Available for consulting

I turn business needs into work engineers can build — and stakeholders understand.

Will Thompson · Technical Product Owner · PSPO I · 25+ years in software

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Selected work

Where product meets engineering

  • Co-designing features with Fortune 500 customers like Ford

    Kardex · FulfillX

    Product Owner · 2024–present

    Warehouse execution software has to fit very different customer sites. I own product direction and delivery, turning customer and operational needs into features that work across those environments.

    • FulfillX
    • AutoStore
    • C#
    • React
    • Jira
    How I work on it
    Product role
    Lead the Scrum ceremonies, keep the backlog focused, and structure requirements and documentation in Jira and Confluence.
    Customer co-design
    Run feature demos and co-design sessions with Fortune 500 customers such as Ford across multiple high-velocity warehouse operations.
    Technical edge
    Understanding the automation, integrations and application behavior underneath lets me resolve ambiguity with engineers directly instead of handing it back.

  • Codebase reduced by 75%

    Abercrombie & Kent · Modernization

    Senior Application Programmer · 2022–2024

    Legacy ColdFusion and VB.NET applications were holding back security and integration work. I moved them to modern ASP.NET with REST APIs.

    • C#
    • ASP.NET
    • REST APIs
    • JWT
    • Blazor
    What changed
    Delivered
    A ColdFusion app rebuilt in ASP.NET with REST APIs, a VB.NET console app refactored to ASP.NET 8 with 75% less code, JWT security across the enterprise, and a Keeper Security integration.
    Why it matters for product
    I know what modernization really costs, which keeps my roadmaps and estimates honest.

  • One shared requirements and delivery process

    CSC Generation · Product development

    Product Development Manager · 2021–2022

    Requirements, code and documentation lived in separate places. I championed Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket as a single workflow from idea to release.

    • Python
    • Django
    • ETL
    • Jira
    • Confluence
    How I worked
    Product role
    Worked across product-development concerns and unified how the team captured and tracked requirements.
    Technical edge
    Stayed hands-on: built and maintained ETL between internal and vendor systems, responsible for data integrity.

What I bring

A product owner who speaks engineering — and plain English

  • Product ownership

    Vision, backlog and prioritization driven by value. PSPO I certified, running Scrum day to day for a commercial software product.

  • Technical fluency

    Decades of C#, .NET, SQL and APIs. I read the code, discuss trade-offs with engineers and scope work that can actually ship.

  • Clear communication

    A degree in English language and literature. User stories, acceptance criteria and stakeholder updates that people read and understand.

  • AI-assisted analysis

    Claude Code and OpenAI Codex to speed up requirements and technical analysis — always checked against the real systems and business rules.

Through Codelands AI I also take on consulting: backlog and requirements health checks, writing engineering-ready user stories, and setting up AI-assisted analysis workflows. Start a conversation.

Toolkit

Product practice, backed by real engineering

Product & Agile

  • Scrum
  • Backlog management
  • User stories & acceptance criteria
  • Process & data flows
  • Jira
  • Confluence

Engineering

  • C#
  • .NET / ASP.NET
  • React
  • JavaScript
  • Python / Django
  • Git

Data & integration

  • SQL Server / T-SQL
  • REST APIs
  • ETL
  • Elasticsearch
  • BizTalk
  • XML / XSLT

AI

  • Claude Code
  • OpenAI Codex
  • Prompt engineering
  • AI-assisted analysis
Will Thompson

About

Hi, I'm Will.

I studied English at the University of Alaska Anchorage, then spent more than two decades writing software for companies like Visa, GoDaddy and JDA Software. Along the way I led teams, built application frameworks for Fortune 100 clients and modernized a lot of legacy code.

Today I'm a Product Owner at Kardex. The combination is my edge: I can sit with engineers and reason through the code, then turn around and explain the decision clearly to customers and stakeholders.

Occasionally, I write about engineering culture: Hire Programmers Who Take Pride in Mistakes and The Importance of No Memory.

  • PSPO IProfessional Scrum Product Owner, Scrum.orgVerify on Credly
  • B.A. EnglishLanguage & Literature, University of Alaska Anchorage
  • ProgrammingZero To Mastery Academy, 2023

Contact

Let's talk

Hiring a product owner, or need help getting a backlog engineering-ready? Send me a note.

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