Head of Product

JULIAN WHITAKER

PRODUCT LEADER

Synthesizing Strategy, AI/ML, & Design into Breakthrough Products

Phone: 415-***-**** • Location: SF, CA • Email: ******@***-*********.** • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julianwhitaker EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Product leader with 20+ years innovating industry-defining products at the intersection of business strategy, user experience, and emerging technologies. I specialize in transforming complex challenges into intuitive, AI- enhanced solutions, grounded in deep research, systems thinking, and cross-functional execution. My foundation blends engineering, UC Berkeley design thinking, deep user empathy, and business strategy, shaped by a career that progressed from development into immersive user research and UX design, through corporate and product strategy, with into extensive consulting across dozens of industries. This progression gives me a rare ability to hold the full problem space in mind, bridging technical architecture, pixel-level interfaces, field-driven insights, stakeholder alignment, and development execution. With 110+ launches across 60+ industries, I’ve developed a pattern-recognition lens that consistently surfaces breakthrough opportunities across domains.

Throughout my career, I’ve strategically integrated AI/ML, enhancing my products with fraud detection, computer vision, predictive analytics, and digital twins, among others. Most recently, during the H100 surge, I led AI product strategy at Vultr and Aethir, meeting weekly with senior NVIDIA AI/ML engineers. I launched Vultr’s Model as a Service at GTC 2024, and Aethir’s DePIN Enterprise AI won "AI Product of the Year." I operate at the intersection of strategic vision and hands-on execution—translating complex goals into clear product narratives, aligning cross-functional teams, and shipping market-defining solutions. My signature: bringing clarity to ambiguity, making the complex feel simple, and delivering intuitive products. Track record: four successful exits totaling $1.24B, multiple industry firsts, and products still thriving decades after launch. WORK EXPERIENCE

Aethir Head of Product – Enterprise AI (contract) 2024 – 2025 Decentralized GPU Infrastructure

Brought in to launch and lead Aethir's enterprise AI division, translating decentralized Web3 infrastructure into enterprise-ready AI offerings.

• Product Strategy from Zero: Defined vision, roadmap, and architecture for enterprise-facing AI offerings atop Aethir's 400K+ distributed GPU nodes

• Market Alignment: Translated technical capabilities into coherent enterprise use cases, ideal customer profiles, and pricing strategy

• AI Product Innovation: Spearheaded Model-as-a-Service and edge inference product development, making decentralized infrastructure consumable by traditional AI teams

• Go-to-Market Development: Built sales enablement materials, positioning strategy, and foundational GTM processes to support enterprise AI adoption and 3x’ed our seller marketplace inventory

• Org Design & Handoff: Created standard operating procedures, onboarding flows, and operational frameworks for long-term scalability and successful transition to in-house leadership

• Outcome: Aethir was named "Crypto AI Project of the Year" and featured in Fast Company's "Next Big Thing in Tech"

JULIAN WHITAKER

WORK EXPERIENCE CONTINUED

Vult Head of Product 2022 – 2024

Top 10 Cloud Service Provider

Built product function from zero. Led AI infrastructure strategy during H100 wave.

• AI Platform Leadership: Created GPU infrastructure roadmap and drove technical implementation through weekly NVIDIA senior engineering collaboration

• Revenue & Account Transformation: Moved upmarket, doubled revenue in 2 years, unseating 8 of 10 top customers with net-new accounts - rebuilt sales process, adapted messaging for enterprise AI customers

• Strategic Partnerships: Achieved NVIDIA Elite Partner and Dell Partner of the Year; delivered Singtel/Airtel deals (largest in company history)

• Product Portfolio: Launched five products, including Model-as-a-Service at GTC 2024, plus core platform improvements (CDN, Kubernetes, IaC)

• Market Position: Elevated brand from unknown to recognized AI infrastructure alternative through strategic product improvements and market positioning

Applied Materials Principal Product Management (on-going consulting engagement) 2017 – present Global Semiconductor Equipment Leader • $28B Revenue • Fortune 200 Brought in by the former Chief of Staff to lead the modernization of business-critical platforms across a 34,000- employee enterprise.

• AI/ML R&D Platform: Built bleeding-edge virtual modeling tool, enabling PHd material scientists to simulate semiconductor in digital twins, eliminating millions in R&D

• Enterprise Modernization: Migrated company off asynchronous and shared Excel docs to a unified, single- source-of-truth, diverse suite of digital products, from C-suite dashboards to just-in-time manufacturing

• Cross-Functional Delivery: Delivered 40+ products across every division, team, and function, including phase-gate systems, capability models, and $2B fabrication plant planning tools

• Strategic Continuity: Maintained trusted advisor and contributor status through 4 major reorganizations; tools widely adopted and used daily across the company, 8 year later

• Innovations: Simplicity from Complexity: Sophisticate multivariate visualizations; vendor R&D system and workflows, adapting agile within a waterfall culture Insight to Innovation Managing Partner & Head of Product 2017 – 2022 Product Strategy, Definition, & Design Consultancy Founded niche consultancy innovating top products for startups & enterprises; embedding emerging technologies

• Client Portfolio: GE (sales intelligence), IBM Watson (enterprise marketing), Wells Fargo (CRM & global mobile guidelines), Tyco (security monitoring), Walmart (workforce safety)

• Strategic Engagements: Led 20+ product transformations across Fortune 500 and high-growth startups - fintech to industrial, social to logistics

• Technology Integration: Embedded emerging capabilities where they added value - predictive analytics, computer vision, virtual models and digital twins

• Cross-Industry Pattern Recognition: Applied insights from 60+ industries, innovating non-obvious solutions for complex business problems

• Executive Advisory: Trusted partner to C-suite on digital transformation, product-market fit, and strategic technology adoption, highly adapted to complex organization psychology, structure, and culture JULIAN WHITAKER

WORK EXPERIENCE CONTINUED

Tesla (formerly Solar City) Principal Product Manager 2015 – 2017 Clean Energy Division

Partnered with executive team (CEO, COO, CTO) to define, lead, and execute highest-priority strategic initiatives on mission-critical systems during hypergrowth, leading to acquisition (formerly Solar City).

• Enterprise Data Unification: Orchestrated company-wide "big bang" migration consolidating 3 legacy databases into a single-source-of-truth with no rollback path, affecting every user and system

• Field Productivity: Built real-time earnings app for per-panel-payment model, driving 10x installer speed; incenting top teams to install up to 5 homes per day

• Operational Intelligence: Create smart dispatching tools and algorithms, as well as regulatory automation managing 500+ jurisdiction-specific requirements across 40+ markets - 15% productivity gain

• International Market Entry & Expansion: Led product readiness for Mexico expansion, including localized operational flows, compliance models, and cross-border systems

• Commercial Ops Expansion: Ported residential platform to commercial division, adapting field tools and compensation models for complex industrial deployments

• Acquisition Impact: Platforms delivered became core Tesla Energy infrastructure and contributed directly to SolarCity's $2.6B acquisition

PRODUCT LEADERSHIP METHODOLOGY

Proven approach applied across over 110 products and more than 60 industries—from startups to Fortune 500s.

• User Research & Discovery: Deep empathy-led user research, market analysis, and competitive intelligence to identify and isolate primary goals to prioritize

• Strategic Road Mapping: Balance user value, customer need, executive and stakeholder strategies, technical feasibility, and business impact through data-driven prioritization

• Cross-Functional Execution: Align engineering, design, and executives using OKRs, agile iteration, shared metrics, and clearly defined and communicated north-star product vision

• AI/ML Integration: Pragmatic application of emerging technology – opportunistically and pragmatically amplified where it mattered the most, driving outcomes not possible before

• Proven Impact: Delivered products from 100M+ consumer apps to $26B+ enterprise companies, driving 4 successful exits

EDUCATION

University of California, Berkeley

BA Architecture • Formal Human-Centered Design Thinking Methodology JULIAN WHITAKER

EXPERIENCES, HISTORY, PERSPECTIVE, APPROACH – UNIQUELY MINE For over two decades, I have developed solutions for a diverse range of users, environments, goals, platforms, and businesses. I’ve worked for and with founders, start-ups, scale-ups, and leading global enterprises. My journey has taken me through engineering, advanced user-centered focus, founding corporate strategies, organizational development, and extensive experience as an external consultant. Over that time, I have come to recognize universal and repeating patterns, as well as developing my own unique methods and approaches. Whether it's underwriting a $2 million loan, tracking your child's location, animating the next blockbuster, or simply customizing a gift card for Mother's Day, identifiable & universal patterns are there, just under the surface. Recognizing and connecting them is the heartbeat of innovation, helping lead a design-thinking methodology to breakthrough moments and solutions.

Different - yet - Similar:

• SWAT tactical updates mid-operation Parent notifications when their kids reach school.

• MLOps configuring data center GPU clusters Farmers ordering tractor lubricants on the back 40.

• Pixar animators designing new worlds City planners mapping megaproject infrastructure.

• CEO reviewing a $20B portfolio in a boardroom Solar installer tracking his wages on a rooftop

• R&D scientist exploring a cleanroom digital twin Restaurateur tracking food temps on the road Repeating Patterns: even across cleanrooms, call centers, rooftops, farms, retail floors, or crisis zones Collaboration: Transparency, timeliness, communication, and auditability. Humans: Goals, perception & cognition, mental models, safety, group dynamics. Strategy: Market position, go-to-market, P&L, digital transformations Workflow & Ops: Scheduling, workflows, configuration, compliance, orchestration. Regulatory Compliance: HIPAA, GDPR, SOX, PCI-DSS Platforms: Mobile, web, desktop, wearables, IoT, on-prem, cloud, decentralized (Web3) Models: B2B, B2C, B2B2C, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, enterprise app Industry-Leading Products: World's first mobile family tracker World's first mobile social network Leading mortgage processing platform Bleeding-edge semiconductor digital twins AI & Emerging Tech, Strategically Applied: Computer vision security video threat assessment AI / OCR loan folder categorization Wearable smart sensors reducing labor injuries AI fraud detection saving millions AI code quality monitoring, hardening CICD execution

Innovation stems from a deep and varied understanding and the ability to connect these insights in new ways. I start in the field, eye-to-eye with my users.

Whether it’s a cleanroom, a warehouse, or a soccer field, I study my users, the environment, the frictions, and the underlying goals. Insights and breakthrough moments take shape as I integrate and transform business strategy, technical possibilities, and my extensive library of universal patterns to solve my users’ needs. Solutions take shape that feel clear, intuitive, and, in retrospect, almost self-evident, even when they were not initially visible. The environments may change, boardrooms, cubicles, rooftops, but my ability to see clearly, synthesize deeply, design intuitively (UX), and execute quickly remains constant regardless of the problem, the team, or the technology.

I have been seeing to the heart of the matter for over 20 years.

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