Terrence Chipuka

Senior AI Product Manager and Agile Delivery Lead with 7+ years of experience delivering enterprise, SaaS, mobile, and AI-powered products across South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Asia from concept to market. Experienced in product strategy, go-to-market execution, customer acquisition, stakeholder engagement, and AI-driven innovation. Proven ability to align business objectives, customer needs, and technology capabilities to launch products that drive adoption, revenue growth, and operational efficiency.

Skilled in Generative AI, LLMs, prompt engineering, automation workflows, product discovery, roadmap development, and cross-functional team leadership across distributed global environments. Recognized for translating complex opportunities into scalable products that achieve measurable business impact and sustainable growth.

Team Leader, Delivery - Must Company - South Africa

(2025-12)

Promoted to own execution governance across a portfolio of 10+ concurrent web and mobile projects. Embedded LLM tooling into core delivery workflows and established an AI-first delivery framework across product and engineering teams.

• Promoted to own execution governance across a portfolio of 10+ concurrent web and mobile projects, achieving 95% on-time delivery and measurably reducing post-release defects within the first two quarters.
• Embedded LLM tooling (Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot) into core delivery workflows, cutting requirements artefact production time by ~60% and reducing pre-sprint ambiguity across distributed teams.
• Established an AI-first delivery framework across product and engineering teams, accelerating requirements definition, solution validation, and development handoffs while reducing delivery bottlenecks.
• Leveraged AI-assisted prototyping, requirements generation, and workflow automation to reduce product delivery timelines by 25%, enabling teams to move from concept to implementation significantly faster.
• Enabled engineering teams to reduce development effort through AI-powered code generation, documentation, and technical analysis tools, improving delivery velocity across multiple concurrent projects.
• Built proactive risk identification frameworks that surfaced delivery blockers, resourcing conflicts, and scope creep early — reducing escalations to senior stakeholders by over 40%.
• Directed initiative execution across distributed teams, covering velocity tracking, dependency management, and escalation paths; drove continuous improvement through structured retrospective cadences.
• Partnered with executive stakeholders to align product delivery priorities with business objectives, ensuring roadmap execution supported commercial goals, customer needs, and strategic initiatives.
• Collaborated with product, marketing, and business teams to support go-to-market readiness activities, including launch planning, stakeholder alignment, release communications, and successful product rollouts.
• Served as the primary delivery interface for stakeholders and B2B clients, maintaining full transparency on timelines, MVP scope, and trade-offs across all active workstreams.
• Defined and enforced delivery standards, Definition of Done criteria, and quality checkpoints; introduced manual testing sign-off gates that cut post-release defects significantly.
• Used velocity trends, defect rates, and stakeholder feedback to drive data-backed backlog prioritisation — improving sprint predictability and reducing rework cycles quarter over quarter.
• Coached Product Owners and developers on modern ways of working, embedding prompt engineering and automation thinking into the team's daily practice.

Senior Product Owner - Must Company - South Korea, Remote

(2025-03 - 2025-12)

Directed full product lifecycle across 8+ concurrent WordPress, Next.js, API, and cross-platform mobile projects. Scaled multiple WordPress builds from MVP to high-traffic production.

• Directed full product lifecycle across 8+ concurrent WordPress, Next.js, API, and cross-platform mobile projects — scaling multiple WordPress builds from MVP to high-traffic production, reducing average launch timelines by 30%.
• Reduced product discovery time from 3 weeks to 5 days by designing detailed product flows, API dependency maps, and data models using LLM tooling before sprint kickoff.
• Prototyped directly from user requirements using Base44, Replit Agent, and v0.dev, cutting time-to-stakeholder-validation from days to hours and accelerating go/no-go decisions.
• Delivered RESTful API projects end-to-end: defined contracts, validated endpoint behaviour using Postman, managed integration timelines, and signed off against acceptance criteria.
• Directed payment gateway integrations (Stripe, PayFast) across e-commerce and SaaS products — achieving zero post-launch payment failures across all go-lives through rigorous UAT and security sign-off.
• Ran sprint ceremonies backed by velocity data and risk summaries, maintaining consistent team alignment and reducing mid-sprint blockers across distributed teams.
• Conducted structured competitor analysis and B2B market research that directly shaped roadmap prioritisation, resulting in faster feature-market fit validation.
• Defined and tracked product KPIs and OKRs across all projects; used pipeline metrics and performance dashboards to inform executive decision making and justify resource allocation.
• Translated complex technical constraints into clear business language for non-technical stakeholders, bridging the gap between engineering and C-suite.

Senior Product Owner, Mobile & AI Delivery - Norrin Radd - Johannesburg, South Africa, Hybrid

(2023-12)

Spearheaded end-to-end delivery of consumer applications across Android, iOS, and Flutter. Built and directed a cross-functional team of 6–10 engineers, designers, and QA specialists.

• Spearheaded end-to-end delivery of consumer applications across Android, iOS, and Flutter — taking each product from MVP to mass-market release, with one app reaching 10,000+ active users within six months of launch.
• Built and directed a cross-functional team of 6–10 engineers, designers, and QA specialists; improved team throughput by 25% over two quarters through structured delivery rituals and clear ownership frameworks.
• Reduced product discovery time significantly by introducing prototyping into the pre-development phase — enabling stakeholder sign-off on product direction before any engineering resource was committed.
• Defined and owned the product roadmap for each consumer application, balancing user experience priorities with technical feasibility and business timelines.
• Established a structured release management process covering versioning, manual regression testing, app store submissions, and post-launch monitoring — eliminating ad-hoc deployments and reducing hotfix releases by 35%.
• Partnered directly with clients to translate business goals into product requirements, with each release tracked against agreed KPIs to ensure measurable value delivery.
• Set up post-launch review cadences to track user retention, crash rates, and engagement metrics, feeding insights directly back into the next planning cycle and reducing churn on key products.
• Integrated GitHub Copilot into development workflows and structured LLM-assisted review into QA, improving first-pass quality and reducing review cycles.
• Coordinated app store submissions for both Google Play and Apple App Store, managing review cycles, compliance requirements, and phased rollout strategies.
• Facilitated regular retrospectives and sprint reviews with clients and internal stakeholders, ensuring continuous alignment and iterative improvement across active delivery tracks.

Software Product Manager - Bdtask - South Africa, Remote

(2018-09 - 2022-12)

Directed the full product development lifecycle of multiple mobile and SaaS applications across healthcare, e-commerce, and retail verticals. Scaled each from MVP to production, contributing to a combined pipeline valued at over R8m.

• Directed the full product development lifecycle of multiple mobile and SaaS applications across healthcare, e-commerce, and retail verticals — scaling each from MVP to production, contributing to a combined pipeline valued at over R8m.
• Conducted market research, user interviews, and competitive analysis to surface user needs; insights directly shaped roadmap decisions that improved user adoption by 30%+ across key product lines.
• Defined product strategies, roadmaps, and feature prioritisation based on user feedback, business goals, and market trends, ensuring every sprint delivered measurable business value.
• Collaborated with UX/UI designers to shape intuitive app interfaces; partnered with marketing and sales teams to execute GTM strategies that accelerated B2B client acquisition.
• Performed manual quality checks and functional testing across web and mobile products prior to release, verifying acceptance criteria and documenting defects — reducing critical post-release bugs by 40%.
• Tracked app performance through analytics tools and A/B testing, using data-driven insights to optimise conversion funnels and improve retention across active products.
• Coordinated external vendor and partner relationships, managing B2B client engagement cycles, SLA adherence, and timely delivery of integrated services.
• Assigned tasks to junior developers, reviewed updated systems, and authored technical documentation for new software programmes.
• Facilitated product discovery workshops with business stakeholders to align on scope, success metrics, and release criteria before development commenced.
• Managed product backlogs and sprint planning sessions, ensuring prioritisation reflected both user value and business ROI across all active workstreams.

Honours Degree - Computing - University of South Africa (2025-01 - 2026-11)

Certificate - Financial Literacy & Business Fundamentals - University of the Witwatersrand (2020-02 - 2021-06)

Bachelor of Information Technology - Information Technology - Vaal University of Technology (2018-02 - 2020-06)

Diploma - Information Technology - Damelin College (2015-01 - 2017-12)