misspelled. The next step was to recommend what channel that artist was going to appear on in the near future. The added challenge was tapping into streaming data to get the artist names and channel appearances.
Education
2023 - 2023
Certification in Artificial Intelligence
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Boston, USA
2007 - 2008
Master's Degree in Information Systems Management
George Washington University - Washington, DC, USA
Certifications
OCTOBER 2012 - OCTOBER 2016
Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
JANUARY 2008 - PRESENT
CIO University Certificate
GSA CIO University
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