Mel De Soysa

Digital, technology and product are in the fabric of everything I do, both in my professional career,

and in my personal life. I have an innate curiosity for how things work and I believe this is essential in designing and implementing a coherent digital strategy to ensure organisations can continue to thrive in this new landscape.

I started my career in digital technology as a graduate software developer at Datacom, after completing an engineering degree at Auckland University. Datacom were very user focused, and developers were encouraged to be well rounded and work directly with customers. This is where the seed for my love of digital products was planted, and from there I worked in several industries on various products, including payroll, healthcare, finance, and finally digital streaming at TVNZ.

I enjoy new challenges and exploring different industries and products, with a view that each industry or product has learnings or viewpoints that can be applied elsewhere to solve problems.

After a stint at Datacom, I took an extended break to jump back on the tools and develop my own mobile app. A custom built, cloud-based, mapping service. My business partner and I created an

MVP (minimum viable product) and worked with Auckland Zoo before deciding to focus on family commitments. I learned a lot from this period in my life, including galvanising my self-starter attitude and building a product of my own from scratch.

This opened the door to my first stint at TVNZ, where I was instantly hooked! As a Senior Product

Manager, I’m responsible for leading the design, build and experimentation of new features on

TVNZ+, and working with the business to refine the product strategy. I love working with data and making data-led decisions, and I’m proud to say - we readily incorporate user testing and experimentation behind every feature we build, and validate our strategy with market research and quantitative data to ensure we are always going in the right direction.

I believe I have the skills, knowledge and experience to take any organisation on its digital journey and build great products that not only are loved by users, but also generate tangible value to the

Senior Product Manager at TVNZ, Auckland April 2022 — Current

Product manager for connected TV (CTV) and Mobile, on NZ’s local streaming service; TVNZ+. In this role I interpret the customer and strategic business needs and work with squads to design, build and experiment on new features for TVNZ+ on CTV and mobile. I also work with business stakeholders to refine the product strategy for TVNZ+ in the ever expanding streaming landscape.

Key Projects

• TVNZ+ News Launch: In June 2024 we launched a reimagined news experience on TVNZ+. I worked with senior executives from the newsroom to design and build a great initial user experience (MVP), along with a roadmap to reach our MLP and beyond, that aligned with our digital strategy.
• TVNZ+ Sport Launch: We recently acquired content rights for several major sporting events including the Ashes cricket, tennis, NFL and many more. I worked with the squads to design and build an experience with TVNZ+ for users to stream live sport and replays.
• TVNZ+ Rebrand: Complete rebrand of 14 endpoints across web, CTV and mobile from TVNZ OnDemand to TVNZ+
• Movies & TV Shows Hubs: Improving our product to better showcase our amazing movie content and align with industry standards which reduces friction as viewers enter TVNZ+ from other services.

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• New Device Launches: Worked closely with Amazon for Amazon Fire TV Stick and VIDAA for Hisense / VIDAA to launch our app on Amazon’s latest Fire TV Stick and Hisense TVs.

Technical Delivery Lead / Business Analyst at Humm Group, Auckland July 2020 — March 2022

Facilitating discovery and leading the technical delivery for one of Humm group’s flagship BNPL products;

Bundll. Implementing new features to not only increase customer volume, but also transaction volume, while still providing a simple, easy to use mobile app. Working on this product is a unique challenge because we always need to find the right balance between mitigating fraud and providing a great customer experience.

Key Projects

• Bundll NZ: Full greenfield implementation of Bundll in NZ
• Bundll AU Tech Stack Migration: Migrating from legacy origination system to target state cloud microservices
• Data Robot: Integration of machine learning for credit decisioning during the customer onboarding process
• Token Connect: Partnership with Mastercard whereby customers can use their Bundll card as a funding source for other apps such as Uber.
• Velocity Partnership: Partnership with Virgin Air where by customers earn points for repayments on their Bundll card
• EDMs: Implementation of Cheetah marketing for push notifications and other customer EDMs

Technical Business Analyst at TVNZ, Auckland May 2018 — July 2020

Facilitating discovery / delivery for TVNZ’s digital streaming service; TVNZ OnDemand. Defining the MVP for a feature, key metrics, technical solution and user stories using agile methodology. Conducting analysis of delivered features to evaluate whether the value hypothesis had been met via A/B testing with split.io.

Working with the wider development team and key business stakeholders, ensuring that the TVNZ digital product strategy, vision, and roadmap is understood.

Key Projects

• Video Processor: Complete rebuild of our video processing service, utilizing microservices, to be more scalable and fully integrated with the master data store (IBMS) and media asset manager (VizOne)
• Viewer Profiles: Complete re-design and implementation of our user model to move from accounts to profiles. This involved wholesale changes to our database and API layer and multiple downstream systems such as GA and Iterable
• Relevancy: Implementation of a relevancy engine built on AWS Personalize in order to create a more relevant experience for viewers
• CMS Migration: Migration from our legacy CMS (Adobe AEM) to a new cloud-based CMS (Contentful).

Acting Product Manager at TVNZ, Auckland Nov 2018 — Feb 2019

Responsible for leading multiple complex, high visibility digital initiatives targeted at increasing growth of our

OnDemand product across 12 different endpoints (web, mobile and big screen platforms). Working with stakeholders across the business from Marketing, Sales, Research & Insights, Content and the GM of Product &

Strategy to ensure the initiatives would meet business requirements and have the best chance of success.

Key Projects

• Viewer Profiles: Complete re-design and implementation of our user model to move from accounts to profiles.

Co-founder at Mapusaurus Ltd, Auckland Oct 2017 — May 2018

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Founding and developing a cloud-based mobile customer experience service for leisure parks. Built with

Xamarin Forms and JavaScript, some of the features we are working on include: mapping & navigation, real-

time updates, scheduling & alerts, mobile payments and analytics.

Key Projects

• Auckland Zoo MVP: Digitized and GPS enabled the Auckland Zoo map which allowed users to find more info about animal enclosures and the best path to get there. We were also working on a crowd-sourcing feature that would optimize your time at the zoo, ensuring that you were at an enclosure when an animal was available.

Product Manager at Datacom, Auckland Oct 2015 — Oct 2017

Managed the product development teams and owned the product delivery for our Australia DataPay and DataHR products. I was also the integration specialist for all of our products where I was able to work with clients to map their data to ours and work out the best way to send/receive data to/from our payroll system. In addition to this, I designed and implemented a Selenium automation testing framework and upskilled the testing team to create and maintain an automated test suite.

Key Projects

• API Integration Offering: Design and implementation of a REST API as an offering for clients to integrate with our

DataPay product.

• NZ Cricket: Replacing the legacy payroll system and integrating with TimeFiler and SAP
• Ingram Micro: Integrating with PeopleSoft to retrieve master user data for payroll processing

Technical Business Analyst at Winscribe, London May 2014 — Oct 2015

Acted as the bridge between customers and the Winscribe implementation team on large scale NHS digital transformation projects. I set up workshops to gather requirements and map as-is and to-be processes, working closely with key stakeholders and SMEs for transitioning to the new process. I was also the integration mapping and implementation specialist in the UK office and was able to build integrations between our system and NHS clinical systems via HL7 messaging.

Key Projects

• Winscribe Implementation at UHB: Analysis and facilitation of Winscribe Text at one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK.

Designed and implemented the clinical portal (Lynx) integration using Mirth and HL7 messaging.

• Winscribe Implementation at Warrington: Analysis and facilitation of Winscribe Text at one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK. Designed and implemented the clinical portal (MediTech) integration using Mirth and HL7 messaging.
• Winscribe Implementation at Calderdale: Analysis and facilitation of Winscribe Text at one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK. Designed and implemented the clinical portal (PASWeb) integration using Mirth and HL7 messaging.

Team Leader at Datacom, Auckland May 2011 — May 2014

Hands on team leader of a product development team for an online forms-building module tightly coupled with our DataPay payroll system. Also, in this role I was responsible for migrating our largest clients from their old payroll system to ours. This involved requirements gathering, process mapping and working with key

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stakeholders to get buy-in and ensure we could achieve at least the same or better in terms of functionality with our new payroll implementation.

Software Developer at Datacom, Auckland Jan 2008 — May 2011

Worked on projects and developed products using C#.Net, JavaScript, SQL Server, SSRS, WinForms, TeamCity,

Octopus Deploy, Git and Selenium.

University of Auckland, Bachelor of Engineering

Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Software, Hons

2004 — 2008

St Peters College, Epsom, Auckland

University Entrance A Bursary

1997 — 2003