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ANDREW LOCKE

Cape Town   –   andrew@abrulo.com   –   (+27) 82 417 0392   –   https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-b-locke/

SUMMARY

Senior Product Manager experienced in delivering innovative software solutions and products, with a strong background in learning and delivering new technologies. Owning the product vision to execute product-led growth strategies, ideation, development, and launch of new products and services, while collaborating with stakeholders spanning four continents. Dedicated to maximising customer value by developing and executing the product strategy, crafting a value proposition that resonates with both internal and external users, aligning with business goals, enhancing value, and addressing evolving customer needs.

Harnessing extensive emerging market experience and demonstrating expertise across multiple industries, including Fintech (banking, insurance, loyalty, digital payments), retail (e-commerce), and the people sector (Coaching and Recruitment). Diverse experience across multiple industries, the breadth of experience provides versatile insights and approaches to addressing customer needs, identifying unique opportunities to deliver solutions, with a growth mindset that yields impactful outcomes.

An alumnus of the University of Stellenbosch Business School with an MBA emphasizing Leadership and Strategy, possessing a unique blend of entrepreneurship, strategic thinking, and technical acumen. A founder and key contributor in diverse ventures, taking pride in the ability to tackle challenges, expedite processes, and make a significant global impact. Aspiration lies in driving innovation, solving problems in existing products, startups, and early growth stage ventures, and leveraging a passion for entrepreneurship, ideation, and solution-building.

EXPERIENCE

Senior Product Manager

Sand Technologies                                                                                                                                                                                                                     March 2023 – Present, Global Remote

• Led a team through ideation, development and launch of our SaaS platform that would contribute to our Sand vision to place 2 million young professionals into jobs by 2030. A strong emphasis on utilising AI-driven technologies and data-driven approaches, I’ve enabled automated ranking & matching between talent and opportunity, ensuring both individuals and businesses and alignments tailored to their specific needs, value proposition and ethos.
• Developed and executed the product strategy aligning with business goals, utilising customer feedback mechanisms and data analytics to identify competitive advantages, contributing to the value proposition for internal and external users.
• Led product discovery efforts, implementing rapid prototyping experimentation with design tools such as Figma and enterprise automation tools, Workato and Zapier. I also identified tech partners to rapidly scale our talent database, implementing data and GenAI products that connect employers with over 100 million talent profiles globally.
• Regularly aligned the product roadmap to business objectives, executing and owning the product strategy that would drive key business KPI’s such as user retention and engagement. Implementing Martech and business analytics quantitative and qualitative data to guide our prioritisation helped us grow the platform by over 1000% in the first 4 months.

Co-Founder

Sabrulo                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    April 2021 – Present, Global Remote

• Founder working with startups and early growth-stage ventures, utilising a dual-track product-led approach to address challenges and ensure tangible results with an 18% year-on-year growth.
• Providing product management services and strategic guidance to companies like The Room and Sand Technologies.
• Employed agile methodologies in product development and operations, ensuring swift adaptation to changing market demands.

Senior Product Manager

The Room                                                                                                                                                                                                                               May 2021 – February 2023, Global Remote

• Led a product team in a dual product owner role, reporting to the CPO, managing end-to-end dual-track product delivery, while collaborating with engineering, design, and other cross-functional teams, writing clear product specifications, user stories, use cases, and acceptance criteria, to guide the development team effectively.
• Achieved over 110% growth of the talent platform in 2022 and maintained an outstanding 90% of events NPS, through effective strategies utilising data science techniques to analyse user engagement and growth.
• Demonstrate the ability to generate strategic trade-offs to effectively solve problems and drive impactful outcomes, drive sales strategy and execution, and validate key business metrics through data-driven decision-making.
• Oversee the roadmap to maximise discovery and delivery of the right features through prioritisation with stakeholders, ensuring the features developed added the most value to our customers and aligned with our larger business objectives.

Product Manager

Integrative Enneagram Solutions                                                                                                                                                                 February 2020 – April 2021, ZA, Cape Town

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• Technical Product Manager role reporting to the CEO and founder, Led the development and deployment of a global B2C/B2B SaaS product across over 20 countries, ensuring cohesive product development and implementation using tools such as Confluence, Asana and Jira through an agile development process.

Product Lead

4C Group                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              July 2018 – July 2019, ZA, Cape Town 

• The senior management role managing a business division that provided services for the rapid adoption of financial technology solutions and mobile money services(M-Pesa) across Africa.
• Managed a division, overseeing a team of 10, delivering our products and services to customers in 7 countries.
• Provided strategic direction and planning to ensure quality, capacity and capability continuously demonstrated to our clients in our products, projects, SLA’s and KPIs, resulting in a 23% increase in revenue through SLA contracts.

Solutions Manager

Yoyo                                                                                                                                                                                                                January 2016 – June 2018, ZA, Cape Town 

Software Development Project Manager

Tangent Solutions                                                                                                                                                                                       October 2011 – December 2015, ZA, Johannesburg

Project & Procurement Manager

Atvantage Project Managers & Quantity Surveyors                                                                                                        February 2006 – September 2011, ZA, Cape Town 

EDUCATION

Masters In Business Administration

Leadership and Consulting • University of Stellenbosch Business School • Stellenbosch • 2014

Bachelor of Commerce (Hons)

Business Management • University of South Africa • Cape Town • 2010

Bachelor of Commerce (Law)

Management and Law • Rhodes University • Grahamstown • 2005

CERTIFICATIONS

APMG AgilePM

APMG International • 2017

PRINCE2® (2009) Foundation & Practitioner APMG International • 2016

ITIL® (2011) Foundation APMG International • 2016

SKILLS

Product strategy, Business strategy, Product development, Project Management, Stakeholder Management, Cross-Functional Leadership, Market Research, Risk Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), E-commerce, Data analysis, Marketing strategy, Product roadmap, Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), User experience (UX), Prototyping, Software as a Service (SaaS), Budgeting, Negotiation, Leadership, Initiative, Communication, Teamwork, Problem-solving, Time management, Agile methodologies, Functional Testing and Quality Assurance.