Dave Armstrong
hikingdave @ gmail.com
Wisconsin Dells, WI

Status: Idly looking for work. Open to Remote product work. 

Technical Product Manager

I am a Technical Product Manager who understands both the product vision and the engineering realities. My background includes business process automation, platform migrations, data migration, internal business systems strategy and support, and full-cycle development of SaaS products. I offer a unique blend of product ownership and engineering expertise.

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Sr. Product Manager / Engineer: 06/2022 - 11/2024: Topcoder, Remote

• Technical lead for 0-1 / greenfield development of a new SaaS platform that provides enterprise accounts access to the gig worker community. Onboarded 300 organizations to the new platform.
• Fostered a highly efficient product development environment, improving team velocity and reducing new member onboarding time to under 30 minutes, effectively enhancing the internal developer experience.
• Co-led product ownership, focusing on large features requiring technical architecture refactors, developing mini-roadmaps to deliver major changes to an evolving product, including the definition of user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Managed the product roadmap and backlog for data integration initiatives, including interoperability within the broader product ecosystem.
• Decreased cloud costs by 25% by researching AWS environments to identify areas where services could be decommissioned and delegating viable shutdown efforts to the appropriate project managers across the platform.
• Researched and updated Auth0 environments, removing high-risk implementations by migrating away from deprecated features.
• Conducted market research into future innovations, delivering strategic recommendations to the C-Suite.

Product Owner / Senior Software Engineer: 12/2018 - 02/2022: Diligent Corporation, Remote

• Defined the product roadmap and modernization of a policy management system, delivering a modern tech stack that integrated with the legacy systems.
• Facilitated cross-functional collaboration between business stakeholders, design teams, and engineering, ensuring alignment and successful feature refinement and delivery. This included data-driven research on feature usage paired with customer discussions to remove outdated feature sets.
• Defined and prioritized the product backlog for a remote development team using Kanban, translating complex business needs and feature usage data into actionable user stories and technical requirements.
• Designed and implemented a custom Kanban workflow in Jira to optimize team efficiency and enable seamless transitions between new product development and legacy system support, reflecting a strong understanding of agile methodologies.
• Utilized Confluence to document product requirements, design specifications, and strategic decisions, ensuring clarity and alignment across all teams. 
• Created a series of video demos and presentations to outline the history of the application’s purpose, development, and evolution, which was used to onboard institutional knowledge of the product into a parent company’s product strategy.
• Conducted feature-specific product research on newly acquired solutions, evaluating their strategic fit and potential for integration into the overall policy management strategy to ensure cohesive internal systems.
• Implemented technical product enhancements for the legacy BoardDocs platform, including a 10x improvement in search system scalability and performance, and an 80% reduction in page response times, and full WCAG compliance of the UI, directly improving internal operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and user satisfaction for 4500+ school districts and government entities.

Senior Software Engineer: 10/2017 -10/2018: Numetric, American Fork, UT

• Front-end Coding (UI/IX) using JavaScript / React for an analytics solution targeted to state DOTs and other transportation agencies. 
• Worked to streamline and simplify the codebase, including re-write of metric visualizations,  mapping engine (from ESRI to Mapbox), and implementation of those updates into multiple analytics applications.

Web / Software Consultant: 6/2017 -10/2017, Spanish Fork, UT

• Short-term consulting with local businesses to improve their marketing / web presence, including SEO optimization, page performance, e-commerce setup, brand implementation.
• Data Conversion / Integration Projects  -- Wrote data import scripts to convert Word documents into standards-compliant HTML for import into web-based document management systems.

Senior Software Developer: 1/2013 - 5/2017: BoardDocs, Remote

• Played a pivotal role in the product development and launch of a new policy publishing system, leading the growth of the entire BoardDocs ecosystem by adding over 2000 organizations, expanding the customer base by 500%.
• Designed and delivered an internal Event Management system, enabling streamlined operations for 100+ events, from sales webinars to full conference registration, scheduling, and communication.
• Planned, prioritized, and implemented improvements to the internal systems within the BoardDocs governance platform, including data import processes, internal business apps, reporting, IT tracking systems, salesforce integrations, and online help systems.
  
  

Consultant: 7/2011 - 12/2012, Denver, CO

• Gates Rubber – Migrated SharePoint from MOSS 2007 to SP 2010. Developed web service based BI dashboards for ongoing projects.
• University of Oregon - Front-end development for SharePoint pilot program and mentoring of new SharePoint consultants.
• BC/BS of New Jersey – Analyzed Lotus Notes/Domino environment, recommending solutions for migrating to modern platforms including estimated scope of work on all applications.
• Renewable Energy Startup – Designed and developed data gathering infrastructure, reporting tools, and SCADA systems for small-scale portable hydro-electric turbines.
  
  

Sr. Programmer/Analyst: 8/2007 - 7/2011: DCP Midstream, Denver, CO

• Re-architected both web applications and server infrastructure for SharePoint farms, resulting in 80% performance improvements.
• Decreased Lotus Notes footprint from 6000 applications down to 46, primarily through consulting with stakeholders on business process changes, tied to migration of technical functions to Microsoft tools, resulting in a 50% cost reduction to operate the platform.
• Hands-on tech lead for a mixed team of on-site and offshore contract resources responsible for application development, end user support, and operation support of applications and servers.
• UI Design and front-end coding for custom applications.

EDUCATION:

Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA -- B.A. Art