Headline

Platform PM | Open to Global Roles | Engineer-turned-PM

About

I turn integration and infrastructure chaos into calm, reliable systems. For the last five years at smallcase (one of India's largest wealth-tech platforms) I've owned the execution rails behind investing: the layer that connects the platform to 22 stockbrokers, 2 RTAs, 48+ asset managers, and payment partners for order execution, SIPs, after-market orders, payments, and compliance. Those rails serve 10M+ investors, process 2.5–4M orders a month, and have carried ₹90,000 crore+ (~$9.5B) in transaction value at 99.99% uptime. I came into product from two years as a software engineer, and that's still my edge. I write dev-grade specs and API contracts, reason about failure modes before the code is written, and talk to partner engineering teams directly (which collapses resolution cycles that would otherwise pull in five people). Some of the work I'm proud of: • Raised SIP (recurring-investment) success from ~35% to ~85%, and grew organic activation to 100k+ new users/month at near-zero cost (cutting blended CAC nearly in half). • Delivered SBI Securities (the broking arm of State Bank of India) as a 0-1 bank-broker integration - architected the infra, owned security/compliance, and shipped the full investing stack (AMOs, Limit/Order-Details APIs, required-funds logic, symbol-file ingestion, error codes) in ~4 sprints; now ~2.5M users and ~$210K/yr (₹2 Cr) revenue, +25% YoY. • Cut platform error rates from ~30% to ~7% and support turnaround by ~85%; decommissioned two legacy broker stacks and re-architected for 99.99% uptime. • Owned the regulatory backbone of InfoSec, AppSec, and data-privacy audits - all independently. I believe the best API is the one no one has to think about, and that you should ship the contract before the code. The spec is where disagreements are cheap. I'm now looking for a larger product challenge: broader end-to-end ownership on globally impactful platform or consumer products, particularly with international teams (open to SEA relocation), while remaining open to exceptional roles in Bangalore. If you're building APIs, investment platforms, developer infrastructure, or B2B2C infra at scale - let's talk.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

claudecode

ChatGPT

Vercel AI SDK

Wispr Flow

Work experience

Professional development at Career Break, Aug 2026 - Present · 1 mo, Remote, After an incredible five-year journey at smallcase, I'm taking an intentional break before my next role - a deliberate step to optimize for broader ownership and larger customer impact, rather than jumping at the first opportunity. I'm using the time to: - Build and ship personal products - Umbra (a privacy-first digital-footprint discovery and removal tool), ResumeForge (an ATS-aware resume builder), and MacVitals (a macOS health-check tool) - all open-source and fully client-side. - Go deeper on AI and agentic workflows - LLMs, prompt engineering, AI-assisted development, and automation - which I treat as a serious productivity multiplier rather than a novelty. - Sharpen my product craft through structured study of product thinking, system design, and design frameworks. - Train for endurance sport (Ironman 70.3) again - the same discipline and long-term goal-setting I bring to my work. I'm now exploring my next challenge: a senior/technical product role with broad, end-to-end ownership on platform or consumer products at scale, particularly with international teams (open to relocation), while remaining open to exceptional opportunities in Bangalore. If that sounds like your team - let's talk.

Product Manager II at smallcase, Nov 2024 - Jul 2026 · 1 yr 9 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, As Product Manager II, I owned smallcase's broker-integration platform end to end - the layer connecting the platform to every broker, RTA, asset manager, and payment partner - from strategy through delivery and post-launch performance. - Owned product vision, strategy, and roadmap across all 19 broker integrations - order execution, recurring plans (SIPs), after-market orders (AMOs), compliance, and payments - powering 10M+ (1 Cr+) investors and ~2.5-4M orders/month. - Delivered SBI Securities (broking arm of State Bank of India) as a 0-1 bank-broker integration - architected the infra, owned security/compliance, and shipped the full investing stack (AMOs, Limit/Order-Details APIs, required-funds logic, symbol-file ingestion, error codes) in ~4 sprints; now ~2.5M (25 lakh) users and ~₹2 Cr (~$210K)/yr revenue, +25% YoY. - Stood up the mutual-fund commercial and integration backbone - 48+ AMC partnership agreements (BPAs) plus end-to-end order, payment, and settlement flows - now supporting ~₹40,000 Cr (~$4.2B) in assets under management across 48 live AMCs. - Owned the platform's regulatory backbone independently - InfoSec, AppSec, and data-privacy (DPDPA) audits across 4 cycles a year - and led end-to-end Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy for transaction-critical flows. - Acted as senior product interface for all 19 broker and bank partners (HDFC, SBI, Axis, Kotak, Groww, AngelOne, Dhan, and others), driving product and tech decisions across 8 cross-functional teams (Product, Eng, Design, Compliance, Ops, Growth, Leadership, Support). - Built the org-wide PM operating framework - quarterly funnel and success-rate reviews plus 20-30 user interviews per cycle - adopted by all PMs; recruited, onboarded, and mentored 5 PMs, with 3 direct reports.

Product Manager I at smallcase, Apr 2023 - Nov 2024 · 1 yr 8 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, As Product Manager I, I owned high-impact problem spaces across the broker-integration platform end to end - from opportunity identification and solution design through launch, measurement, and post-launch optimization. - Drove recurring-investment (SIP) success rate from ~35% to ~85% across a series of projects - a step-change in the reliability of recurring investments on the platform. - Grew organic new-user activation from ~30k to 100k+ users/month at ~zero acquisition cost, cutting blended customer-acquisition cost (CAC) from ~₹1,350 (~$14) to ~₹750 (~$8) per user. - Reduced platform error rates from ~30% to ~7% by introducing standardized error codes and an experimentation framework across all broker integrations, enabling data-driven resolution across engineering teams. - Led the decommissioning of 2 legacy broker systems (Kotak and Axis) and migrated to a modern stack - moving ~2.5M (25 lakh) users and lifting uptime from ~75% to 99.99%, each in ~2 sprints with zero disruption to live flows. - Owned go-to-market for 10+ broker integrations and major product lines - open-banking account aggregation (AA), fixed deposits (FDs), mutual funds (MFs), and bank-account verification (BAV); AA + BAV lifted MF onboarding conversion from ~60% to ~85% by removing wrong-account and data-mismatch failures. - Reduced customer-support ticket turnaround time by ~85% (95% resolved under 12 hours) via RCA methodologies, engineering/QA SOPs, and clear ownership frameworks.

Associate Project Manager at smallcase, Jul 2021 - Apr 2023 · 1 yr 10 mos, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, As Associate Product Manager, I joined the broker-integrations team from a software-engineering background and took ownership of production issues, a marquee 0-1 integration, and the diagnostics groundwork that later scaled across the platform. - Delivered the Kotak Neo integration - an early, highly complex 0-1 broker integration - leading discovery, edge-case hunting, and round-the-clock resolution of login and auto-SIP issues, plus a multi-websocket build. - Translated strategy into 30+ detailed PRDs and workflow documents (system flows, API contracts, edge-case handling), partnering closely with engineering and design in agile cycles. - Ran funnel diagnostics and failure analyses on live transaction flows (~2.5-4M orders/month), surfacing the error-rate and drop-off problems later solved at scale. - Became the de-facto trainer for broker/integration knowledge and internal tooling, leading onboarding and knowledge-transfer for new teammates and PMs.

Software Engineer at TEKsystems, Aug 2019 - Jul 2021 · 2 yrs, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, Over ~two years at TEKsystems I progressed through three roles of increasing responsibility and technical complexity, building the software-engineering foundation that underpins my work as a technical product manager today. Trainee Engineer (Aug 2019 - Feb 2020) - Built strong coding fundamentals with a focus on OOP concepts and database management. - Proposed and implemented solutions to technical problems, shipping bug-free code. - Wrote and executed unit test cases, following best practices across development, testing, and deployment. - Guarded against regression issues across other modules when making code changes. Associate Engineer (Feb 2020 - Jan 2021) - Assisted architects in implementing proofs-of-concept and supported software engineers with day-to-day problem-solving. - Dug into business cases and collaborated with architects to devise potential solutions. - Contributed to brainstorming sessions to design robust, efficient solutions. Software Engineer (Jan 2021 - Jul 2021) - Developed and deployed custom business logic and interfaces on the Salesforce Lightning Platform. - Used both declarative and programmatic methods - including Apex and Visualforce - to extend the platform. - Ensured technical feasibility and effectiveness of solutions, leveraging my Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I (PDI) certification. Across these roles I built a solid engineering foundation - OOP, database design, SDLC, unit testing, and system-level thinking - along with a habit of translating business needs into technical solutions. That grounding is what lets me operate at the product-engineering boundary today: writing dev-grade specs and API contracts, reasoning about failure modes early, and speaking the same language as the engineering teams I build with.

Project Trainee at TEKsystems, Jan 2019 - May 2019 · 5 mos, Greater Hyderabad Area, - Completed hands-on training in Salesforce administration and platform development, gaining practical experience with the Salesforce ecosystem. - Prepared for the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I and Salesforce Certified Administrator certification tracks through structured technical training.

Education

Bachelor of Technology, Information Technology, Manipal University Jaipur

200+ Badges, 130k+ Points, Trailhead by Salesforce

Public links

github: https://github.com/kartikeya1