Celso Pinto
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
A skilled operator with 20 years of experience in the software industry, Celso has deep experience in managing projects in SaaS companies and regulated (eg. FinTech) industries. Having worked with engineering teams and senior management in successfully adopting Agile methodologies, Celso has a deep understanding of what it takes to get buy-in at all levels of a business and manage teams to deliver with exceptional cadence and quality.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Founder
Pomar
- Managed a small distributed product team of five staff using Kanban.
- Built and refined backlogs for two products by conducting customer development interviews.
- Completed a project to launch a Stripe add-on that enabled marketers to collect payments on landing pages without backend programming. After a successful launch, IP was sold to a 3rd-party.
VP Operations Europe
Mezu Inc.
- Developed a business plan to support the business expansion from the USA to Europe.
- Drove the EU regulatory approval roadmap, budget, and timelines, by procuring and managing multiple partners from banking institutions to regulatory consultants.
- Oversaw scope, timelines, and budget for the adoption of marketing technology stack, coordinating with Mezu's marketing, engineering, and compliance teams.
- Successfully managed various procurement processes to secure technology vendors and consulting partners.
Sr Product Manager - Payments
We got POP
- Managed and coordinated internal stakeholders to define the yearly payments platform roadmap.
- Led a team of four engineers to maintain the original payments platform, and develop a ledger system to track payments in the marketplace.
- Managed bi-weekly sprints (daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, sprint planning and retrospective meetings, etc.), developed and groomed product backlog.
- Guided the team of eight engineers and one product manager in adopting Scrum and increased velocity 10x though improved requirements and better methodology.
- Line managed one product manager, providing 1:1 coaching and support to design and deliver the marketplace's roadmap.
- Delivered the company's product management guidelines to the executive, sales, support, and engineering teams.
- Led the adoption of BI software to enable real-time reporting of marketplace KPIs, eliminating days of manual data collection and reporting.
EVP Strategy & Business Development
YLD Ltd.
- Redefined YLD's market positioning and services offering by incorporating insights from interviews with potential buyers, current clients, and internal stakeholders.
- Increased sales 3.5x with a new commercial approach and by advocating a customer-centric attitude to increase client satisfaction and secure renewals. Personally closed those multi-million Pound Sterling sales opportunities.
- Created the business case and project plan to establish a 150-staff near-shoring development centre for one enterprise client.
Product founder & CEO
SimpleTax
- Developed product vision and business case, securing funding from top UK venture capital firms and individual investors.
- Drove user satisfaction to a Net Promoter Score of 83 by executing several “follow me home”-type initiatives that helped remove many friction points in the user journey and deliver significant improvements to customer success.
- Led a team of three engineers, one designer, and one tester to develop and launch an online consumer income tax filing software, coordinating the launch with our marketing team.
- Improved time-to-market of new features after revamping product development processes to adopt Kanban, feature flipping, and continuous deployment.
- Doubled conversion rates by leveraging data from qualitative UX research, A/B testing, and usage analytics. Created clear decision-making processes to mitigate feature creep.
Senior Technology Consultant
Ministry of Social Security
- Defined the functional and non-functional requirements for the payment channels project, that at the time managed over €24 billion in yearly cash flow.
- Promoted to manage a team of 8 staff aiming to turn-around the Social Security Portal project that was over a year late.
- Changed methodologies from Waterfall to Scrum, managed daily stand-ups, bi-weekly releases, the project backlog and the sprint planning and retrospective meetings.
- Improved product quality and stability by reassessing quality assurance processes and enabling the clear communication of acceptance criteria, resulting in the permanent reduction of major issues by over 90%.
- Influenced stakeholders to abandon the proprietary portal solution, resulting in the adoption of a strategy based on flexible open source solutions, that enabled the team to deliver the first version of the product in just 3 months after a one year delay.
Project History
Pixie
https://www.usepixie.comPerformed customer and product discovery, validating customer demand and closing initial sales before product was developed.
We Got POP Payments
Reorganized Scrum teams and drove improved team performance with a clearer methodology.
Technologies used include Python/Django, various AWS services, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, ReactJS.
SimpleTax
Oversaw roadmap and managed all releases of the SimpleTax SaaS application.
Led a team of three engineers, one designer, and one tester to develop and launch an online consumer income tax filing software, coordinating the launch with our marketing team.
Social Security Portal (Portugal)
Turned around a project that was a year late, delivering the first release in just three months.
Influenced stakeholders to abandon the proprietary portal solution, resulting in the adoption of a strategy based on flexible open source solutions, that enabled the team to deliver the first version of the product in just 3 months after a one year delay.
Changed methodologies from Waterfall to Scrum, delivering improved project management, greater quality, and team satisfaction.
Education
Executive Master of Business Administration Degree in Project Management
UAL - Universidade Autonoma de Lisboa - Lisbon, Portugal
Level III Diploma in IT
CNAF - Lisbon
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