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Octavian Petrescu

Aiming for a director role in cutting-edge tech where my experience as a functional manager and delivery expert in top-tier consulting/entertainment can be leveraged optimally

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Octavian Petrescu
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Professional Status
Employed
Open to opportunities
About Me
UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION
Focuses cross-functional teams on (1) Actualizing ambitious product visions, (2) Driving innovation through partnership, and (3) Optimizing operations to derive maximum user value.

EXPERIENCE SUMMARY
(A) Managed 7 programs through continuous planning, dev, testing and delivery of multiple products/projects
(B) Led 4+ products end-to-end through concept, design, dev, launch, and scaling
(C) Controlled budgets of up to $25m
(D) Functionally-managed 3 teams of 5 to 60 people
(E) 15+ years of hands-on strategy, architecture, innovation, and dev work

LOOKING FOR A ROLE
(1) Delivering desirable, reliable and impactful software/hardware systems, (2) Pioneering transformation initiatives at scale, (3) Coaching or Mentoring 3-15 amazing people

INDUSTRIES
8+ years in 3 top-tier entertainment tech orgs, 6 years at 2 top-tier consulting firms, 2 years in banking, 1 in health

AREAS OF FOCUS
(1) Organizational Leadership, (2) Digital Product Management, (3) Unity & Full Stack Web Development

PERSONAL TOOLKIT + GSuite/O365
• Analyze: DataStudio, PowerBI, R
• Architect: Plant UML, draw.io, GCP
• Manage: Jira & Trello (Agile), MSProject & smartsheet (Waterfall), AirTable
• UX: Figma, balsamiq, InDesign, Miro
• Prototype: Unity, Vue.js, Firebase

MISCELLANEOUS
• Boxes, Runs, Swims, Hikes & Freedives
• Reads Hacker News & James Michener
• Native proficiency English & Romanian
• Working proficiency in French (B2)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/octygen/
Resume created on DoYouBuzz
Experiences
  • • Managing the 8+ person cross-functional/cross-org program scaling Unity's Source Access product.
    • Chief of Staff for Unity's VP of Architecture, managing a 10-person team and influencing 4 key programs, 3 products.
    • Spearheaded the analysis for, and now helping steer, the developer velocity program within Unity Core Engineering.
    • Designed the program strategy for Unity's CloudLabs Platform and now steering the product effort around it.
    • Conducted an in-depth analysis of the Unity culture to identify new leadership skills and values now needed at scale.

Senior Technical Product Manager | R&D Imagineer

Walt Disney Imagineering
2017 to 2021
Full-time
Los Angeles and Orlando
  • • Spearheaded development of Helios - a mission-critical authoring platform for interactive HW/SW experiences.
    • Headed development of Dancer - a mission-critical robotic figure control software suite.
    • OKR: Standardize a platform for interactive Guest experiences across Disney. KR #1: 4 of the 5 top priority projects are powered by Helios. KR #2: 5 of 5 potential LoBs will use Helios to drive game logic in all their new experiences.
    • OKR: Lower time-to-market for interactive Guest experiences. KR: Helios significantly (2X) speeds up development of experiences as it decreases the amount of time-consuming iteration between creative designers and developers.
    • OKR: Improve control of animatronics with electric motors. KR: Dancer runs 100% of Disney's new animatronics.
  • • Designed and oversaw creation of the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser resort Guest experience software.
    • Managed development of the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride software featuring cutting-edge vehicle cycling.
    • OKR: Create experiences that span Disney's technology ecosystem. KR: The Galactic Starcruiser's ground-breaking Guest experience combines 10 disparate Disney systems and is envisioned as a new Disney line-of-business by itself.
    • OKR: Create a ground-breaking ride for the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge land. KR: Rise of the Resistance received the Themed Entertainment Association Award for Outstanding Achievement.
  • • Created and managed a team dedicated to ideating, evaluating and prototyping technology innovations.
    • OKR: Drive technology innovation across Cirque to improve operations and lower costs. KR #1: Led a portfolio of 40+ prototypes with 70% project adoption. KR#2: Created tight partnerships with 8 disparate Cirque departments.
  • • Part of the Program Value Realization team at a global tier-1 consulting firm specializing in the Health industry.
    • Manager of a 60-person team on a strategic digital initiative for one of the top US healthcare plans.
    • OKR: Mobilize team to minimize project risk. KR: Went from 200+ unmitigated risks to 15 in the span of a year.
  • • Top-tier technology arch, dev, testing and deployment in M&E (50%), Financial Services (30%), Public Sector (20%).
    • CERTIFICATION: Recipient of Accenture's "Technology Architect" certification, a rigorous 3-year process.
  • • Recognized with leadership or performance awards at Accenture (2x), Booz (1x), Cirque du Soleil (1x) and Disney (2x).
    • 2010 to Present - Case Competition Coach & Lecturer at the University of Ottawa & Simon Fraser University.
    • 2014 and 2015 - "Prince Charming" & "The Beast" in three Christmas parades making 1000s of kids very happy :)
    • 2002 to 2007 - R&D Dev Lead (teams of 3 to 10) for 3 core applications using PHP, JS, MySQL, CSS, HTML and Flash.
Skills

Functional & Technical

  • People leadership skills built through direct supervision of 8 teams of 3-60 people over 10 years including: staffing, listening, motivating, managing conflict, performance counseling and developing people.
  • Product leadership & Customer obsession built across the management of 4+ mission-critical products from concept through design, development, testing, deployment and sustainment ops.
  • Execution abilities proven since 2010 including: solution design, change management, "selling" a vision, scaling of solutions to vast audiences, UX design, roadmapping and program value realization.
  • Analytical skills practiced since 2008 including: requirements/business case/gap analysis, best practice research, methodology creation, optimization based on analytics and target state definition.
  • TECH: 10+ years of technology/business/application/data architecture and design roles in four major industries.
  • TECH: 10+ years of web app development with various stacks with 5 years in cutting-edge DevOps environments.
Education

Bachelor of Commerce + 2 Certifications (WIP) + 6x Coursera Specializations

Bachelor of Commerce / Management Information Systems 2008 at University of Ottawa and University of Sydney
• CERTIFICATIONS: Unity Assoc. Game Developer (by EOY '22), GCP Professional Cloud Architect (by EOY '23)
• COMPLETED: Digital Product Management (focus on AI/ML products) specialization from University of Virginia
• COMPLETED: Adapting, Influencing, Leading, Strategising, Forecasting (5x) specializations from Macquarie University.
Resume created on DoYouBuzz