Sam Rostami

Passion Fuels Purpose! 

BIOGRAPHY

Hi, I'm Sam Rostami, an AI Product Manager based in the UK. With 8+ years taking software and AI products from discovery to launch, I specialise in starting from an unclear problem, cutting scope when the evidence says to, and turning the rest into real, funded, shipped products.

I've led three Innovate UK-funded AI products through different patterns of AI work: retrieval over domain knowledge, multi-agent orchestration, and LLM output evaluation against an expert-approved reference set. That meant coordinating distributed teams of up to 8 across the UK and South Asia, hiring into them directly, and designing explainability and human oversight in from the start rather than bolting them on. I'm comfortable at the level of system architecture and API design, not just requirements hand-off.

Outside work I build and ship my own tools: an AI career platform, a football simulation engine, a startup card game and two published Chrome extensions. Currently open to AI Product Manager, Senior Product Manager and Digital Delivery roles in the UK.

Sam Rostami

Innovate UK-funded AI platforms delivered

+

years of product & digital experience

£k+

Innovate UK grant funding secured

Skills

AI Product
Roadmapping
Agile/Scrum
LLM Evaluation
Flutter & Firebase
Next.js & React
Docker & Cloud
Computer Vision
Figma & UX
Prompt Engineering
Human-in-the-Loop
Data Analytics
Multi-Agent Systems
User Research
A/B Testing

Experience

  • Product & Technology Lead @D-Ready

    Jul 2023 – Apr 2026 | Stockton-on-Tees, UK
    • Owned strategy, roadmap and backlog for three AI products across 80+ sprints: RaiDOT (AI governance SaaS), AIquaBoost (aquaculture AI using IoT, computer vision and LLMs) and CADENCE (agentic AI for manufacturing).
    • Led a team of up to 8 engineers, data scientists, designers and researchers across the UK and South Asia, plus external engineering suppliers. Wrote job descriptions, hired, onboarded and ran 1:1s and reviews. Managed suppliers with technical due diligence and sprint-level risk registers. When the outsourced mobile team collapsed 8 weeks before a funding milestone, I rebuilt the Flutter/Firebase app myself and delivered on time. The codebase then went back to the team.
    • Installed and calibrated 8+ water-quality sensors for the AIquaBoost pilot at Swansea University. Managed the rollout at three commercial fish farms in Bangladesh. Sensor and app data traced high mortality to oxygen handling during transfer. Mortality fell from 60% to 40% within one production cycle.
    • Wrote business cases, 5-year financial projections, KPIs and delivery plans for 10+ Innovate UK applications. 2 awarded, £190,000+ in total, all scoring 70%+. Reported progress against budget and milestones to funders.
    • Led RaiDOT's go-to-market pivot after discovery showed SMEs were not ready for a risk assessment tool. Rebuilt it as a learning platform with 5 Responsible AI modules, a custom CMS and an AI assistant. Reached 250+ registered users across 20 SME organisations.

  • Co-Founder & Product Lead @Manolight

    Apr 2018 – Jun 2023 | Tehran, Iran
    • Built and ran a D2C platform over five years with a team of 6 to 8 across operations, marketing and support. Grew it to 10,000+ monthly visitors through SEO, Instagram and a referral programme, on a bootstrapped budget.
    • Traced about 30% of customer complaints to fulfilment bottlenecks. Redesigned order processing, connected the WooCommerce store to the national postal service and a private courier for live shipping costs, and automated about 40% of processing tasks.
    • Replaced Excel-based order tracking with Odoo (ERP and CRM). Orders, marketing and support now share one set of data.
    • Replaced a manual order-and-callback process with an automated customisation and checkout flow. A/B tested pricing, bundles and checkout. Conversion rose about 15% and repeat purchases about 25%.
    • Planned launches around seasonal peaks (Nowruz, Valentine's Day, Black Friday), coordinating suppliers, packaging and advertising. Automated about 80% of routine customer messages without adding headcount.

  • Digital & Operations Coordinator @Padid Kavosh Pars

    Oct 2014 – Apr 2018 | Tehran, Iran
    • Managed the launch of the company's first digital client platform and product catalogue. Proposal turnaround fell by about 20%, and reach grew from regional to national.
    • Replaced paper-based sales tracking with a CRM (Odoo). Sales forecast accuracy rose from 45% to 78%.

Education

  • Associate's Degree, Computer Software Engineering

    Jan 2011 – Sep 2014 | Damghan University

    Relevant courses included Data Structures and Algorithms, Computer Systems Engineering, and Software Modelling & Lifecycle.

  • Product Management

    2025 | LinkedIn Learning

    Technical Product Management, Building a Product Strategy, Building a Product Roadmap, Customer Development, Product Innovation for Product Managers, Launching Your Product, Technology for Product Managers

  • Google Project Management

    2023 | Coursera and Google

    Professional Certificate

  • Google Data Analytics

    2023 | Coursera and Google

    Professional Certificate

  • Google Digital Marketing

    2022 | Google Digital Garage

    The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, Professional Certificate