Israe Samady

As an innovative leader, mentor, and philanthropist in the digital technology sector, I've established myself as a results-driven professional with expertise as a Product Lead, Project Manager, and Business Operations Manager. With an MBA and over eight years of hands-on experience, I have a proven track record of successfully guiding large-scale, multimillion-pound digital tech products/projects from inception to delivery within the fintech, digital tech, innovation, and consultancy sectors. I'm proficient in Agile, Scrum, and Waterfall methodologies, demonstrating an exceptional ability to manage stakeholders, resources, strategic roadmaps, feature prioritization, and project/program risks, all while ensuring delivery remains within scope, timeline, and budget.

I excel at building and motivating high-performing teams, and driving consensus through effective leadership, coaching, and mentoring. I am deeply passionate about implementing enterprise-level digital tech solutions, leveraging cutting-edge technologies and innovative approaches to foster business growth and achieve operational excellence.

Project Manager (Permanent) - Sep 2022 to present.

Hamilton Capital Holding Ltd (Fintech Startup Company), London, UK.

• Directed multiple large-scale IT projects/programs using Waterfall and Agile, with 7 scrum teams concurrently delivering 50+ features across 5 market-aligned products within budget, scope and timeline.
• Successfully led a 200-strong team of professionals across various departments, including technical, financial, operational, strategic program teams, product managers, UI/UX designers, business analysts, software developers, solution architects, QA engineers, DevOps team, security team, legal and compliance team, marketing team, and customer support team, throughout the entire development lifecycle, while maintaining positive workplace dynamics.
• led workshops and conducted comprehensive product training sessions for product owners and product designers, through effective leadership, coaching, and mentoring, ensuring they possessed the necessary skills to deliver high-quality results.
• Spearheaded the creation and delivery of innovative mobile payment product (Blockchain), an app that manages over $20M in monthly transfers and has seen a 50% YoY growth rate.
• Led the development of a high-performance, secure financial exchange trading platform, capable of handling 15,000 transactions per second, achieving 99.98% uptime, and reducing transaction locking issues by 90%.
• Delivered customer value iteratively, managing products through sprint planning, launch phases, and follow-on releases.
• Implemented risk mitigation strategies reducing the average risk impact by 35%, ensuring project/ program completion and success."
• worked hand in hand with the head of software architects & Tech lead to design modular and scalable platforms, anticipating a user base growth of 20% per quarter and accommodating peak transaction periods with up to 300% increased server capacity.
• Successfully communicated product and project/program roadmaps, along with KPIs to the Board, aligning team objectives with business goals for increased effectiveness and agility.
• Central in the front-end rebranding for our entities in Japan, UAE, and Australia, ensuring robust security and suitable architecture.
• Managed the CI/CD project, cutting the release cycle from six to two weeks, which led to a 25% decrease in bugs, a 30% reduction in production deployment issues, and a 40% increase in software delivery speed.
• Enhanced user experience by leading the successful launch of rewards and Referral Program features and CMS product delivery, attracting over 20,000 new users in the first month and increasing repeat usage rates by 35%.
• Collaborated with the Marketing and CRM departments to Implement advanced automation strategies, resulting in a 50% reduction in manual effort, a 40% increase in customer retention rates, and a 30% improvement in the accuracy of targeted messaging.
• Ensured 100% compliance with regulatory requirements including data privacy, anti-money laundering, and fraud prevention, and actively spearheaded a user-friendly KYC/AML/ Financial crime process that verified over 500,000 users without any complaints and reduced user complaints related to compatibility issues by 70%.

Business Operations Consultant- Jan 2022 to June 2022

Google via Aquent (The Giant Digital Tech Company), London, UK. -

• Project managing the EMEA data & analytics roadmap, including prioritization and adoption of data operations, automation, and reporting and forecasting solutions for the EMEA Google Devices and Services (D&S) team.
• Responsible for Project Manage 20 team members and roadmaps across all 3 work streams, gathering requirements, identifying issues and risks, looking at ways to improve processes, and setting up mini work streams.
• Developing user stories for planning using various tools such as Tableau, then handing these over to the development team to build and test the quality before delivering it. As a result, the development timeline was reduced by 35% and overall product quality increased by 25%.
• Collaborated with EMEA business stakeholders (tech teams, operations organizations, Senior executive teams) to align requirements with technical capabilities, and outline and drive implementation plans across people, processes, systems, and tools by partnering internally with the BTI team (Business Tools, Data & Infrastructure team).
• Developed key metrics for deployed tools, assessed current state solutions, and outlined strategies to improve overall products development. This led to a 40% improvement in product usage and a 30% increase in overall product lifecycle efficiency, signifying a significant positive impact on operational efficiency and product adoption.

Product Lead -Nov 2018 to Dec 20221.

Safi Ideas Ltd (Fintech Startup Company), London, UK

• I spearheaded the ideation, development, and successful launch of an innovative digital banking loans platform, revolutionizing the digital fintech industry with a secure payment infrastructure and aligning our systems with the latest advancements technology. As a result, achieved a remarkable 62% increase in revenue, generating (£13M), and expanded our customer base by 35% in just one year.
• Demonstrated expertise in design, data analysis, user research, digital tech and engineering domains, effectively merging these disciplines to launch world-class products that acquired approximately 50K digital transactions.
• Built and led cross-functional teams of 70 external and internal QA engineers, developers, designers, architect solutions, DevOps, Business operations, and tech experts, fostering a collaborative work environment to develop and maintain innovative digital Fintech platforms. This contributed to a 40% increase in project completion rates and a 35% reduction in product development costs.
• Engineered a secure digital transactions payment infrastructure with a streamlined integration process, creating standardized APIs and protocols with seamless connectivity, enhancing transaction throughput by 35% (20K transactions per hour), reducing processing time by 70%, and improving user satisfaction by 95%.
• Implemented agile methodologies in product development, and preparing technical documentation in software development, and developing comprehensive roadmaps aligned with strategic goals for the entire product lifecycle.
• Orchestrated a risk management framework for a global payment processor, improving fraud and financial crime risk mitigation efficiency by 35%.
• Developed and executed an international expansion strategy, incorporating market research, regulatory compliance, and strategic partnerships with key industry players, such as financial and tech institutions, banks, pension funds, DFIs, CDC Partners and investors resulting in a 35% growth in market share and successful global market penetration.
• Established strategic partnerships with 7 key financial institution players in the UK, USA, EU, Turkey, Ghana, Ethiopia, and the Philippines, contributing to a 20% increase in market share and a 30% increase in product visibility.
• Led workshops and comprehensive product training sessions, boosting team productivity by 30% and reducing onboarding time for new hires by 50%.

Product Manager - Jan 2016 to Sep 2018

Business Intelligence Engineer- Feb 2015 to Dec 2015

PI Marketing (Martech Startup Company), Morocco

• Led and managed the digital tech squad and successfully led high-profile cross-functional projects with strict timelines, resulting in a $4.5M revenue increase within the first year, meeting 95% of timelines, budgets, and scope.
• Expanded the team from 18 to 50 tech professionals, managing a diverse group of business analysts, developers, designers, administrative support, solution architect and tech board experts for successfully developing state-of-the-art tech products using agile or waterfall methodologies. These efforts led to a 45% increase in revenue, 40% enhancement in operational efficiency and a 35% increase in customer engagement.
• Simultaneously managed international client projects, retaining 85% of existing customers, and acquiring 1200+ new clients, through meeting customer needs and expectations during the entire product lifecycle, thereby significantly contributing to the company's expansion.
• Implemented data-driven strategies that boosted customer engagement by 35%, conversion rates by 28%, and a 25% reduction in customer acquisition costs.
• Fostered strong partnerships with datacentres, partners, and external vendors Spearheaded the strategic planning process for the digital tech department, overseeing the prioritization of initiatives and successfully implementing a roadmap to enhance system compatibility and managed project/program reporting and KPIs monitoring across departments, presenting results to SMEs and achieving a 95% prompt issue resolution rate.
• Led the conceptualization and creation of an innovative AI-powered analytics platform solution, Revamped the company's data infrastructure improving data analysis efficiency by 40%, reporting accuracy by 60% and now used by over 1000 businesses.
• Provided leadership, coaching, and mentorship to over 30 team members, ensuring a 90% success rate in high-quality outcomes.

• Master in business administration ‘MBA’ in Management and Leadership (F/T) – with distinction

Dissertation in Strategic management consulting completed 20 000 words.

The University of the West of Scotland, London campus, UK. Oct 2018 to Jan 2020.

• Master of Engineering in Decisional Statistics and Business Intelligence (F/T)– with Merit University

Abdelmalek Essaadi - Faculty of Science and Techniques of Tangier, Morocco. Sep 2011 to Jul 2014.

• Bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and computer science (F/T)

University Abdelmalek Essaadi - Faculty of Science and Techniques of Tangier, Morocco. Sep 2009 to Jul 2011.

• High School Diploma in science ‘Baccalaureate’ with Merit Sep 2008 to Jul 2009