Technical Product Manager · Remote

Zachary Balaska Technical Product Manager

Equally comfortable in the codebase as on the roadmap.

I own the full software development lifecycle — from requirements and design through backend development, QA, and production deployment.

about

The missing link between engineering and business

I'm a hands-on technical product manager working in B2B SaaS for the cyber-insurance market. I own the full software development lifecycle for a multi-product platform — gathering requirements, writing and assigning the work, running QA and code review, and shipping to production.

Over the past few years I've taken multiple products from 0 to 1 on a modern Python and Vue 3 stack, integrating large language models (OpenAI and Anthropic Claude) and external threat-data sources into shipped features. I lead a small distributed engineering and QA team across several time zones and act as the central coordination hub where engineering, customer success, and sales converge.

What I like most is being technical enough to build it and product-minded enough to know what's worth building — translating fuzzy business needs into a prioritized, well-scoped roadmap, then seeing it through to the release notes.

selected work

Things I've shipped and led

Internal AI knowledge system 0→1

Self-initiated · adopted org-wide

Designed and built an automated knowledge ecosystem that captures org meetings, logs documentation, and recalls institutional knowledge on demand — drafting user stories and answering questions across departments. Connects Microsoft Teams, Claude, Confluence, and Jira. Saves the team several hours every week.

LLM integration Workflow automation Internal tooling

Multi-product platform — full SDLC ownership

B2B SaaS · cyber insurance

Took multiple products from concept to production, owning backend development, data ingestion, report and output design, deployment, and DevOps. Shipped 49+ production releases on a steady cadence with maintained changelogs, while adopting AI-assisted development to take on hands-on engineering across the stack and reduce delivery cycle time.

Python Vue 3 PostgreSQL AWS Release mgmt

Flagship platform UI & reporting redesign

Design through customer rollout

Led a full UI and reporting redesign of the flagship product, owning the work from design and wireframes through implementation and the customer-facing release — improving how security and privacy risk findings are presented to underwriters and policyholders.

Product design Figma Data viz / reporting
personal projects
capabilities

What I bring

Product

  • Roadmap ownership
  • 0→1 product delivery
  • SDLC management
  • Agile / Scrum · Jira
  • Requirements & user stories
  • Release management
  • Stakeholder management

Technical

  • Python · JavaScript
  • Vue 3 · React
  • SQL / PostgreSQL · Redis
  • RESTful APIs · Git
  • AWS · GCP · DevOps
  • AI / LLM integration (OpenAI, Claude)

Design & Data

  • Figma · UI design
  • Report / output design
  • Wireframing
  • Data ingestion & pipelines
  • External data integration (NVD, MITRE)

Domain

  • Cyber insurance
  • Cybersecurity & privacy risk
  • SOC 2 · GDPR · CCPA · NIST
  • English (native)
  • Mandarin Chinese (HSK 3)
experience

Career so far

Technical Product Manager — CyRisk

B2B SaaS · cyber insurance · Remote · 2023 – Present

Own the end-to-end SDLC for a multi-product platform and lead a distributed engineering and QA team. 0→1 delivery across multiple products on a Python / Vue 3 / PostgreSQL / AWS stack with integrated LLMs and external threat-data feeds.

Cybersecurity Product Manager — Ford Motor Company

Remote · 2022

Primary liaison between enterprise product, legal/privacy, and external regulators (CA, UK). Led remediation of 1,000+ critical noncompliant cloud resources during an AWS-to-GCP migration, cutting monthly infrastructure spend by $5,000+ and resolving compliance issues ahead of deadline.

Foreign English Teacher — Alphabelle American School

Taipei, Taiwan · 2017 – 2020

Designed and delivered adaptive curricula for students aged 3–17, managed classes of up to 20, and mentored new teachers.

Education

Kenzie Academy & Ball State University

Full-Stack Software Engineering Certificate — Kenzie Academy (Butler University / SNHU), 2021. B.S., International Business — Ball State University, 2015.

contact

Let's talk

I'm always happy to connect with people building thoughtful software. The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn — and I'd be glad to share more detail on any of the work above.