Open to Product Manager roles

Product Manager. Customer-Centric Product Builder.

Frontend Engineer with 8+ years of experience delivering customer-facing products at Walmart and Cisco. Passionate about product strategy, AI-powered experiences, customer journey optimization, and cross-functional leadership.

Walmart · Cisco alumni AI-native PM Cross-functional leader
Somashekar Gowda

Currently exploring

AI-powered customer experiences

0+

Years building products

0

Featured product initiatives

0+

Cross-functional partners

0

Fortune 50 companies

About

From shipping code to shaping products

Eight years of engineering taught me how customer-facing products are really built. I bring that depth to product decisions — pairing technical credibility with discovery, strategy, and clear ownership.

Career evolution

  1. 2017 – 2018

    Frontend Engineer · Cisco

    Shipped production frontends for enterprise products. Learned the craft of clean UI and reliable, scalable code.

  2. 2018 – 2025

    Product Engineer / Senior Frontend Engineer · Sam's Club

    Led customer-facing experiences across membership, renewal, and personalization. Partnered deeply with product and design.

  3. 2025 – 2026

    Product Engineer / Senior Frontend Engineer · Walmart

    Driving AI-powered, customer-centric product work. Bridging engineering depth and PM rigor across cross-functional teams.

What I bring

Product Discovery
Stakeholder Management
Agile & Scrum
Customer Experience
AI Product Management
Cross-functional Leadership
Data-driven Decisions

The best PMs are great translators — between customers, engineers, and business. Engineering taught me the second language fluently; product is teaching me the rest.

Core Skills

A T-shaped toolkit

Deep technical roots, broad product instincts, and an AI-native lens.

Product Management

Product StrategyProduct DiscoveryRoadmappingPRDsAgile / ScrumUser StoriesStakeholder ManagementA/B TestingProduct AnalyticsCustomer Journey MappingAI Product ManagementPersonalization

Technical

ReactTypeScriptGraphQLREST APIsSQLCloud FundamentalsCI/CDMicroservices
Product Initiatives

Featured product initiatives

Selected stories showing how I frame problems, navigate trade-offs, and ship outcomes customers feel.

Initiative 01
Platform

Sponsor Membership Platform

Led cross-functional collaboration across Product, Engineering, Content, Payments, and Business to launch employer-sponsored memberships and streamline onboarding.

Stakeholder ManagementProduct DeliveryCross-functional Leadership
Read initiative
Initiative 02
Customer Experience

One-Click Renewal Experience

Simplified membership renewal by reducing customer friction and orchestrating multiple backend workflows into a seamless user experience.

Customer ExperienceProduct StrategyFunnel Optimization
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Initiative 03
AI

AI-Powered Personalized Perks

Built an intelligent personalization experience leveraging customer behavior and order history to surface tailored membership perks.

AI Product ManagementPersonalizationProduct Analytics
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Initiative 04
Platform

Self-Service Promotion Platform

Designed reusable platform capabilities allowing business teams to launch and manage promotions without engineering involvement.

Platform Product ManagementSelf-ServiceOperational Efficiency
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Initiative 05
Search

License Plate Vehicle Search

Improved vehicle search accuracy by introducing license plate lookup and dynamic vehicle attributes.

Search ExperienceProduct DiscoveryCustomer Experience
Read initiative
Product Thinking

How I think like a Product Manager

The frameworks and habits I lean on to turn ambiguity into clear bets.

Prioritization Frameworks

RICE, weighted scoring, and opportunity sizing — chosen for the decision, not for show.

Product Roadmaps

Outcome-oriented roadmaps with explicit bets, assumptions, and exit criteria.

Customer Journey Mapping

End-to-end journeys that surface invisible friction across teams and systems.

North Star Metrics

A single metric that captures value delivered, supported by clear input metrics.

Experiment Design

Hypothesis-first A/B testing with guardrail metrics and pre-registered analysis plans.

AI Product Opportunities

Spotting where LLMs create genuine user value vs. where they just add latency and risk.

Leadership & Community

Leading beyond the workplace

Community work where I get to practice exactly what product asks of me — coordination, ownership, and customer experience at scale.

Vokkaliga Parishat of America

Core Committee Member

Led cross-functional planning and execution for a large-scale national convention, overseeing publicity, website, stage design, sports, and cultural programs.

Kannada Koota of Northern California

Food Committee Chair

Led food strategy, vendor coordination, and logistics for large-scale community events, delivering exceptional attendee experiences.

Resume

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Somashekar Gowda — Product Manager

8+ years building customer-facing products. Engineering depth, product instincts, AI-native.

Available for Product Manager roles

Let's build products
customers love.

Hiring a PM, exploring AI-native product opportunities, or just want to compare notes? I'd love to chat.