Hire the Best Product Managers in California

I'm a Senior Product Manager and Product Owner specializing in AI-driven products. Currently AI Product Owner at a smart-tourism startup, where I own the full product roadmap end-to-end, run sprint planning and engineering ceremonies, define LLM and RAG feature requirements, and ship production AI features across leading frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Before that, I led national-scale AI platform delivery and project management for Egypt's Ministry of Higher Education across 27 universities, including an adaptive AI tutor, a RAG-powered research platform built on the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, and a K-12 AI assessment platform. I owned the AI Solutions Nano Courses program end-to-end: 5,000+ registrations, 2,000+ live participants, and 4 multilingual onboarding webinars. What I help clients with: • Product Management and Product Ownership: Roadmaps, PRDs, user stories, acceptance criteria, sprint planning, backlog grooming, stakeholder alignment, and measurable success metrics • AI product strategy: Translate ambiguous founder or exec vision into prioritized roadmaps tied to business outcomes • LLM evaluation and selection: Compare frontier models on cost, latency, output quality, and context limits before you commit engineering hours • RAG and agentic systems: Design retrieval architecture, prompt strategies, and agent workflows that actually ship rather than stalling in proof-of-concept purgatory • Project management across teams — Run cross-functional delivery in Jira, Trello, Smartsheet, Asana, and Monday platforms; concurrent multi-client and multi-program execution without quality slipping • Rapid prototyping with modern AI-first tooling(like v0 or Lovable): Validate product ideas in days, not sprints; replace static mockups in stakeholder reviews with live, deployable prototypes • EdTech and B2G delivery: Multi-institution rollouts, adoption programs for non-technical educators, and stakeholder dynamics that make government contracts work My background also includes Lean Six Sigma at Medtronic on FDA-regulated production lines, and CEO experience taking a 200+ person organization from operating losses to 15% profitability. So when I say outcomes over demos, I mean it from both an engineering-discipline and a P&L perspective. Best fit: founders shipping their first AI feature, EdTech teams scaling LLM-powered learning, product leaders who need a senior PM partner to take an idea from "we should try AI" to a working product, or organizations that need a Product Owner who can also run the project management discipline behind delivery. I'm available in the ET and CET time zones; I'm a US citizen, open to travel, and available immediately. Send a message and let's talk about what you're trying to build.

As a senior software engineer and architect, I have over 25 years experience partnering with businesses to transform their ideas into functional software products. I excel at software engineering, software architecture design and planning, leading development teams, writing technical specifications, and designing user interfaces and experiences. My work spans development of both enterprise and consumer applications with a focus on artificial intelligence, e-commerce and online payments, iOS and Android applications, API integrations, hardware integrations, server administration, automations, content management, web development, and SEO - all with an emphasis on exceptional design. I understand the importance of striking a balance between timeline, budget and feature set when designing and phasing a project, ensuring it works realistically within a business’ constraints. My communication style is clear, concise and transparent. When you hire me, you gain a team player that takes full ownership of his assignments and is guided by a relentless work ethic. I am proactive in looking ahead for potential issues and opportunities, and provide these insights as continuous feedback to stakeholders. While I am eager to discuss projects both large and small, simple and complex, covering a wide range of disciplines, below is a list of areas where I have deep expertise: Artificial Intelligence Extensive experience implementing AI technologies, including custom AI agents, conversational chatbots, recommendation engines, automated decision-making, predictive analytics, personalized user interactions, and content analysis/generation. Skilled in prompt engineering, model fine-tuning, and building hybrid systems combining multiple AI models with traditional software components. Proficient in integrating frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. I maintain expert knowledge of current and forthcoming offerings, enabling me to guide clients in selecting services that deliver optimal output at economical costs. API Integration Deep expertise building secure, efficient, and well-documented API integrations, including RESTful, GraphQL, legacy services (SOAP, XML-RPC), OAuth and other authentication protocols, and real-time data synchronization. My integration experience includes: Stripe, Plaid, Square, Twilio, SendGrid, Slack, Google/Bing/Meta Ads, Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Google Docs/Sheets/Drive, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Hootsuite, Monday.com, Quickbase, Teamwork, Asana, Quickbooks, NetSuite, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, DocuSign, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Maps, Mapbox, and more. DevOps and Server Administration Twenty years experience in setup, migration, and maintenance of Unix/Linux hosting environments, including 15 years managing AWS infrastructure as well as Azure, Google Cloud, Heroku, Cloudflare, and others. Skilled in optimizing performance, ensuring availability, load balancing, security hardening, automated deployments, monitoring and alerting systems, and maintenance automation. Thrives during emergency situations and catastrophic failures under extreme pressure. E-commerce I’ve developed custom e-commerce offerings that have processed over a billion dollars in transactions. Functionality has included payment processing integrations, bi-directional third-party inventory management and POS integrations, fulfillment pipelines, subscription services, and high volume architectures processing thousands of orders per minute. Android & iOS Development Ten years of experience building native and non-native Android & iOS apps and supporting API suites with hundreds of App Store and Google Play submissions. Feature sets include e-commerce, push notifications, user authentication, location services, deep linking, barcode scanning, and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons. Cannabis Tech Fourteen years experience developing software for cannabis dispensaries and MSOs, including online ordering, in-store kiosks, in-store TV menus, and Android/iOS apps. Expert knowledge integrating with cannabis POS platforms and APIs, including Dutchie POS (formerly LeafLogix) and Dutchie Plus, Jane POS and Jane Roots, Treez, BioTrack, Greenbits, Blaze, Flowhub and MJ Platform, as well as delivery logistics platforms like Onfleet and Detrack. Subject matter expert on Android and iOS apps for dispensaries, having submitted more dispensary apps than any other developer in the world. Fractional CTO & Consulting Apart from software development, I also offer fractional CTO services as well as consultation services to businesses during the idea conception, planning, and pre-production phases of their software projects. This can include product design, strategic planning, technical feasibility analysis, market research, risk assessment, budgeting and cost estimation, project scoping, workflow design, team structure and roles, RFP creation and management, and vendor selection and staffing.

🎖 Expert-Vetted - Top 1% on UpWork / |📱Designed #1 Consumer App | 🧠 Approved for the "Einstein" Green card by the US Government | 🔝 9+ Years of Experience | 🏆 Winner of the EGG Accelerator | 🇺🇸 Based in Silicon Valley | Chat-GPT Expert My goal is to recognize and find a balance between your business goals and your users' needs, to create user friendly, engaging and visually spectacular mobile and web designs. I have 100+ projects under my belt that include MVPs, Redesigns, Conversion Optimization and more. My clients include agile startups to big established companies. My unique process goes as follows: Discover Business/User Needs ➡️ Competitive Reserach ➡️ User Personas ➡️ Ideate Assumsions and Build measurable Hypothesis ➡️ Create Wireframes ➡️ User Testing ➡️ Iterate ➡️ Create Interactive Prototypes ➡️ User Testing ➡️ Iterate ➡️ Deliver to Engineers I prioritize teamwork and great communication above everything else and i use processes to ensure you are kept on the loop in every phase of your project. Services Include: 🎯 Mobile App Design (iOS & Android) 🎯 Web Design 🎯 UI/UX 🎯 Wireframes 🎯 Interactive Prototypes Feel free to contact me directly if you are looking for high quality results. Alkis

Technical AI Program Lead & Product Manager (Expert-Vetted, Top 1%) who turns founder vision into shipped, production AI — not slideware. Ex-Tesla and Experian, with $400K+ earned and 100% Job Success across 45+ Upwork engagements. What I actually do: - Orchestrate multi-model AI — design and build agentic workflows across Claude, GPT, and Gemini, including MCP-based tool/context setups. Hands-on where it counts, and I direct engineering for the rest. - Wire AI into your real stack — connect models to live business data and systems (CRM/Salesforce, cloud, internal APIs) so outputs are grounded, not generic. - Build with governance in mind — SOC 2 / RBAC-aware deployments, sensible data boundaries, and controls to keep shadow AI in check. - Own delivery end-to-end — scope, sequence, and ship with real PM rigor (Agile/Scrum) so AI initiatives reach production and stay maintainable. Tools & stack: Claude, GPT, Gemini, MCP, Jira, Linear, HubSpot, AWS, and modern web stacks (React, Node.js, Python). Track record: - $400K+ earned on Upwork across 45+ engagements, 100% Job Success - $10M+ in client ARR influenced; 200+ complex projects shipped across e-commerce, healthcare, and logistics - Long-term, repeat client partnerships If you need someone who speaks both founder and engineer and can take an AI initiative from idea to production, let's talk. Also available for full-stack delivery — web & mobile app development, Amazon Seller Central, Shopify, WooCommerce, and WordPress — plus data & BI (Power BI dashboards & reporting) and digital transformation consulting, solo or with my NinjaDev team. Whether you need a senior AI/product lead or an end-to-end build, reach out and let's talk.

AI Workflow Automation & Operational Systems for Events, Hospitality, and Growth-Stage Operations I’ve spent 12 years producing 300+ events and a decade leading enterprise-scale operations, building systems that saved 100K+ hours and $5M+ in measurable value. Across events, hospitality, and operations teams, the problem is consistent: Manual coordination scales with volume instead of becoming more efficient. Event teams manage 50+ vendors per event using disconnected tools. Hospitality managers solve workforce scheduling constraints manually each week. Operations teams re-enter data across systems, reconcile discrepancies, build reports from scattered sources, and waste hours searching for information across platforms that don’t integrate. I build AI-powered systems, automation workflows, and production-grade platforms that eliminate operational friction. At The McBurney Group, I design and implement: • AI agents and intelligent automation workflows • System integration and cross-platform orchestration • Workforce scheduling automation • Meeting intelligence and document processing systems • Operational dashboards and reporting automation • Custom-built AI production applications 100+ workflows and automation systems deployed across events, hospitality, and operational environments. Industry Focus Events Vendor coordination automation, timeline generation, budget intelligence, and communication workflows for event companies and independent planners. Hospitality Workforce scheduling systems, compliance tracking, turnover reduction, and operational efficiency builds for hotels, venues, and restaurants. Growth-Stage Operations Meeting intelligence, knowledge retrieval systems, document automation, workflow orchestration, and AI-driven process optimization for coordination-heavy businesses. I came from operations and learned to build with AI, not the other way around. Most automation initiatives fail when technology is implemented without redesigning workflow reality. I architect complete systems where AI agents, workflows, platforms, and people work together. I build implemented solutions, not theoretical strategies.

I am a seasoned product and UX leader with over 25 years of experience in building and scaling interactive digital platforms across diverse markets, including consumer, enterprise, and AI-driven sectors. My ability to translate bold visions into production-ready experiences has been honed through hands-on leadership from concept to release. I specialize in integrating product strategy with engagement systems and technical architecture, delivering measurable growth and lasting impact. I excel in prototyping, iterative development, and cross-functional collaboration, ensuring go-to-market readiness and successful team scaling. If you're seeking a partner who can drive innovation and create compelling user experiences, let's connect to discuss how I can elevate your product vision.