Marcos Saiz
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Montevideo, Montevideo Department, Uruguay
Toptal member since June 7, 2019
Across his career, Marcos has worn many hats: startup founder, advisor, practice leader, M&A integrations VP, procurement manager, PMO leader, and, most recently, AI implementation consultant. This breadth, paired with a strong technical foundation and exposure to dozens of companies through M&A work, gives him the range to move fluidly between business strategy and hands-on execution—from procurement and vendor management to product and operational transformation.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Continuous Delivery (CD)
- Continuous Integration (CI)
- Kanban
- Project Management
- Scrum
- Stakeholder Management
- Waterfall Development
Work Experience
Director
Digital Henka
- Identified opportunities to streamline customer workflows, reduce manual effort, and build scalable governance practices from the ground up, leveraging my experience that spans from sales to procurement.
- Collaborated with several SMBs and corporate clients to identify pain points, create improvement plans, and ensure the implementation resolves the business's pain points. Used a proven methodology called the Henka Process.
- Helped a customer plan and execute a migration to the cloud that included servers, applications, and telephony, and changed the way it related to several service providers.
- Worked with supermarkets to improve their IT infrastructure, design a data lake from scratch, and implement programs such as customer clustering, cashier cross-selling, and loyalty programs.
- Handled vendor expenses, including license portfolios and SaaS renewals, ensuring spend visibility and preventing redundant or lapsed contracts.
Integrations Director | PMO Director
Generix Group
- Coordinated the due diligence and integration planning for the acquisition of DDS software.
- Managed the transformation project for their legacy MPRP communication gateway application. This modernization project included coordination across development teams, DevOps, product management, cloud IT/SaaS, and customer support.
- Managed the transformation projects to modernize and adapt the legacy AIO application to the French e-invoicing reform. The goals included re-architecture, infrastructure updates, performance improvement, and several functional additions.
- Managed the technical documentation team, training a new manager to define key performance indicators and manage operational improvement projects.
- Managed the PMO team, overseeing digital transformation and technical projects across the organization: data center migrations, implementation of different tools, cloud migrations, product development, and more.
- Created and managed product roadmaps for both AIO and GCN products.
- Combined agile practices with traditional PMP methodology to achieve results and satisfy different stakeholders.
Project Manager | Professional Services Leadership (via Toptal)
ServiceRocket, Inc
- Joined the team as a project manager to salvage a project with one of the Big Five tech giants. Effectively oversaw the Agile project to grow the account, resulting in a fivefold increase in account size over two years.
- Held the Latin America regional manager interim role, managing a team specializing in Atlassian migrations and implementations and serving mid-market to enterprise customers in the US and UK. Hired and trained key resources for the team.
- Served as a partner practice lead and implemented an execution framework to standardize worldwide processes across the professional services practice. Defined key performance indicators, documented processes, and executed improvement projects.
- Worked as a professional services resource manager and oversaw the resource allocations across the worldwide PS organization, defining the people growth strategy, owning the budget and resource utilization, and defining hiring guidelines.
- Oversaw the technical sales and delivery activities for a broad portfolio of projects (including NetSuite ERP implementations and customizations and e-learning systems customizations) across several industries.
- Represented the company with partners, prospects, and customers. Managed ServiceRocket's biggest customer program, consisting of several multi-year, multimillion-dollar projects.
- Negotiated directly with enterprise vendors, managing multi-year contracts and renewal cycles across technical and non-technical software categories.
VP of Integration Management
ESW Capital
- Drove process optimization across the integrations department, including the due diligence process and the procurement function, standardizing workflows to reduce redundancy and improve operational oversight.
- Managed due diligence projects and overall company integration projects for 30 companies for over $1 billion.
- Led the end-to-end procurement function for all newly acquired companies. Conducted comprehensive contract audits across the vendor landscape, making consolidation, renegotiation, and termination decisions that generated $1+ million in savings.
- Integrated and closely managed server migrations to AWS, creating CI/CD pipelines and improving the overall software quality, source code migrations, compliance certifications, finance systems migrations, new support team training, and more.
- Addressed operational efficiency in different teams by defining metrics, documenting processes, and executing productivity improvement projects. Achieved up to 10 times the productivity after applying an improvement framework.
- Managed communication across the organization using agile techniques, which included the acquisition target and internal stakeholders ranging from CEOs to ICs.
- Owned cost-reduction initiatives across all spend categories, with a particular focus on technical infrastructure—including initiatives that halved cloud and datacenter costs (AWS and others).
- Aligned 30 functional leaders and their teams to perform a complete and prompt 4-week due diligence and a 90-day full integration into ESW Capital processes.
- Ran the acquired companies on par with the acquiring company CEO for 90 days.
Principal
Impactus
- Ran this boutique agency and was responsible for the execution of all customer-facing projects.
- Offered a variety of services, including graphical design, online marketing, usability design, and software development.
- Managed marketing campaigns for customers, from inception to execution and results measurement.
Software Engineering Manager
Aurea Software
- Orchestrated a 100-person team composed of engineering and managed services individual contributors across 10+ teams with several projects per team.
- Delivered strategic projects such as PCI compliance, data center to AWS migrations, full deployment automation, and 50% hardware cost reduction initiatives.
- Defined and implemented the standards for continuous integration and continuous delivery across the organization, using agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban.
- Managed all projects focused on adding features and fixing defects in four different portfolio products.
- Interviewed 100+ individual contributors, hired tens, and had to release tens as well.
- Managed a hosted EDI platform with 350 million transactions/year from 160 different sources.
- Worked in a globally distributed and dynamic environment, meeting aggressive goals.
- Audited and optimized the IT infrastructure worth millions in annual AWS costs, simplifying the footprint and halving costs twice in six months.
- Implemented solutions to measure and enhance the teams' productivity in a globally distributed workforce.
Senior Consultant | Project Manager
Urudata Software
- Led the team that created a credit platform for one of the biggest Latin American banks. Managed the project since requirements creation until users were trained and the system was stable in production.
- Created the customer-facing waterfall project plan while running the teams internally using Agile.
- Implemented the knowledge management system in the biggest Uruguayan oil company.
- Managed the development of the directors' assistance application. Led the team that started with requirement collection up to the implementation and training of executives.
- Led the development team that developed the document management solution sold by Urudata and implemented in the oil company.
- Managed the overall project, defining deliverables for the customer, 3rd party vendors that provided other parts of the solution, and other project managers that the solution interacted with.
Founder | Director | Special Project Manager
Feng Office
- Contributed to the definition of business model, strategic planning, market analysis, technology positioning, financial analysis, relationship with investors, and supporting organizations.
- Created the operations area and handled software development (web application and eCommerce site), server infrastructure, and customer relationship management.
- Handled the IT infrastructure, including auditing the current infrastructure and increasing its efficiency while implementing solutions to increase staff productivity.
- Defined the marketing and sales strategies, implemented process automation, and defined tactics and promotional campaigns. Developed the end-to-end strategy for advertising agencies.
- Hired and trained tens of developers who were part of the team.
- Managed sales and marketing projects aimed at increasing sales.
- Managed several projects to decrease support ticket throughput.
- Oversaw the server infrastructure, including running several projects to increase availability and responsiveness while controlling costs.
- Led a multidisciplinary team of 15 using Agile methodologies in a startup environment. Handled the information architecture, design, and implementation projects of Feng Office for more than 200 companies and organizations worldwide.
Teacher
Universidad de la República
- Taught information security to undergraduates, including setting up the information security labs and assisting students during class.
- Taught programming to first-year students, including algorithms and their efficiency.
- Led the Web 2.0 Mastery course for postgraduates.
- Served as a tutor for a degree project while working with the Human-Computer Interaction Group.
Project History
Feng Office Collaboration Platform Development
Managed the development until it became a feature-rich collaboration platform used by millions around the world.
Feng Office was born as my end of career project while studying systems engineering. I developed it with a colleague as an open source project under the name of OpenGoo. It was rated with the highest grade and was the basis for the venture. The project was recognized and supported by international organizations such as Prosperitas Capital Partners, Allied Venture, and IDB. Uruguayan supporter institutions include the National Agency for Research and Innovation, the Fondo Emprender, the Banco de la República Oriental del Uruguay and the Fundación Ricaldoni. International press articles, over a million visits to its website, more than 300,000 users and translations to 25 languages make Feng Office one of the world’s most popular cloud-based project management systems.
Si Quiero Wedding Gifts Portal
Relaunched the portal to make it a fully operating business.
I partnered to acquire this portal specializing in newlyweds’ gift lists. After the acquisition, I revamped the portal, relaunched it with improvements, and successfully sold it. I handled the IT infrastructure and software development during my tenure.
Lead Discovery and POC for Leading Radio Station
Led the discovery and MVP phases of a bigger project for a leading radio station.
Led the discovery phase, which resulted in requirements being defined. Successfully managed the development of the MVP using Agile methodologies and handed over to a peer to continue development for the full scope.
Infocasas Team Building and Development Team Ramp Up
http://www.infocasas.com.uyDesigned the operations area including engineering, SaaS, and support.
My responsibilities included key team members recruitment, the definition of internal procedures for development, server management areas, advice on the angel investment round, and successful elaboration of funding plans and training of the future CTO.
Infocasas is a VC-backed real estate portal for homeowners and real estate agents who wish to sell or rent properties. It currently operates in several Latin American countries and is backed by a Malaysian VC fund.
Managed the Credit Platform Project for an International Bank
Led the project from requirements gathering until months after go-live, ensuring the success of the project.
My duties started with requirement gathering, solution architecture, and design. I then led the implementation team, trained users, and ensured the system implementation was a success.
The customer was the most valuable Latin American bank.
Clinic Management Application
Designed and developed a clinic management application for the healthcare industry.
I was in charge of requirements collection, development, and production implementation of a clinic management application.
The system’s main features included patient management, clinical history, availability and agenda management, and debt management.
I led a team of three engineers in developing this project. We successfully launched and implemented the system in six months and maintained it in production for several years.
Interactive Consultant Using AI and GenAI
Designed the 1st prototype of an AI-powered assistant that collects company information and generates recommendations to increase productivity at the company level.
The user flow of the application is the following:
• The user—usually a small-business owner—answers several questions about his company via text or recorded audio.
• Recorded audio is automatically transformed to text using AI-powered speech-to-text.
• All answers are analyzed by AI algorithms, summarizing the results.
• Answers are presented in both document and PowerPoint format.
Education
Postgraduate Courses in Finance, Economics, Operations, and HR
ORT University - Montevideo, Uruguay
Bachelor's Degree in Software Engineering
Universidad de la Republica - Montevideo, Uruguay
Certifications
DevOps Leader
DevOps Institute
Skills
Tools
Asana, Jira, Visual Studio .NET, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Jenkins, TeamCity, JavaScript Debugging, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), AWS SDK, MySQL Workbench, MySQL Performance Tuning, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015, Confluence, Slack, Miro, Zoom, Trello, JavaScript Testing, PostgreSQL, Visual Studio 2012, TFS, Microsoft Team Foundation Server, GitHub, Git, Subversion (SVN), CVS, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power BI, Canva
Paradigms
Agile Project Management, Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall Development, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Agile, Web Architecture, Change Management, Agile Delivery, Implementation Project Management, Agile Software Development, Organizational Change Management (OCM), Agile Product Management, Requirements Analysis, Waterfall Delivery, Design Thinking, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Key Performance Metrics, UX Design, Test-driven Development (TDD), Behavior-driven Development (BDD)
Platforms
Windows, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MacOS, Amazon EC2, SharePoint, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Zendesk, Xamarin, Azure, Zoho CRM, WordPress
Industry Expertise
Software, Oil & Gas, Banking & Finance, Venture Capital, Law, Pharmaceuticals, Entertainment & Leisure, Real Estate, Healthcare, Asset Management, Digital Marketing, Sales & Marketing, Energy, Professional Services
Other
Technical Project Management, Project Tracking, Business Requirements, Stakeholder Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Global Team Management, Project Management, Program Management, Software Development, Software Development Management, IT Systems Architecture, Cross-functional Team Leadership, GitFlow, Website Migration, Project Management Office (PMO), Startups, Data Analysis, Waterfall Methodology, Operational Efficiency Improvement, Process Documentation, IT Project Management, R&D, Consulting, Operations, Business & Digital Transformation, Chief of Staff, Digital Project Management, Process Mapping, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Transformation, Backlog Management, Project Discovery, Agile Program Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Planning, Discovery, Functional Requirements, Delivery Management, Vendor Selection, Deployment, Documentation, Project Management & Delivery, Project Planning, Business Communication, Communication, Global Project Management, Ticketing, Process Definition, Task Management, Customer Insights, Web Technologies, Enterprise Project Management, Business Process Analysis, Business Process Improvement (BPI), Standard Operating Procedures Development, Change Impact Assessment, Roadmaps, Automation, Complex Problem Solving, Business Strategy, Business Processes, Web Project Management, Account Management, Workflow Optimization, Cloud Infrastructure, Product Discovery, Early-stage Startups, Distributed Team Management, Product Roadmaps, Third-party Management, Vendor Management, Vendor Coordination, Technology, Digital Transformation, CIO, Restructuring, Budgeting, Agile Deployment, Project Coordination, Project Timelines, Service-level Agreements (SLAs), Incident Management, Digital Platform Development, SQL, Data, Infrastructure, IT Service Management (ITSM), Project Planning & Execution, Coordination, SLA Management, Migration, Cloud Migration, Risk Management, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Post-merger Integration, Due Diligence, Customer Support, MySQL, SQL Server 2016, PMO, Agile Sprints, Scrum Master, Web UI, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server, CakePHP, Data Center Migration, Data Migration, Database Migration, Process Improvement Project Management, Training, Operational Assessments, Small Business, Workflow, Agency, Sales, Process Improvement, Jira Administration, Product Management, Agile Coaching, Process Design, Process Flows, Business Analysis, Productivity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Prototyping, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Product Strategy Consultant, Growth Strategy, Business to Business (B2B), Enterprise SaaS, New Product Rollout, Digital Asset Management, ERP Implementation, Pitch Decks, Market Research & Analysis, Presentations, Resource Management, Project Scoping, Sprint Ceremonies, Product Marketing, Market Intelligence, Business Process Optimization, Stakeholder Analysis, App Development, AI Agents, Machine Learning, AI Consulting, Compliance, Web Scraping, Governance, Operating Models, Agentic AI, Qualitative Research, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Cutover, Marketing Services, Revenue Strategy, Marketing Platforms, Content Management Systems (CMS), Agentic Frameworks, Procurement, Procurement Process Optimization, Financial Software, Purchasing, Cash Flow Modeling, Financial Modeling, Board Reporting, Credit Analysis, Product Launch, Life Science, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), CPG, Supply Chain, BlueJeans, Finance, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), Web Application Architecture, JavaScript, Mobile, Mobile Web, Web UX, Mobile UX, AWS HA, Oracle 11g, Microsoft, Visual Studio 2017, jQuery, AngularJS, PCI Compliance, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Legal, Recruitment, Project Management SRO, Stakeholder Engagement, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Customer Service, Acquisitions, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Software Project Management, Education, Information Security, IT Security, Programming, Algorithms, Tutoring, Economics, Business, Human Resources (HR), Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Architecture, Robotics, Neural Networks, User Experience (UX), Web Development, Databases, Algebra, Probability Theory, Calculus, Team Building, Company Strategy, Product Growth, System Architecture, Microsoft Teams, IT Infrastructure, IT Operations Management (ITOM), IT Consulting, Development, Workshops, Healthcare IT, Patient Services, Project Management Professional (PMP), Smartsheet, Process Modeling, Business Process Modeling, Learning Management Systems (LMS), ClickUp, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Marketing, Advertising, Campaign Design, Gaming Platforms, Market Insights, Research Analysis, Zoho, Software Design, Data Analytics, Branding, ServiceNow
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