I’m a product director whose been at the junction of product strategy, UX, and engineering for more than 10 years. Most recently I led digital servicing for hundreds of thousands of monthly users across multiple brands. Just before that I specialized in launching new Fintech brands and products. My background gives me a unique edge. I started in engineering and software while learning UX and ultimately landing in product. It lets me bring teams together to solve complex problems and create products that people love. I’m excited about roles where I can feel a real impact in what I’m doing every day. If I’m lucky, I’d like to see my products making people’s lives better.
Here you’ll find my complete career soup to nuts. It’s not who I am, but it is the work I’ve done professionally.
Community Choice Financial Inc.
Director of Product Management from 2022 – 2025
- Led online servicing for 7 brands and over 500,000 monthly active users
- Improved application submission rates by 10% through analyzing customer behavior with web analytics tools like Google Analytics and Contentsquare.
- Generated aggregate $2m portfolio growth by launching online applications for 2 separate brands
- Served as a consultant for FirstFin Credit by architecting the complete UX for the application journey and championed project roadmap coordinating more than 7 cross-functional teams
- Grew multi-brand digital experience through strategic planning, roadmap facilitation, and backlog prioritization
- Overhauled customer support procedures and introduced centralized contact center model for internet support.
- Prevented significant litigation risk and ensured compliance by educated retail business partners on best practices for internet financial products
CURO Financial Technologies (now Attain Finance)
Product Manager from 2016 – 2022
- Created $50m loan portfolio by launching 4 brands through partnering with leadership to develop roadmaps and optimize the customer experience. You can see some of these on my portfolio
- Grew team of Junior Product Managers and UX specialists with emphasis on empowerment and development
Drove acquisition journey and CRM design for FirstPhase credit card launch
We implemented an entirely new Drools-based decision engine and underwriting model. My team defined the application journey and a completely new agent CRM to support finding customers, completing their applications, and supporting them along the way. We collaborated with internal development and a consulting team to build the new system over multiple iterations. We completed UAT and tested the complete MVP before going live to begin building a portfolio.
- Led and implemented product strategy for new line of credit product launch and designed UX improvements, new product features, and issue resolution while managing short-term backlog items
- Reduced loan write-off by 2% by implementing new fixed payments system through market analysis, complex loan modeling, and by leveraging Microsoft Excel expertise to curate new models
Caterpillar Inc. Energy & Transportation, CAT Electronics
Senior Design Engineer from 2008 – 2016
Developed Energy and Transportation Display Product Strategy supporting the Marine, Petroleum, and Industrial markets while serving as Project Manager to lead cross-functional teams for eight products. You can see some of my products on my portfolio.
Designed UX, UI, and Software Architecture and liaised with customers from conception to final solution for over 10 products
I met with business customers to dig into their needs and challenges. Using our agile approach, my team developed product ideas that tackled those specific problems. We quickly built prototypes to test our assumptions and validate our concepts.
Feedback was key—we used customer insights and beta testing in the field to refine our products, turning ideas into solid solutions. In the end, I presented our final product at trade shows, showcasing how we transformed their problems into real-world value.
Michigan State University
Undergrad Research Asst. – Smart Microsystems Lab 2006 – 2008
Used Verilog to design a hysteresis inversion controller on a Spartan3 & later Virtex 2 Pro FPGAs. Culminated in publishing a conference paper based on the development of an adaptive hysteresis inverter for artificial muscle.
Technical Skills
Figma/Axure RP
I used both of these extensively at CCFI and Curo. In my opinion, they’re both good at different things and really depend on the work environment. Figma truly shines in a coordinated organization that goes from designers building component libraries to UX & Product that leverage them into final journeys that are built by dev who need to be plugged into those component libraries straight from zeplin or dev mode. If all of that isn’t there, to be frank, I’d rather use Axure and be able to build far more capable interactions faster.
Python, GenAI, & Cursor
This is my side project that I’m still learning and working on moving my local setup to the cloud.
Data Analysis w/ SQL
Data driven decisions are my bread and butter. I’m not a SQL wizard but I’d rather write my own query and pull the data myself then bother a data analyst on something that will take longer to provide context than to just do it myself.
Google Analytics, ContentSquare (CSQ), MS Clarity
There wasn’t a week that went by that I didn’t check a dashboard, review a funnel for conversion/drop off or home in on a specific experience to watch how replays of customer behavior.
Financial Modeling in Excel
At Curo, I created a model in Excel that directly emulated our in-house line of credit engine down to the penny. It could take an existing customer’s loan from today and simulate time forward. With that, I layered on new features to build a proof of concept our engineering team could build from.
I created a similar model for our installment product that I used to define loan modification features and figure out product structure for ancillary products and discounts.
HTML/CSS/js
My team (and I) pioneered embedded web platforms at Caterpillar. Ours was the first display technology that was completely web based.
Jira Admin/Automation
At Curo I was one of two Jira administrators, later the primary administrator at CCFI. I introduced the product organization at CCFI to Jira Product Discovery. As an engineer at heart, anytime I can automate my work or do things faster/better I jump at the chance to learn.
J1939/CAN/Modbus Datalinks
This goes back to my days at Caterpillar. I designed custom messaging and simple protocols on top of j1939. Built translation modules to go from j1939/CAN to modbus to facilitate site controls and integration for power systems.
Java, C# .NET
We had two key platforms at Caterpillar. One, an embedded java based webserver and the other was provided by Beijer Electronics which was C# .NET.
WordPress
You’re looking at it!
Publications
X. Tan Ph.D.; Omar Bennani; “Fast Inverse Compensation of Preisach-Type Hysteresis Operators Using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays” Proceedings of the 2008 American Control Conference, pp. 2365-2370, 2008