Customer & Behavioral Psychology
Understanding how users think, struggle, decide, and adopt products.

AI-First Technical Product Manager
Ex-AWS PMT-ES · Ex-Microsoft Azure · UW Foster STEM MBA ’26
Who I Am
Hi 👋, I’m Shankar — an AI-first Technical Product Manager who brings curiosity, technical depth, product taste, and grit to ambiguous problems. I enjoy product work that starts with a messy human problem, moves through disciplined discovery, and ends in a clear strategy, prototype, or roadmap that helps cross-functional teams build simple, scalable products customers adopt and trust.
Outside product work, I’m usually hiking, working out, or trying to understand why people behave the way they do.
A snapshot of a few products and prototypes I’ve built, tested, and shaped across AI, consumer, and community experiences.
Apr 2026 - Ongoing
Discovered 3 student fitness pain points through 6 interviews (hypotheses driven); built a 0-to-1 personalized AI gym buddy MVP in 3 hours at OpenAI Codex Hackathon; currently iterating toward a broader release based on user feedback.
Jan 2026 - Mar 2026
Led an 11-member cross-functional team across design, engineering, and business to build HeyLily, a Hiya competitor and AI scam-call assistant for seniors. Ran 15+ user interviews, guided development of an android call app, and crafted a 5-year B2B2C go-to-market model.
Sep 2025 - Ongoing
Built an AI music recommendation engine in n8n for mood and occasion sub-playlist curation, using dynamic song-feature selection and improving relevance by 73% versus a rule-based baseline in project testing.
Jan 2026 - Ongoing
Interviewed 2 hike organizers to identify planning pain points; architected AI Hike Researcher, a cost and time efficient AI agent that gathers 6 real-time safety signals and personalizes trail filtering, reducing weekly planning time by 98%.
Sep 2025 - Mar 2026
Ideated, launched, and ran the Foster Tech Club program that made product thinking more social and hands-on; created event marketing, posters, Luma pages, and audience messaging; produced three teardown events with 110+ attendees.
Feb 2023
Analyzed 100 one-star Bumble App Store ratings, root-caused the recurring no-matches problem, brainstormed solutions, and proposed Bumble Barney, an AI wingman intended to decrease no matches by 10%. Won 2nd rank in the February NextLeap Capstone project.
Understanding how users think, struggle, decide, and adopt products.
Using AI to rethink workflows, reduce friction, and create new product experiences.
Turning customer signals, usage patterns, and business context into better product decisions.
Connecting market needs, company goals, competitor research, financial tradeoffs, and go-to-market realities into product decisions that create durable business value.
Working credibly with engineering teams across cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, scalability, and reliability.
Aligning engineering, design, business, and customer stakeholders around clear problems and measurable outcomes.
Driven, high ownership, comfort with ambiguity, proactive problem-solving, and outcome-focused execution.
Listening for signals, understanding motivations, mentorship, and collaborative alignment.
Deliberate thinking, simplicity, attention to detail, and long-term orientation.
Where I Worked
Amazon Web Services
Seattle, WA
Worked on AWS FinOps cost optimization strategy, customer discovery, roadmap prioritization, and PRFAQ-style product definition.
Microsoft
Bangalore, India
Led Azure Core Storage product and engineering work across Blob NFS, AI incident diagnosis, distributed caching, and high-throughput infrastructure for enterprise and HPC workloads.
Jul 2021 - Jul 2024
Spearheaded the 0-to-1 development and launch of a Windows CLI client using WSL2 virtualization for Blob NFS, unlocking a new Windows segment and onboarding 150+ B2B customers while partnering with product leadership on go-to-market strategy.
Jul 2021 - Jul 2024
Built troubleshooting tooling to diagnose Azure Blob NFS issues, collect useful logs, and support faster root-cause analysis for users and Azure support workflows.
Microsoft
Hyderabad, India
Built Azure Monitor and Migrate product experiences and cloud infrastructure improvements across UX, performance, cost, reliability, and disaster recovery.
What I Studied
Foster School of Business, University of Washington
Seattle, WA
VP of Foster Tech Club and AI Product Builder, focused on product strategy, customer research, AI prototyping, go-to-market thinking, and product leadership.
Jan 2026 - Ongoing
Interviewed 2 hike organizers to identify planning pain points; architected AI Hike Researcher, a cost and time efficient AI agent that gathers 6 real-time safety signals and personalizes trail filtering, reducing weekly planning time by 98%.
Sep 2025 - Ongoing
Built an AI music recommendation engine in n8n for mood and occasion sub-playlist curation, using dynamic song-feature selection and improving relevance by 73% versus a rule-based baseline in project testing.
Apr 2026 - Ongoing
Discovered 3 student fitness pain points through 6 interviews (hypotheses driven); built a 0-to-1 personalized AI gym buddy MVP in 3 hours at OpenAI Codex Hackathon; currently iterating toward a broader release based on user feedback.
Sep 2024 - Mar 2026
Benchmarked Asana's sales strategy and go-to-market motion across nine dimensions, recommending clearer PLG vs. SLG guidance and competitive differentiation. Awarded 1st place for best assessment out of eight teams.
Jan 2026 - Mar 2026
Led an 11-member cross-functional team across design, engineering, and business to build HeyLily, a Hiya competitor and AI scam-call assistant for seniors. Ran 15+ user interviews, guided development of an android call app, and crafted a 5-year B2B2C go-to-market model.
Sep 2025 - Mar 2026
Ideated, launched, and ran the Foster Tech Club program that made product thinking more social and hands-on; created event marketing, posters, Luma pages, and audience messaging; produced three teardown events with 110+ attendees.
Sep 2024 - Mar 2026
Proposed Roblox, a user-generated-content platform, as the acquirer for Shutterstock in the Foster Case Competition. Presented a $1.5B valuation and synergy analysis showing how Shutterstock assets could expand Roblox creator tools, content quality, and market share.
Sep 2024 - Mar 2026
Developed a go-to-market strategy for Microsoft 365 Copilot to capture 1% of the U.S. university student market, modeling $2.9M in value over four years. Positioned Copilot as a Gen Z-facing AI productivity product through campus adoption, value messaging, and education-focused GTM tactics.
Sep 2024 - Mar 2026
Produced four milestone reports on South Korea's gaming sector, covering market sizing, developer and publisher mapping, growth themes, and investment analysis. Turned the research into a prioritized outreach list of six targets to guide 2025 go-to-market planning.
Sep 2024 - Mar 2026
Developed a structured consulting analysis for SBS, turning client context, market research, and strategic signals into prioritized recommendations, supporting rationale, and an executive-ready presentation.
NextLeap
Bangalore, India
Selected as a Top Fellow with 2nd rank in NextLeap’s Product Management Fellowship, focused on structured product thinking, customer pain-point analysis, and capstone problem solving.
Feb 2023
Analyzed 100 one-star Bumble App Store ratings, root-caused the recurring no-matches problem, brainstormed solutions, and proposed Bumble Barney, an AI wingman intended to decrease no matches by 10%. Won 2nd rank in the February NextLeap Capstone project.
Feb 2023
Designed wireframes for a Netflix social discovery concept, exploring how friend circles, onboarding, and recommendation flows could make content discovery more social and habit-forming.
Feb 2023
Created a user persona and mapped Netflix's new-user onboarding journey to identify friction points, emotional states, and opportunities to improve activation, personalization, and first-session value. Published the journey map on Figma, where it received 650+ uses and 17+ likes.
Feb 2023
Collected product design explorations in Figma, including journey maps, wireframes, and interface concepts that show product thinking across discovery, interaction design, and user experience.

IIIT Hyderabad
Hyderabad, India
Completed an advanced AI/ML certification focused on machine learning and deep learning, placing 2nd in the capstone project.
Sep 2018 - Dec 2018
Completed the Advanced AI/ML Certification capstone at IIIT Hyderabad and placed 2nd for the project.

PES University
Bangalore, India
Graduated with a 9.5 CGPA, ranked in the top 5% of the class.
Aug 2014 - Jun 2018
Built an AI tool that transforms hand-drawn sketches into realistic images using Convolutional Neural Networks and Generative Adversarial Networks. Won 2nd place in the final-year project competition for applying computer vision and generative modeling to creative image generation.
How to Contact Me
Liked my work, have an idea to collaborate on, or just want to geek out on any of my interests? I’d be happy to hear from you. ☕