Prasantha is available for hire
Hire PrasanthaPrasantha Jayakody
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Lake Forest Park, WA, United States
Toptal member since January 19, 2020
Bio
Prasantha has 25 years of product management experience with internet-based software products across several industries. Eighty percent of his career, Prasantha has focused on business-to-business solutions, and for the past eight years, he's been launching new SaaS solutions. Prasantha's specialty is new product introductions for both startups and large enterprises alike.
Project Highlights
Measure Diversity of Candidate Pools Using Machine Learning (ML)
Defined and led the development of an application that gives recruiters gender and ethnicity details of candidate pools.
Predictive Failure for Industrial Assets Using Machine Learning (ML)
Defined and led the development of an application that alerts reliability engineers when an asset is predicted to fail.
Vehicle Telematics Application for Consumers
Conducted primary and secondary research to define an MVP for a direct to consumer vehicle telematics application.
Expertise
Work Experience
Founder
2018 - PRESENT
Ruby's Lab
- Formulated new SaaS offering to provide companies a means to measure their diversity and inclusion initiatives.
- Validated problem statements and value propositions through interviews with executives at companies that met the ideal customer profile.
- Defined personas and use cases and wrote the product requirements document (PRD).
- Created high-level designs that utilize serverless microservices on AWS.
- Led the technical implementation of the MVP.
- Built a customer pipeline.
Principal Product Manager
2017 - 2018
Bsquare
- Defined product requirements and created business processes to launch Bsquare's industrial IoT platform as a SaaS offering.
- Defined a new machine learning-based product and served as product owner during the development of the MVP.
- Created a joint-value proposition and drove product enhancements to support partnerships.
Product Strategist
2013 - 2017
Independent Consultancy
- Worked with early-stage technology companies to help solidify their product vision and to create a comprehensive product strategy centered around IoT technologies.
- Conducted primary and secondary research to validate and support the strategy.
- Wrote product definition documents and helped guide the software development process regardless of development methodology but with a focus on agile.
- Created rapid prototypes—both software and hardware components—to validate scenarios.
- Worked in vehicle telematics, unattended retail, and field service markets.
IoT Evangelism Planner
2015 - 2016
Microsoft (on Contract)
- Created the strategy and developed programs for global evangelism of Microsoft Azure’s IoT capabilities to the Maker audience. The programs included online engagement as well as real-world events.
- Established standard operating procedures for field evangelists to qualify opportunities and to execute the programs.
- Developed content for Microsoft to exhibit at Maker Fairs around the world.
- Built IoT projects to share with the Maker community online.
Senior Product Manager
2014 - 2015
Attachmate
- Repackaged and repositioned the existing product to better meet customer needs and drive new license revenue in a declining market.
- Created the product road map and defined features for an upcoming release.
- Established positioning and composed messaging documentation for marketing.
- Helped drive the adoption of agile/scrum in a waterfall organization.
Director, Product Management
2010 - 2012
Motricity
- Managed a SaaS-based mobile marketing platform targeted at large, direct-to-consumer enterprises.
- Implemented a market opportunity analysis and defined go-to-market strategy.
- Created and presented business cases for each major release to the executive team.
- Owned the overall P&L globally for my product and was directly responsible for SMS based messaging products which I led to profitability in 2010 and continued to grow in a flat market.
- Managed product managers who owned other components of the portfolio.
Director, Product Strategy
2009 - 2010
Motricity
- Identified new product opportunities targeted at mobile network operators which leveraged Motricity’s existing relationships and core competencies.
- Evaluated organic and inorganic growth strategies.
- Performed product and go-to-market due diligence on M&A prospects.
Manager, Product Management
2008 - 2009
Vulcan
- Created a new product management group to evaluate business opportunities for emerging technologies in markets ranging from home theater components to mobile to the Semantic Web for consumers and enterprises.
- Defined gating process to take product concepts through the early product realization stages from inception to prototyping to incubation.
- Created business cases to get approval and funding from executive management to move projects through the process. The new process reduced prototyping to incubation cycle time from 18 months to less than six.
- Managed a team of product managers and researchers.
Product Manager
2006 - 2008
Independent Consultancy
- Defined the go-to-market and product strategies for a new project targeting the digital out-of-home media market.
- Managed a four-person technical team while working with technology partners and advertising agencies to validate product and business case assumptions.
- Created a new system to track consumer behavior and submitted a patent application to protect it.
- Met with investors to raise Series A funding.
- Provided go-to-market strategies for a mobile software project that would enable it to gain a valuable position within the carrier dominated mobile ecosystem.
- Defined new business opportunities in location-based services, created the business case, and led the software development process to create a prototype.
- Led a ten-person project team and created a method for a user to quickly make a selection from a large number of objects on devices with limited input capabilities and submitted a patent application to protect it.
- Built the business case for a new service offering by segmenting the mobile consumer data services market, analyzing the competition, and identifying target markets whose needs matched company’s core competencies.
- Defined and led the development of a proof-of-concept to an on-time and on-budget delivery.
Product Manager
2003 - 2006
AT&T Wireless (on Contract)
- Handled the complete life-cycle management for core applications on AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless consumer data services—mMode and MEdia Net respectively. The applications focus on customer self-service, productivity, and viral marketing in order to increase data usage and reduce customer churn.
- Defined use cases, wrote product requirements documents, and designed application work-flow diagrams.
- Consulted with development as they created design documents to ensure product requirements are correctly and completely accounted for.
- Assisted with quality assurance in the creation of test plans to ensure the product was sufficiently tested at both a system and a UI level.
- Work with marketing to create tools for sales and customer support.
- Led a team of five other product managers.
Senior Product Marketing Manager
2002 - 2003
WRQ
- Defined and managed all go to market activities for new enterprise application integration product line including awareness campaigns, lead generation programs, alliances, and sales-readiness.
- Changed sales strategy from infrastructure sale to project sized deals resulting in shorter sales cycles and add-on sales opportunities to existing customers.
- Wrote white papers and by-line articles to educate the market.
- Doubled the year-over-year revenue.
Senior Product Manager
1999 - 2000
WRQ
- Defined direction for Reflection product line (represents 95% of corporate revenue).
- Created and managed an aggressive marketing program in a mature market which gained access to 10% of a competitor’s installed base, exceeding the goal by more than 500%.
- Increased revenue 250% on a strategic product by repositioning it and recreating its value proposition.
- Identified strategic opportunities in the enterprise application integration market.
Business Development Manager
1997 - 1999
Aventail
- Established and launched a partner program with more than 15 companies within the first four months. In addition to building awareness for the startup, the partner program generated a steady stream of leads.
- Defined an emerging market opportunity and drafted the product plan for a new extranet security product.
- Secured funding from management to develop product.
- Created a three-year product road map and wrote detailed requirements for the initial release.
Project History
Measure Diversity of Candidate Pools Using Machine Learning (ML)
Defined and led the development of an application that gives recruiters gender and ethnicity details of candidate pools.
A large percentage of companies have funded diversity and inclusion initiatives. However, very few have the means to measure these projects. A common tactic is for companies to focus on increasing the diversity of candidate pools.
This multi-tenant SaaS application automatically calculates the gender and ethnicity breakdown of candidate pools solely based on the candidate's resume.
This multi-tenant SaaS application automatically calculates the gender and ethnicity breakdown of candidate pools solely based on the candidate's resume.
Predictive Failure for Industrial Assets Using Machine Learning (ML)
Defined and led the development of an application that alerts reliability engineers when an asset is predicted to fail.
Unplanned downtime is very costly for manufacturers. If reliability engineers could be warned about impending failure, they have a chance to resolve the issue during regularly scheduled maintenance.
This multi-tenant SaaS application would monitor real-time data about the asset's performance and would continuously calculate the likelihood of a future failure based on a machine learning model.
This multi-tenant SaaS application would monitor real-time data about the asset's performance and would continuously calculate the likelihood of a future failure based on a machine learning model.
Vehicle Telematics Application for Consumers
Conducted primary and secondary research to define an MVP for a direct to consumer vehicle telematics application.
The company was building a platform on which independent developers could create easily applications consumer-facing telematics applications. The platform abstracted a lot of the complexity and manufacturer variability in the vehicle data.
This project's goal was to create a publishable reference application to showcase a variety of the platform's capabilities and to validate consumer interest.
This project's goal was to create a publishable reference application to showcase a variety of the platform's capabilities and to validate consumer interest.
Mobile Payments for Vending Machines
Defined and led the delivery of a mobile payments platform for vending machines that returned a positive ROI in under a year.
The majority of vending machines are cash only because of the significant hardware costs associated with a card reader and the significant transaction costs associated with credit/debit card processing.
Any mobile payment solution needed a hardware solution that could plug and play with most machines and which would cost under $20. Additionally, a cashless payment method needed to be based on a stored value system in order to drive down per-transaction processing fees.
Our solution accomplished both those goals.
Any mobile payment solution needed a hardware solution that could plug and play with most machines and which would cost under $20. Additionally, a cashless payment method needed to be based on a stored value system in order to drive down per-transaction processing fees.
Our solution accomplished both those goals.
Education
1988 - 1992
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA, USA
1988 - 1992
Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics
University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA, USA
Certifications
DECEMBER 2019 - DECEMBER 2021
AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate
Amazon
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile Product Management, Microservices Architecture, Microservices
Other
Software as a Service (SaaS), MVP Product Management, Product Strategy, Product Management, Enterprise Software, New Products, B2B, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Machine Learning, Go-to-market Plans, Cloud, Strategic Partnerships, Internet of Things (IoT), Software Technical SWOT Analysis, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Monetization Models, Value Proposition, Startups, B2B Partnerships, Serverless, Product Roadmaps, Web UX, Product Marketing
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.
1
Share your needs
Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2
Choose your talent
Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3
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