Ed Byford
Product Manager building developer tools at Kong.
Passionate about climate tech and social impact.
Building products that matter
I am currently working at Kong as a Product Manager for the Kong Gateway family of products. Prior to this role, I served as the Product Lead for Messaging and Streaming at VMware Tanzu, where I was responsible for setting product strategy and building productive relationships with users, customers, and internal teams, primarily focusing on RabbitMQ, the world's most widely deployed messaging and streaming broker.
Now, I am excited to be part of Kong – a fast-growing and innovative company working on influential products such as Kong Gateway. As a product manager, I look forward to driving the strategy and direction of these products while collaborating with talented professionals to make a lasting impact in the tech industry.
My recent extra-curricular experience includes completing the AirMiners Boot Up programme in 2023, which further fuelled my dedication towards climate tech and positive social impact initiatives. I am passionate about leveraging my skills to contribute to meaningful projects that address environmental challenges and improve people's lives.
If you are interested in discussing climate tech, social impact initiatives, or potential collaborations within these areas, please feel free to reach out!
do what works. do the right thing. be kind.
Skills & Technologies
Product Management
- Team Leadership & Development
- Product Discovery & Strategy
- Go To Market & Roadmapping
- Financial Forecasting
Soft Skills
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Public Speaking
Technical
- AI/ML & Data Science
- Cloud & Kubernetes
- Event-Driven Architecture
Infrastructure
- Edge Computing & IoT
- Virtualization
- Data Engineering
Experience
Staff Product Manager
Kong Dec 2024 - PresentSenior product manager position responsible for Control Planes (SaaS, on-prem, and Kubernetes)
- This is a new position but responsibilities include owning vision, strategy, and roadmap for the above products
- Working with Engineering, Customer Support, Marketing, Legal, Product Operations to increase revenue and usage
- Managing multiple senior stakeholder relationships and customer relationships to improve outcomes for customers and increase revenue for the company
Product Lead
VMware Apr 2020 - Mar 2024Managed the business (RabbitMQ, OSS and commercial products), leading cross-functional teams across five offerings and achieving an average of 36% YoY revenue growth over the past 2 years.
- In 4 years, more than doubled the revenue (some years with 50% y/y growth) and maintained a 90% renewal rate
- Launched 3 new offerings to market
- Created and validated strategy for the business across both OSS and commercial products
- Aligned the teams on product vision, strategy, and outcomes via OKRs
- Continually refined the strategy and roadmap based on customer discovery sessions and KPIs
- Hired and mentored 4 product managers
- Created new commercialisation and pricing strategies, including financial forecasting
- Presented at industry conferences and online, on the product and related subjects (e.g. Edge)
- Drove alignment with senior internal stakeholders across marketing, support, legal, finance, and sales to validate and manage risks and assumptions
- Communicated product vision and strategy to senior customers from a diverse range of industries
- Achieved technical familiarity with virtualization technologies, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, as well as edge computing (AI/ML, data engineering) and event driven architectures.
Senior Product Manager
Pivotal Software Feb 2019 - Mar 2020Managed the commercial version of the popular open-source message broker, RabbitMQ
- Built customer relationships, gathered requirements, and wrote and accepted stories
- Attended events, conferences, and leading customer advisory boards with senior customer representatives
- Prioritised feature work, bugs, and attending escalations
- Designed and implemented telemetry dashboards to provide the team with adoption and usage metrics
- Onboarded and coached a product designer to develop user journeys to drive product innovation
- Proposed, validated, and incepted on new features, which drove average 18% quarter-on-quarter increase in adoption over 2 years
Jigsaw XYZ (2017 - 2019)
Product Manager / Scrum Master
Client: Commercial Property Apr 2018 - Jan 2019Led a multi-disciplinary team through development and launch of an iOS / Android / Web app
- Managed an Agile team, writing user stories, tracking delivery progress in sprints, collating user feedback
- Leading Retrospectives, Iteration Planning Meetings, Backlog Grooming
- Leading shareholder updates and demos
- Overseeing and attending launch parties and collating user feedback
Junior Product Manager
Client: Large Multinational Tech Consultancy Apr 2017 - Apr 2018Product Managed the implementation of tools for: evaluating project delivery risk across the project portfolio; reviewing and remediating those projects
- Led the design and implementation of an AI/ML tool for flagging risky projects
- Agreed methodology for risk model with senior Business and Technology stakeholders
- Led an international team of analysts and data scientists to add Machine Learning to the tool
- Created dynamic reports using D3.js to explore the results
- Designed and managed the delivery and launch of a separate React web-app for managing project quality reviews across the consultancy
Capco (2012 - 2017)
Senior Consultant
Client: Tier 1 UK Retail Bank Apr 2015 - Mar 2017Systems integrator team for a large systems and data migration programme
Senior Consultant
Client: Tier 1 UK Investment Bank Nov 2013 - Mar 2015Compliance review for OTC derivatives business, implementation of process and technology controls
Consultant
Client: Tier 1 UK Investment Bank Apr 2013 - Oct 2013Identification and remediation of derivative agreements impacted by CASS regulation
Analyst
Client: Tier 1 UK Investment Bank Jul 2012 - Mar 2013Tracking and resolution of regulatory audit findings and identification of impacted accounts