Product & Business Leader
Products
that
have
to work.
I build them for autonomous machines, energy, and infrastructure. Today I lead ASI’s Civil Construction business.
$150M
Pipeline built
22%
Portfolio margin gain
40
Person org led
29
Robots operating at once
About
I’m most useful when the real problem isn’t fully defined…
I start at the source: first principles, the data, and some hard-earned intuition. That usually puts my plan a step ahead of where the organization expected to be. Buy-in takes time, but the results hold. When better information shows up, I can change course fast.
- Scope
- Product Line GM / BU Leader, or senior product leadership with P&L ownership
- Domains
- Physical AI, Autonomous Systems, Modern Energy, Datacenter Infrastructure
- Level
- Business Unit Leader with P&L ownership; Director-level for 12+ years; leading an org of 40
01
Choosing what to build
The hardest product calls come early, before the data is complete: what to build, for whom, and when.
Built the solar, storage and EV charging offers behind a $150M pipeline
02
Making the margin work
Margin doesn’t improve by accident. I treat cost, pricing, and how a product earns as design decisions, made alongside the features.
22% portfolio margin gain from a cost-reduction roadmap
03
Keeping teams in step
Plans tend to fail between the roadmap and the field, when teams stop sharing priorities. I build the process that keeps them aligned.
Rebuilt the company-wide development process; 11 robot programs run on it
Autonomous Systems · Datacenter Infrastructure
Autonomous Solutions
Business Unit Leader, Civil Construction
– Present
- Lead ASI’s autonomy programs for dozers, compactors, and tractors – 3 platforms, 4 machines, 9 field use-cases – with a ~40-person team on two platforms and use-case ownership on the third.
- Ran a demonstration for a lead customer with 29 robots working at once across 3 autonomous zones, every platform and use-case live.
- Led the rebuild of ASI’s product development process: a stage-gate system covering all 13 functions, from how teams coordinate down to each deliverable template, with support from every level of leadership. 11 robot programs now run on it.
Founding work: Renewables (2025)
- Led 20+ customer and market interviews and narrowed the field to the 15 most promising segments for investment and sales.
- Built a 24-month roadmap with phased acceptance criteria tied to field readiness and results.
Case study
Rebuilding the Product Development process
13 functions · 11 robot programs
01 Inherited
The process was a list of high-level steps: what should happen, with no guidance on how, and no definition of done. Meanwhile every new program was already in flight, each finding its own way forward.
02 Decided
I’d led Stage-Gate rebuilds before, so I took this one on. The aim: more structure than we had, far less than an automotive OEM’s. Gates sit where the money and customer promises are; everything else stays lean.
03 Built
Templates and acceptance criteria for all 13 functions, from Product and Engineering to Supply Chain and Support, each paired with an AI prompt model so the process was faster to adopt than to work around. Rolled out in waves over four months, backed by an executive sponsor.
04 Measured
All 11 major robot programs now run on it; only a few small ones stayed on the old way. Every gate gives leadership and customers the same read on where a product stands, so schedule commitments rest on real milestones.
Context
From solar fields to datacenter pads
Pile Drivers · Drones · Dozers
Pile Driver
1Autonomous pile driving for solar fields: the vertical I led, temporarily paused.
Drone
2Survey and site data, continually imported into Mobius, ASI’s fleet management software.
Dozer
3ASI’s primary earthmoving platform, which I now lead alongside compactors and tractors.
In the field
Modern Energy · Distributed Energy Resources
Sunnova Energy
Group Product Line Manager, C&I + Microgrid
–
- Built and integrated the solar, energy storage, EV charging (including early V2G / V2H), and grid services offers behind a $150M pipeline in 2024.
- Led a remote monitoring and control rollout that saved $5M+ and launched 12+ months early, by getting Product, Engineering, and Operations working from one plan.
- Raised proposal-to-contract conversion 45% year over year across ~200 proposals, by sharpening the offers and training sales on what customer interviews revealed.
Context
Commercial & Microgrid
PV · ESS · EV charging · Microgrid
Rooftop Solar
1Office-roof solar offsetting daytime load, when grid power costs the most.
Commercial Energy Storage
2Batteries that shave demand-charge peaks and keep critical loads running through outages.
DC Fast Chargers
3Fleet and multifamily charging, managed off-peak so it never sets a new demand peak.
Complete Microgrid
4Solar, storage and load working as one, so the office park can island from the grid.
Context
Residential Energy‑as‑a‑Service
Energy Management System · EV Charging · V2H
Energy Management System
1The hardware and software that decide when the home makes, stores and uses its own power.
EV charging
2Home charging scheduled by the EMS for the cheapest hours, so the car is ready by morning.
V2H (Vehicle-to-Home)
3The car’s battery as the home’s backup, keeping essentials powered when the grid goes down.
Modern Energy · Grid-scale Storage
Fluence Energy
Senior Product Line Manager
–
- Built lifetime-cost roadmaps for long- and short-duration storage and delivered the initiatives behind a 22% portfolio margin improvement.
- Reworked container design, sourcing, and commissioning, removing $3.9M a year in parts cost without hurting delivery.
Fast Company 2021 Top 10 Innovation: Energy Fluence sold $1B worth of energy storage equipment in 2021, helping electrical grids avoid commissioning coal-burning, peaker power plants. Context
Inside the $3.9M
Three of 30+ cost changes
Container design
1A rack-bridging electrical part, redesigned as a make part at 79% lower cost.
Sourcing
2Cells are 60%+ of a battery’s cost; multi-year contracts lock in volume-based price drops.
Commissioning
3Swapped the AC unit: cheaper, and no more coolant leaks on site.
Photonics · 3D Sensing · VCSEL Lasers
Coherent
Product Line Manager
–
- Won two flagship customers worth $100M in projected 5-year revenue by owning the definition, pricing, and key tradeoffs (+19% margin, and removed an eye-safety barrier to adoption).
- Launched an automotive in-cabin sensing platform with a 10-year roadmap and 60%+ contribution margin, through demanding customer audits.
- Trimmed the portfolio and improved margin 11% by retiring the right products on a clear schedule, with 100% customer uptime throughout.
Apple Newsroom $390M from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund Apple’s investment in Finisar (now Coherent) to expand VCSEL production in Sherman, Texas – the lasers behind Face ID. Context
One VCSEL, three markets
Consumer · Automotive · Industrial
01 Consumer
[One line.]
02 Automotive
[One line.]
03 Industrial
[One line.]
Electrical Infrastructure · Enclosures · Seismic
Eaton
Director of Engineering
–
- Led a 40-person product development org: hired and promoted through career-ladder and succession cycles, made the hard calls (PIPs, RIFs), and developed a standout employee to take over my role when I changed positions.
- Delivered $35M in new-product sales (+29%) by aiming development spend at market demand and sustainability trends.
- Rebuilt engineer-to-order design and production: 55% shorter lead times, 36% sales growth in year one, and 28% higher first-pass yield from added quality checks.
Engineering Manager (2012–2013)
- Owned a $4.0M cost-out P&L (~3% of COGS) across seven sites by setting up value-engineering reviews with clear owners and follow-through.
- Supported acquisition integration; found $2.4M in savings opportunities and led site reviews averaging $350K a year per location.
In the field
Industrial Automation · Oil & Gas
Emerson
Senior Design Engineer
–
- Led a multi-year platform redesign and formalized the design and patent processes; 14 patents awarded.
- Led a 12-engineer design and test team in China, spending extended time on site to keep design, testing, and the factory closely connected.
- Consolidated 20 legacy designs into 6 platform variants – expanded served markets by $21M, with 63% fewer suppliers, 54% fewer components, and 28% better blended margin.
In the field
How I work
How I Work
Early in my career, my job was to design to the spec. A few semi-successful launches taught me that the spec is often the problem. Most products don’t fail on engineering. They fail in the gap between “technically correct” and “customers love it.”
So I don’t count a product as launched when it ships. I count it when it’s working for the people who bought it.
Patents
Patents & design-led innovation
18 patents demonstrating three kinds of value: designs that take cost out of manufacturing and installation, platforms that make products faster to source and extend, and protection for design language a competitor could copy.
Patent drawings
Learning
Continual learning
Building AI products
Shipping Physical AI is my day job now. The coursework keeps my judgment current as the tools change.
Stanford University
Advanced AI Product Management
Making business decisions
My step from engineering leader to product leader: learning to judge a product by how it does in the market.
University of Texas at Dallas
Innovation & Entrepreneurship, M.S. & MBA
Solving hard problems
Engineering taught me that most problems are solvable once you understand them.
Southern Methodist University
Mechanical Engineering, B.S.
Contact
Let’s Connect
I’m heads-down building ASI’s Civil Construction business – autonomous machines that grade, compact, and prepare land for new datacenters. Taking a product from nothing to its first paying customers is the kind of problem I find hard to walk away from.
I’m always glad to talk with people building something hard – especially where there’s a product line or business to own.