Saurabh (Sam) Rao
Product Manager
Brisbane
Summary
Accomplished Senior Product Manager with 15 years of experience successfully leading digital transformation and driving product innovation in diverse sectors such as government, banking, insurance, and enterprise. Proven track record of delivering tangible business results through strategic product vision and effective stakeholder alignment. Recognized for exceptional stakeholder management skills and a consultative approach that optimizes business operations and enables the achievement of strategic objectives. Noteworthy collaborations include Australian Government, Citi, Allianz, Delta Airways, Tennessee Valley Authority, MasterCard, Apple, and University of Melbourne.
Overview
16
16
years of professional experience
2014
2014
years of post-secondary education
5
5
Certifications
Work History
Product Manager (Contract Role)
Palladium Group
11.2022 - Current
- Spearheaded the integration strategy for the PALM scheme, successfully connecting Australian Employer Portal with DEWR PALMIS and 10 international IRD systems, resulting in streamlined workflow efficiency and enhanced cross-border labour mobility outcomes
- Ensured Stakeholder Engagement and System Adoption: Facilitate collaboration with key government stakeholders to ensure the successful adoption and engagement of integrated systems, driving alignment with policy objectives and fostering strong user relationships
- Drive Continuous Improvement: Capture and analyze key system performance metrics to ensure long-term operational efficiency, making data-driven decisions to continuously optimize integration processes and enhance system functionality
Product Owner (Contract Role)
Citi Bank
07.2021 - 10.2022
- Developed comprehensive roadmaps outlining the product vision, goals, and milestones for successful execution.
- Managed backlog prioritization, ensuring alignment with business goals and stakeholder expectations.
- Focused on building critical features up front in order to identify constraints and technical challenges.
- Facilitated communication between development teams and stakeholders, ensuring clear understanding of requirements and expectations.
- Cultivated strong relationships with key stakeholders by maintaining open lines of communication and addressing concerns promptly.
Senior Business Analyst (Contract Role)
Allianz Partners
07.2018 - 06.2021
- Facilitated requirement gathering workshops, resulting in clear project objectives and deliverables.
- Managed stakeholder expectations through transparent communication and timely status updates, ensuring alignment between project deliverables and business objectives.
- Created detailed user stories for system enhancements, leading to improved functionality and user satisfaction.
- Led process mapping initiatives, resulting in optimized workflows and reduced redundancies across departments.
- Liaised on a technical level with enterprise architects and development leads to help define and develop best fit solutions.
Implementation Consultant
Viasat
01.2018 - 06.2018
- Own the customer engagement by leading the requirement gathering, solution scoping and design workshops
- Support the customer with conference room pilots, investigating issues and providing feedback to product team on bugs/feature improvements
- Establish and manage customer relationships with key business and technology stakeholders
- Provide sales teams with detailed, technical support throughout the sales cycle, responding to the product feature and technical elements of RFI/RFP/RFQs
Product Owner
Pramerica Systems
06.2015 - 12.2017
- Development and ownership of requirement backlog to ensure key business deliverables/milestones are met in line with IT deliverables ensuring projects are delivered on time
- Full SDLC life cycle involvement by working closely with customer stakeholders, and technical personnel to conduct cross-functional requirements gathering and documentation sessions and deliver accurate, timely and complete requirements artefacts
- Document, prioritize, and present clear, detailed requirements and in-depth user stories
- Acting as the conduit, 'enabling bridge' and knowledge source across various teams such as sales, legal, operations, customer support, corporate training, other impacted project and development teams by effectively communicating requirements and the knowledge gained throughout projects
Senior Business Analyst
MetricStream Ltd
09.2012 - 05.2015
- Involved in all phases of the implementation lifecycle from requirement gathering, documentation and prioritisation, wire frames/ screen design, functional specifications, writing and execution of user acceptance test scripts through to production implementation and post implementation support
- Story workshop organisation to incorporate feedback and iron out any queries on user stories from QA and dev teams
- Documenting the AS-IS and developing the TO-BE to ensure project team is aware of the stakeholder ask and scope creep is contained
- Coordination of business testing across jurisdictions and process areas to ensure change is fully tested to go live
- Timely delivery while adhering to the Agile-Scrum model
- Projects: Enterprise SOX, IT and NERC Compliance Solution for Tennessee Valley Authority, Enterprise Audit Management solution for MasterCard
Business Analyst
Infosys Ltd
06.2011 - 09.2012
- Accountable for eliciting requirements from users and producing use case scenarios and functional requirement documentation to ensure that requirements are accurately captured and communicated to the technical team
- Participating in client workshops, CRP meeting, client stakeholder interactions and capturing AS-IS process, proposing TO-BE business process, functional behaviour using use case scenarios and documenting functional and technical aspects
- Coordinating with development team to analyse technical implementation feasibility, identify best possible solution to fulfil the requirements
- Projects: Oracle Primavera PPM Implementation for Suzlon Energy, Oracle ERP Implementation for University of Melbourne
Software Engineer
Infosys Limited
09.2008 - 01.2010
- Pro-actively involved in design analysis, coding, debugging and testing of the application
- Exposed to all stages of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) through involvement in requirement analysis, constructing UML diagrams, developing specifications, building, integrating and testing the application
- Involved in major layout changes, development and enhancements
- Projects: Hubble iTunes Reporting Tool for Apple, USA: Hubble automates monitoring of major iTunes internal components (datacentres, pods, servers) and generated notification and alerts to concerned iTunes support team, when the system parameters crosses pre-set limits
- This helped Apple to scale iTunes horizontally
- Knowledge Sharing Portal for Infosys Research: A platform for researchers to share their findings, discuss and publish their subjects of interest
- Portal consisted of 8 modules: RSS feeds, Blogs, Wikis, content management, communities, tech tips, news, and virtual labs
Education
MSc - Business Management
Robert Gordon University
06-2011
B.E. - Computer Science
NMAMIT
01.2004 - 01.2008
Skills
Product Strategy & VisionProduct Roadmap Development & PrioritizationRequirement Gathering, Prioritization and DocumentationBusiness Systems AnalysisTechnical Influence and Solution IdentificationSDLC – Scrum Agile/Waterfall/Hybrid AgileCross Functional Team Co-ordinationCustomer/Stakeholder Relationship management
Product lifecycle management
Product development
Product vision and strategy
Product strategy
Roadmap development
Teamwork and collaboration
Critical thinking
Requirements gathering
Agile software development
End to end feature delivery
Prioritization and execution
Data-driven decision making
Product positioning
KPI tracking
Research and trend analysis
Interpersonal communication
Jira, atlassian, rally
Stakeholder management
Certification
Advanced UX Training, 2015, UX Training Institute
Timeline
Product Manager (Contract Role)
Palladium Group
11.2022 - Current
Product Owner (Contract Role)
Citi Bank
07.2021 - 10.2022
Senior Business Analyst (Contract Role)
Allianz Partners
07.2018 - 06.2021
Implementation Consultant
Viasat
01.2018 - 06.2018
Product Owner
Pramerica Systems
06.2015 - 12.2017
Senior Business Analyst
MetricStream Ltd
09.2012 - 05.2015
Business Analyst
Infosys Ltd
06.2011 - 09.2012
Software Engineer
Infosys Limited
09.2008 - 01.2010
B.E. - Computer Science
NMAMIT
01.2004 - 01.2008
MSc - Business Management
Robert Gordon University