Hi, I'm Kao.

"K-O," like knock-out

I love to create things that are useful, delightful, and bonus points if they make someone laugh. I'm a product leader with 10 years of industry experience who wants to talk less talk and walk (or run) more walk.

Play Kao's Kitchen Cut to the chase🥱

My Career Journey

  1. 2024 - Now

    Principal Product Manager

    Capital One | Discover Network: B2B Network Risk Platform

    I'm leading a 0→1 platform product for the network risk system of record.

    • $1M net-new build
    • 0→1 B2B platform for internal users and external partners
  2. 2022 - 2023

    Technical Product Manager

    Ibotta: B2B API Rewards as a Service (Walmart)

    I set the product vision & shipped an API in .NET/TypeScript that automated product galleries.

    • $1.2M/yr data cost cut
    • +40% engagement
    • −3 mo onboarding time
  3. 2019 - 2022

    Front-End Software Engineer → Technical Product Manager

    Hawaiian Airlines: D2C app for airport kiosks & distribution pricing APIs

    I was a front-end engineer building ADA-compliant airport kiosks that printed boarding passes & bag tags. I pushed to move into product management to led our 3rd party pricing engine for distribution systems such as Google Flights, Kayak, and travel agencies.

    • $100M+ distribution opened
    • −60% airport check-in time
  4. 2016 - 2019

    Full Stack Software Engineer

    General Motors: Enterprise dealership web apps

    Three years in TypeScript, MVP to production. This is why I can read a PR, argue with an architecture diagram, and know when an estimate is padded.

    • $45M overhead cut

Fun Projects

  1. 2020 - Now

    Founder & Solo Game Dev (For Funsies)

    Bandit Visual Games: Indie Video Game Studio

    Successfully Kickstarted a video game project during COVID. Designed, wrote, coded, and launched an indie game (on time!)

Have an interesting problem or alien theory?
Let’s talk.

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