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Riley Winfred · Product Management

People.
Problems.
Products.

Software engineer. Marketing leader. Entrepreneur. Bringing it all together in Product Management to build products that solve meaningful problems.

Exploring Product Manager opportunities · Denver / Remote

Portrait of Riley Winfred
  • Software Engineering
  • Marketing & Growth
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Customer Experience
  • Product Strategy

01 — About

I've spent my career connecting the dots.

I started in marketing. For about seven years I learned how to understand an audience, build a brand, and connect what a business needs to what its customers actually want.

Then I wanted to build the thing, not just tell people about it. So I became a software engineer, working on customer-facing apps, accessibility, and frontend architecture, side by side with product managers and designers.

Along the way I founded and ran businesses of my own. That's where I learned prioritization the hard way: limited time, limited money, real customers, real tradeoffs.

Most recently I worked in financial services and had hundreds of conversations about how people make money decisions. It made me want to simplify complex experiences and build products that educate and empower.

Product Management is where all of this meets: customer problems, business outcomes, technology, and execution. I'm especially drawn to mission-driven, customer-facing products in fintech, financial education, healthtech, and consumer technology.

02 — Featured Work

Selected Work & Product Thinking

Different industries. Different challenges. One consistent thread: understanding problems and creating better experiences.

Curative logo

Curative

2021–2025

Cross-Functional Engineering Leadership

Twice co-led the Front-End Engineering Guild, bringing shared technical needs across teams into prioritization conversations with Product and Engineering leadership.

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Stakeholder Alignment
  • Prioritization
View Project
Fandango logo

Fandango / NBCUniversal

2018–2021

Improving Customer-Facing Experiences

Worked on customer-facing checkout across multiple entertainment brands and advocated for accessibility improvements across teams.

  • Customer Experience
  • Accessibility & Inclusive Design
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration
View Project
Dragaholic logo

Dragaholic

2014–2015

Building and Growing a Digital Business

Founded an LGBTQ+ digital media and community platform, grew it to 3.5M lifetime pageviews and 80K+ followers, and sold it to Q.Digital.

  • Zero-to-One Product Development
  • Audience Understanding
  • Growth Strategy
View Project
Clarity Coach logo

Clarity Coach

2026

Making Financial Education More Approachable

An exploratory, AI-assisted financial education prototype that uses a guided conversation to help people organize their questions and find approachable next steps.

  • Problem Discovery
  • Rapid Prototyping
  • Conversational UX
View Project

03 — Experience

A Career Built Across Disciplines

Download Resume
  1. 2026

    Customer research

    Financial Professional · Wealth Strategies

    • Conducted 200+ structured conversations about financial beliefs and decisions, using AI to find recurring themes.
    • Created and delivered “How to Debug Your Finances,” a talk for technical and non-technical audiences.
  2. Oct 2021 – Aug 2025

    Technical leadership

    Full-Stack Software Engineer L2 · Curative

    • Led engineering delivery on healthcare projects, coordinating teams of 2–7 engineers with Product and Design.
    • Helped launch a Stripe payment integration for a COVID-19 feature in under a week.
    • Built a bulk enrollment feature that automated data validation and ingestion (React, Kotlin/GraphQL).
  3. Sep 2018 – Oct 2021

    Customer experience

    Front-End Software Engineer · Fandango / NBCUniversal

    • Improved desktop and mobile checkout with Product and Design.
    • Go-to accessibility specialist across six consumer-facing products.
  4. Nov 2015 – Mar 2018

    Growth & brand

    Director of Marketing · Q.Digital

    • Grew Queerty Awards voting 60%+ year over year, from 296K to 500K+ votes, with an influencer-focused social strategy.
    • Helped select a mobile-friendly, card-based redesign for Queerty.com.
  5. 2014 – 2015 · Acquired

    Zero to one

    Founder · Dragaholic

    • Built a digital media business to ~3.5M lifetime pageviews in 15 months; acquired by Q.Digital.

04 — Strengths

What I Bring to Product

Technical Fluency

Seven years writing production software in React, TypeScript, and GraphQL. I understand engineering constraints because I've worked inside them.

Customer Empathy

Marketing taught me audiences; accessibility work and 200+ research conversations taught me to look for the people products leave out.

Business Thinking

I've founded, operated, and sold businesses. I know what it means when a decision has to pay for itself.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Co-led an engineering guild and worked with leadership up to the CTO to move cross-team initiatives forward without formal authority.

Rapid Learning & Experimentation

I've changed disciplines more than once and taught myself along the way. Lately that means building AI prototypes to test ideas quickly.

05 — Contact

Let's Build Something Meaningful, Together.

I'm always interested in connecting with people who care about solving meaningful problems, building better experiences, and learning from one another. Whether you're hiring, working in product, or just want to compare notes, I'd love to connect.

trwinfred@gmail.com