Sam Rostami
AI Product Manager
United Kingdomsam-rostami.comlinkedin.com/in/sam-rostamigithub.com/thesamrostami
Professional Summary
Senior Product Manager with 8+ years delivering AI-led digital products from discovery to production. Led the end-to-end product lifecycle across three concurrent Innovate UK-funded AI platforms spanning LLM integration, computer vision, and IoT, working directly with engineers, data scientists, academic researchers, and commercial stakeholders. Experienced in leading cross-functional agile squads, translating business problems into AI/ML product features, and tracking performance through data-driven decision-making. Comfortable working at the level of system architecture and API design, not just requirements hand-off.
Work Experience
Product & Technology Lead
Jul 2023 – Apr 2026Digital Readiness and Intelligent Systems Ltd. · Durham, UK
- Owned product vision, roadmap, and end-to-end delivery across three concurrent AI platforms, RaiDOT (AI governance SaaS), AIquaBoost (aquaculture AI with IoT, LLM, and computer vision), and CADENCE (agentic AI for manufacturing), across 80+ sprint cycles from discovery through commercial deployment.
- Led cross-functional agile squads of 5 to 7 engineers, data scientists, and designers across the UK and South Asia, translating business problems and AI/ML research into scoped, buildable product features for teams on different stacks (PHP/Laravel/Vue.js and Flutter/Firebase).
- Pivoted RaiDOT's go-to-market strategy after discovery data showed SMEs lacked baseline AI maturity; shifted the entry point from risk assessment to AI training, built a digital learning platform with 5 curriculum modules and a custom CMS, and grew the platform to 250+ registered users across 20 SMEs.
- Personally rebuilt the AIquaBoost Flutter/Firebase mobile app in 8 weeks after the outsourced engineering team collapsed, integrating LLM-based recommendations, IoT sensor data, and a computer vision model; delivered on schedule against a fixed Innovate UK milestone.
- Contributed to 10+ Innovate UK funding applications, 2 awarded totalling £190,000+, all scoring 70%+ (majority 80%+); delivered a CADENCE demo that produced a £42K commercial proposal with a Tier-1 automotive manufacturer.
Co-Founder & Product Lead
Apr 2018 – Jun 2023Manolight, direct-to-consumer e-commerce, personalised gifts · Tehran, Iran
- Built and scaled a D2C e-commerce platform from zero to 10,000+ monthly visitors and 61,000+ Instagram followers over five years, owning strategy, product, and commercial decisions throughout.
- Redesigned the checkout and product customisation flow, replacing a manual order-and-callback process with a fully automated purchase journey; lifted conversion rate by approximately 15% and repeat purchase rate by approximately 25% through A/B testing.
- Managed a cross-functional team of 6 to 7 across operations, marketing, and support; led hiring, onboarding, 1:1s, and performance reviews.
- Implemented CRM and ERP systems from scratch, automated approximately 80% of routine customer communications, and redesigned order processing to cut fulfilment-related complaints by ~30%.
Digital & Operations Coordinator
Oct 2014 – Apr 2018Padid Kavosh Pars Co., industrial equipment and insurance supplier · Tehran, Iran
- Managed the end-to-end launch of the company's first digital client platform and product catalogue, cutting proposal turnaround time by approximately 20% and expanding commercial reach from regional to national.
- Replaced paper-based sales tracking with a CRM, improving sales forecast accuracy by ~30%.
Independent Projects
ApplyBullets (applybullets.com)
May 2026 – PresentIndependent project: AI-powered SaaS career tool
- Built and shipped a full-stack AI career tool solo in under 14 days using Next.js, Supabase and the Claude API.
- Ran 15+ user interviews that directly shaped feature prioritisation and MVP scope.
- Improved onboarding completion by 15% through iterative A/B testing of the signup flow.
AI Conversation Bridge (Chrome Web Store)
2026Privacy-first Chrome extension for exporting, organising, and reusing AI chat conversations (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) entirely client-side
- Built a fully local, no-backend architecture with multi-format export (Markdown, JSON, HTML) and searchable local storage, so no user data leaves the device.
More independent builds (The Replay Cup, Startup Simulator and Interview Teleprompter) at sam-rostami.com/projects.
Education and Certifications
Associate's Degree, Computer Software Engineering
Jan 2011 – Sep 2014Damghan University
Certifications: Product Management (LinkedIn Learning, 2025) · Google Project Management (Coursera and Google, 2023) · Google Data Analytics (Coursera and Google, 2023) · Google Digital Marketing (Google Digital Garage, 2022)
Skills and Tools
- AI and ML:
- LLM integration (Claude API, OpenAI, Ollama, FastAPI), computer vision (YOLO, Roboflow, CVAT), agentic AI workflows, prompt engineering, AI governance, responsible AI, Vertex AI, Hugging Face, MLflow
- Product:
- Product roadmapping, product vision and strategy, backlog management (MoSCoW), PRD and user story writing, OKRs and KPI definition, go-to-market planning, pricing strategy, A/B testing, user research and discovery, competitor analysis, UAT, release management
- Delivery and agile:
- Scrum, sprint planning, risk registers, vendor and distributed team management, milestone reporting, Jira, Confluence
- Analytics:
- Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, funnel analysis, Power BI, Tableau (working knowledge)
- Technical:
- Next.js, React, Vue.js, Node.js, TypeScript, Flutter, Firebase, Supabase, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, GraphQL, Docker, cloud deployment, Ubuntu/Linux, OAuth2/JWT, Stripe, API integration
- Tools:
- Google Workspace, Miro, Notion, Asana, Canva, Figma, Adobe XD
