Samuel Minter
3228 124th St SE
Everett, WA 98208
abulsme@abulsme.com
425-999-6428
Summary
Flexible program or product manager for strategic and tactical projects with over 25 years online experience. Specializes in coordinating and defining policies, procedures, and requirement specifications necessary to achieve business goals in projects involving multiple teams and stakeholders. Provides the necessary communications bridge between business and technical teams. Advocates for the non-technical end user of products within requirement and design discussions, specializing in abuse-prevention. Works with external and internal customers to educate them and improve their experience with products.
Professional Experience
(Feb 2022 – Present) Amazon.com: Senior Technical Program Manager, Personalization
(Jan 2019 – Feb 2022) Amazon.com: Single Threaded Leader, Review Abuse Audits, Community Trust
Responsible for developing and coordinating audit processes supporting review abuse prevention and mitigation efforts. Works to ensure the correct measurement and reporting on the incoming abuse flow, exposure of customers to abuse, and enforcement false positive rates. Ensures a stream of representative example cases to aid the anti-abuse teams in identifying opportunities for improvement. Coordinates between business, science, developer, and operational teams internationally on both short term operational issues and longer term needs and requirements surrounding audits and audit reporting.
- Launched multiple new audit programs covering several entity types and audit purposes
- Developed audit reporting mechanisms, including both requirements for automated reporting, and interim manual reporting
- Developed mechanisms for measuring and managing audit alignment and reliability both within and between teams
- Coordinated the creation of a new headline metric to measure impact of review abuse
(Aug 2010 – Jan 2019) Amazon.com: Abuse Prevention Manager, Simple Email Service
Responsible for anti-abuse efforts within the SES team. Coordinates a team of frontline investigators handling abuse cases, including making final calls on "tough cases". Manages abuse related communication and consulting with customers in escalated cases or cases involving high-value customers. Coordinates communication with Sales, Business Development, Customer Support, and Solutions Architects when engaging customers on abuse issues. Handles high-touch engagements with customers to assist with remediating abuse related issues.
- Defined anti-abuse procedures and policies, including both preventive measures, and after-the-fact enforcement for a team of 40 anti-abuse staffers
- Defined requirements for anti-abuse monitoring, automation, and investigative tools for one of the major sources of non-spam email worldwide.
- Improvement of reaction time for the two most significant abuse indicators from more than 24 hours to less than 15 minutes, a greater than 99% reduction.
- Pre-launch pricing and margin analysis for the service as a whole and new features
- Weekly reporting on business and performance metrics
As of Sep 2017, added additional responsibilities for SMS related systems, including defining policies and procedures for managing customer onboarding and dealing with abuse complaints.
(May 2007 – Aug 2010) Amazon.com: Manager, Automated and Targeted Merchandising / Customer Behavior
Responsible for managing the Automated and Targeted Merchandising group (formerly named Customer Behavior). Responsibilities
include staffing of the group, coordination of ongoing projects, interfacing with users of our systems to understand needs and pain points, and determining
the development roadmap for the projects owned by the group. Managed the continuing enhancement, development and maintenance of high performance, high volume, business critical systems. Projects have included:
- Content Optimization System: A system which dynamically optimizes the choices of which merchandising content sources should be used in what order to generate content for a user in a particular context on a website.
- Online Targeting System: Designed to very quickly determine if a visitor to a website meets specified targeting criteria using a variety of available attributes, behavioral and otherwise. This information is used by other systems to determine which content is shown to which users.
- Offline Targeting System: Designed to allow non-technical users to quickly specify attributes of a desired target segment and get back a list of matching user accounts which can then be used for various merchandising activities.
- Automated Email Marketing Programs: Two separate automated email marketing systems, one providing all customers with recommendations based on their personal purchase history and overall product purchase patterns, and the other messaging on the availability of particular new products to users the system determines are likely to be interested in the new product.
- Automated Email Program Creation Tool: A system to allow non-technical marketing users to create new ongoing automated email programs by defining the targeting criteria, content source, and recurrence pattern of the desired email, with additional safeguards in place to automatically stop programs that do not perform up to a defined quality bar.
(Jan 2006 – May 2007) Amazon.com: Technical Program and Product Manager (Customer Behavior)
- Responsible for coordinating the efforts of the Customer Behavior team to meet roadmap deadlines and meet customer needs while interfacing with internal customers and other development groups to manage dependencies and requirements.
- Responsible for working with business partners to promote the adoption of our online targeting solution within merchandising teams.
(Mar 2004 – Jan 2006) Accent Technologies: Product Manager
Responsible for maintaining a product development roadmap to align the evolution
of the product with the needs of current and potential customers while supporting
efforts internally and externally to maximize product knowledge and effectiveness
during rollout and implementation efforts.
- Coordinate Product Roadmap: Work with internal sales,
marketing and development teams to develop and maintain the roadmap of future
product development for the company’s flagship product. The roadmap
must take into account internal development priorities, input from customers
and prospective customers regarding their needs, competitive intelligence
and available development resources.
- Sales and Marketing Support: Develop proposals for prospective
customers
taking into account standard pricing and features as well as requests for
optional modules and customization. Provide support to the sales
and marketing teams as needed to inform customers and prospective customers
about the product’s features, best practices for use of the product
and how future features in the product roadmap may impact them.
- Customer Relationship Management: Coordinate any needed
product customizations for specific customers. Consult with the customer
to define exact product requirements. Coordinate with internal development
and project management teams to ensure the requested custom work is delivered
according to customer specifications.
- Professional Services: Work with the Professional services
team to engage with existing customers to maximize their return on investment
(ROI)
for the product. Involves working to define the most effective methods and
procedures for use of the product given the client’s specific needs,
potential customizations to better integrate with existing client constraints,
and content structure and organization.
(Jan 2002 – Mar 2004) Merrill Lynch: Vice President of Marketing Information Solutions
Responsible for continuously analyzing current information solutions, coordinating requirements and needs across multiple business units, designing enhancement strategies, and ensuring flexible implementation.
- Site Upgrade Analysis: Led team to conduct analysis of issues surrounding several web properties. Designed strategies to enhance and upgrade the sites, with high-level new system implementation requirements
- Content Administration Tools: Coordinated development of requirements for content administration tools for clients and prospect sites across multiple business units. Integrated requirements from business users and previous administration tools into Rational development process format. Worked through a number of iterations of the requirements as the environment changed the project developed through the final application validation.
- Content Management Data Modeling and Architecture: Assigned to take over a floundering content management project using the Documentum 2i architecture and bring it to the point where it could be launched and used. Assessed the current state through interviews with stakeholders and potential users, developed detailed gap requirements including detailed content data model documentation, application flow and wire frame documents. Coordinated with the development team to ensure delivery of as much as possible of the requirements given limited time and budget. Once deployed, assisted content deployment team in development of techniques and procedures to use the new tools.
- Workstation Integration: Managed communication between the Marketing department and the department responsible for the design and launch of the new workstation for brokers. Examined options for placement and highlighting of Marketing tools and content within the workstation, made recommendations and facilitated the marketing discussion of how best to use those options and integrate results into the workstation release.
(Feb 2000 – Dec 2001) Merrill Lynch: Vice President of Development for Interactive
Web Technologies
- Managed a team of up to 10 web application developers, graphic designers,
business architects and support personnel with the mission
of defining the organization, structure and technical direction of websites
and
projects
in order
to meet
business
needs while maintaining technically sound solutions.
- Coordinated the efforts of the team to efficiently create and upgrade
content management and display applications for the public
website and other web properties
using Vignette technologies
- Coordinated the efforts of the team to design a new public website
for Merrill Lynch US Private client combining the features of three pre-existing
sites. The new site incorporated a unique entitlements system and utilized
an XML data exchange methodology for data sourcing and integration.
- Set the technical direction and orientation of the group's development
efforts
- Managed relationships with business clients, systems support organizations,
and external vendors
- Managed projects, including hiring and staffing, in an environment
of shrinking resources and budgets
(Mar 1999 – Feb 2000) Merrill Lynch: Web Publication Manager (Assistant Vice President)
- Managed a web publication team of up to 10 people including HTML coders,
CGI programmers, quality assurance specialists and
site coordinators for the Marketing
division
- Ensured daily publication of content updates to the public site and the
site for clients involving
multiple updates and revisions daily
- Coordinated transition from manual content creation
and publication methods to an automated Vignette
based content management and display
system.
- Managed staffing issues including hiring employees and consultants
and integrating with on site vendor teams and coordination
with business partners and other technical
groups.
(Jul 1998 – Mar 1999) Merrill Lynch: Development Manager
- Managed a team of HTML developers, graphics artists and quality assurance
staff in the Interactive Sales Technology group
- Ensured the daily content update process for the public website and
client site occurred efficiently and on time
- Coordinate initial development and design efforts
for The Learning Network, an internal training
website
(Jan 1997 – Jul 1998) Merrill Lynch: Web Developer
- Member of the User Interface group within the Distributed Application
Technology division.
- Developed Perl based content entry and HTML creation tools
- Worked with graphic designers and application programmers to implement
user interface decisions in the static HTML
based prospect website and
the dynamically created client access site
- Interfaced extensively with business partners and quality assurance groups
to ensure regular content updates occurred daily
(Dec 1995 – Jan 1997) ANSER Inc.: Web Developer
- Website design and maintenance for a variety of clients with duties
including client interface and needs assessment, proposal writing,
information structuring, graphic editing, Perl scripting of interactive
areas and
Apache webserver
administration under Solaris
- Led, coordinated and trained ANSER's four member Internet Group
(Jul 1995 – Feb 1998) Freelance Web Producer
Freelance web design, development and maintenance for a variety of
clients including Talk Radio 1250 WTAE (Pittsburgh),Variety
96 Radio (WVTY Pittsburgh), Operation
Crossroads Africa and Creepy Classics Video.
(Aug 1990 – Dec 1995) Non-Web Positions
Pre-web experience includes radio talk-show producer, research assistant
at a polymer laboratory, and computer cluster
help desk assistant.
Education
- Carnegie Mellon University – Bachelor’s of Science in
Physics Received 1993
- Additional business and management classes taken at H. J. Heinz School
for Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon
Patents
- US Patent 10,013,492 (Jul 2018): Categorization based on user questionnaire
- US Patent 9,769,008 (Sep 2017): Annotations for content creation feedback
- US Patent 9,639,877 (May 2017): eBook Citation Enhancement
- US Patent 8,935,621 (Jan 2015): Systems and methods for selecting components for inclusion in portions of a displayable file
- US Patent 8,834,166 (Sep 2014): User device providing electronic publications with dynamic exercises
- US Patent 8,799,814 (Aug 2014): Automated targeting of content components
- US Patent 7,937,336 (May 2011): Predicting geographic location associated with network address
Personal Projects
- 2007-Present: Cohost and producer of the weekly Curmudgeon's Corner current events podcast
- 2008-Present: Creator, developer, and analyst for Election Graphs, a presidential election poll tracking site
- 2017-Present: Creator and maintainer of the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts