Biren Shah

Fractional CPO

Kickdrum

Jan 2026 – Present(4 mos)

Founder

GoFractionalPM.com · Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Aug 2025 – Present(9 mos)

GoFractionalPM helps growth-stage companies accelerate product development, AI adoption, and operational scaling without the cost of a full-time executive. We combine fractional CPO leadership with hands-on technology delivery — from private LLM deployments to rapid MVP builds. We specialize in three areas: 1) Fractional Product Leadership — providing hands-on strategy and execution when teams need focus, speed, and alignment but aren’t yet ready for a full-time CPO. 2) AI & Automation Acceleration — guiding founders through AI opportunity mapping, design, rapid experimentation, and production-ready implementation. 3) Product Operations Transformations & Scaling — establishing the processes, tooling, and automation needed to prioritize effectively and scale with efficiency. Leveraging AI intelligently to improve Product Ops While we are domain agnostic, currently our work spans Automotive and FinTech. Some examples - A capital-call workflow system that cut errors by 95% and reduced cycle time from 14 days to 5. - A private LLM fund-intelligence platform built for asset and wealth managers. - Designing AI powered workflow automations for Automotive buying process. Our mission: help teams move faster, smarter, and more confidently — from idea to impact.

VP of Product Management & Engineering

J.D. Power · Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Apr 2023 – Apr 2025(2 yrs 1 mo)

Led the digital product vision and execution for J.D. Power’s SmartDigital Automotive Suite, managing a 30+ person cross-functional organization spanning Product, Product Ops, Engineering, Data Science, and Analytics. Scaled SmartLeads, a $25M machine learning (ML) product that leveraged advanced algorithms for real-time lead scoring and purchase intent predication - achieving 2x the average automotive industry sales conversion rates. Launched an AI powered personalized incentive offers product for “on-the-fence” automotive buyers, using predictive modeling – achieving 20% improvement in close rates Build an AI-powered assessment platform to analyze 50K+ monthly dealer communications—identifying behavioral patterns, diagnosing root causes, and driving targeted performance improvements at scale. Led the end-to-end redesign of the customer portal, conducting user interviews, facilitating design workshops, and creating the information architecture and high-fidelity mockups. Crafted product roadmaps through close collaboration with Engineering, Sales, Delivery teams, and external customers—applying strong strategic thinking, clear communication, and empathy to build consensus across diverse stakeholders. Drove cross-functional alignment by balancing priorities, adapting to changing needs, and influencing decision-making to deliver features that maximize business and customer value within timeline, budget, and scope constraints. Transformed development and prioritization processes by launching an Intake platform and applying AI-driven methods to draft requirements, define user acceptance criteria, and align feature prioritization to strategic value—driving 30% reduction in low-value churn and increasing roadmap transparency.

Senior Director of Product Management and Engineering

J.D. Power · Austin, Texas, United States

Dec 2019 – Apr 2023(3 yrs 5 mos)

Sr Director of Product and Engineering

Trilogy · Austin

Aug 2019 – Dec 2019(5 mos)

Conceptualized, designed and launched an industry-leading Automotive Business Analytics platform on QlikView technology, propelling product adoption to over 2000 dealerships and multiple Automotive OEMs such as Hyundai, Genesis, BMW, MINI, Maserati – leading to 2 MM recurring revenue. Engineered an Enterprise-class lead management platform, scaling to handle 10 million monthly transactions with an exceptional 99.9% SLA.

Director of Product Management

Trilogy · Austin, Texas Area

May 2012 – Dec 2019(7 yrs 8 mos)

Responsible for driving the overall product vision for Trilogy's Automotive products; recruiting, training and managing an experienced team of Product Managers, Developers and Product Support personnel. Developing a culture of evaluating projects based on ROI and strategic business objectives and rejecting projects that don’t fit the overall goals of the company. Collaborate with Development to develop a scalable process to rollout features with high quality and on-time delivery. Communicate the product vision to all stakeholders in order to ensure product delivery is aligned with our strategy. Engage with clients to identify their needs and drive future product ideas.

Fractional CPO

Tradepal, Inc. · Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Jan 2011 – Dec 2017(7 yrs)

Designed and built an e-commerce website, iOS and Android app for customers to buy, sell, discover and share unique items with trusted peers. Tradepal differed from others like Craigslist/FB Marketplace in its unique capability to barter goods and ship them directly from the site. Integrated real-time chat in the app to allow customers to ask questions or make arrangement to transact.

Sr Product Manager, Automotive and Real Estate

Vast.com · Austin,TX

Apr 2011 – Apr 2012(1 yr 1 mo)

Built a lead conversion platform for publishers like KBB, AOL Auto, Yahoo Travel, Overstock, USAA, Bing etc which allowed users to find and purchase autos and homes. Managed product roadmap and features for USAA's real estate product and delivered 19% improvement in lead conversion in the span of 6 months

Sr Product Manager, Web Properties

SolarWinds

Apr 2009 – Apr 2011(2 yrs 1 mo)

Created industry-leading innovative transactional / commerce related web features to increase user engagement, conversion, retention and overall user satisfaction. Managed the end-to-end product lifecycle: collected and analyzed both internal and external user needs, translated into innovative new web based opportunities. Created and evangelize business plans/ROI analysis, wrote product specifications, drove product development, and coordinated with both internal and external customers to evolve our web presence. Identified gaps in business intelligence and developed key web performance metrics and reports to drive daily business decisions Leveraged traffic data and user behavior analysis to improve overall lead quality and conversion rate through various web projects Researched and developed numerous A/B tests based on quantifiable analysis, to target different segments of traffic and improve conversion for each segment

Product Manager

Demand Media

Aug 2007 – Mar 2009(1 yr 8 mos)

• Established overall product line strategy; launched new features and managed ongoing performance for one of industry’s leading social media platform • Defined and created Product Requirement Documents to guide engineering deliverables including writing specifications, use cases and wireframes. • Managed the product release process by working collaboratively with Professional Services, Sales, Engineering and Operations. • Evaluated competitors' products and analyzed market trends to educate internal and external stakeholders. • Defined and released one of industry’s first Facebook Connect implementations by working collaboratively with beta customers & Facebook partners. • Guided the product through extensive SEO modifications resulting in significant increase in page traffic and improved Google page rank. • Designed a state of the art Social Media Analytics software module to help customers understand the ROI of Social Media.

Product Manager

National Instruments

Mar 2005 – Aug 2007(2 yrs 6 mos)

• Manage and define roadmaps for five products with sales in excess of $1.5M in 2005, that are pivotal to CEO’s top business goal for 2007 • Lead multinational team of ten engineers to prioritize feature requests, design software architecture, plan software testing, and manage overall project timeline resulting in on time delivery of quality products to manufacturing • Organized requirements gathering through usability sessions, surveys, individual interviews and rapid prototyping to satisfy all relevant stakeholders • Designed a unique business process for license management that facilitates multiple highly profitable partnerships with external companies. • Collaborated with an external company to co-develop and release a revolutionary product, allowing domain experts to leverage the power of embedded systems. • Consulted with SMU university to create a software product that is VP of Academic Marketing’s key educational product for 2006, resulting in 188% increase in sales

Software Engineer

National Instruments

Jan 2000 – Feb 2005(5 yrs 2 mos)

• Developed software for four releases of National Instrument’s flagship software product - LabVIEW • Architected, implemented, and tested several major pieces of LabVIEW platform • Awarded 7 patents during my tenure for inventing new constructs for a graphically programming language. • Presented technical seminars to customers in U.S. and Germany