Day in the Life of a Product Manager: Andrew George, Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead

What does it really look like to move from deep technical expertise into a role that shapes products, teams, and outcomes? In this member spotlight, we hear from Andrew, a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead, who shares his day-to-day, the challenges of working with complex data environments, and how his technical background continues to influence how he leads and delivers impact.

From implementing modern machine learning approaches to unlock new data insights to rapidly delivering solutions that respond directly to customer needs, Andrew offers a grounded perspective on what it means to bridge technology and product thinking.

Can you walk us through a typical day in your role as a Product Manager?

Andrew:

Check emails.
Attend daily cross team stand up and then daily engineering meeting.
Analyse task progress and align the team goals and customer goals into one.
Review and Approve software updates, document changes, production data reports, testing packages.
Conduct software impact analysis.
Discuss with subject matter experts to understand true requirements.
Design system architecture.
Define requirements and what is the best solution to achieve the customer’s needs.
Attend working groups
Innovate and optimize design software and document components.
Assist software engineers to understand our complex data and environment needs and how to verify and validate changes/new software.

Which innovations or projects you’ve worked on do you feel are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in tech?

Andrew: I was in charge to implement modern machine learning (Not LLMs/Gen AI) approaches to assist in various data activities. This has shown that we can provide more data insights then what was designed into the system, 20+ years ago.

Can you share a project or product launch that was particularly rewarding or impactful?

Andrew: The customer shared a pain point in their routine data reporting, this simple question turned into an entire complex software system delivered by the entire team in just 3 months. The team was recognized by the larger business and customer for the prompt delivery.

What’s one mistake or unexpected failure in your work that ended up teaching you the most or leading to a breakthrough?

Andrew: Some of our production data sources come from across industry inputs, that we do not control and from many different users. Thus, sometimes invalid data can slip through into our environment. Over time we have developed significant tools and feedback methods to catch, report and work with our partners to ensure our common customer gets the most accurate information. This transparency and data insights have allowed our team and customer to understand data challenges and implement solutions across the industry.

Looking at the Australian tech landscape, what trends or challenges excite you most, and how is your role contributing to addressing them?

Andrew: The major trend and challenge currently I believe is obviously LLMs. Currently while powerful, they are incorrectly being seen as a magic bullet. I believe this may cause significant issues going forward. A lot of the time LLMs are being pushed to be used to produce lower quality results when a traditional software solution would be simpler to implement, produce consistently accurate results and use less resources. I think each individual should be taking a step back and see through the hype, then we can truly understand where LLMs can fit into our tech stack. Instead of trying to blindly implement it in places it is not fit for purpose.

What advice would you give someone considering a career in product management, including opportunities for growth and upskilling?

Andrew: Focus on a strong base skill set and experience, then using this you can project confidence across your domain. People tend to trust others that are confident in a domain. Additionally, this can lead to less friction with the team as everyone is on the same level and understands what the end goal should look like.