Technical Product Leader · Washington, DC

David Coulter

Product. Engineering. Leadership.

Nine years leading technical product at scale. He's a PM that engineering teams actually trust, someone who asks why before he asks what, closes the loop, and ships things that matter. Obsessed with outcomes, not appearances.

David Coulter seated outdoors in a navy jacket, smiling
  • 9+
    Years leading technical product
  • 71%
    Reduction in stakeholder complaints, Disney
  • 329M
    Rows processed, first quarter in production
  • 40+
    Engineers coordinated cross-functionally
Selected experience

Ch-ch-ch-chaaanges.

  • Disney 2024–2025

    Senior Product Manager, NatGeo & Marvel

    • Led delivery of 20+ features across NatGeo and Marvel digital properties, improving editor and producer productivity by 20%.
    • Coordinated 40+ engineers, PMs, and business stakeholders across internationalization, geotargeting, and tooling.
    • Ran a listening tour with stakeholders, identified the root causes, and addressed them. Complaints to leadership fell 71%.
    • Championed in-house A/B testing and Datadog adoption to protect consumer data and increase observability.
  • PartsTech 2022–2023

    Technical PM, Supplier Integrations

    • Managed Fortune 500 API integrations end-to-end, with each one directly growing total GPV by 10%.
    • Built PartsTech's first collaborative roadmap with AutoZone, improving coordination and delivery across the supplier relationship.
    • Reduced cross-platform bugs by 23% by addressing root causes rather than symptoms.
  • Boulevard 2022

    Technical PM, APIs & Integrations

    • Took QuickBooks integration through Intuit's full UAT and beta approval, now sticky for 80% of customers.
    • Wrote Boulevard's first long-term API and integration strategy in partnership with the executive team.
    • As interim FinTech PM, stepped in and shipped Address Verification, Dispute Management, and next-gen POS hardware on time.
  • Hobsons 2020–2022

    Technical PM, Platform Products

    • Owned Data Channels, a cloud ETL platform that processed 329M rows in its first quarter of production.
    • Led platform product across four product lines, including Naviance, Intersect, Starfish, and Camino.
    • Managed Communication Channels, the email and SMS backbone for all PowerSchool products post-acquisition.
  • Thinkful 2017–2019

    Head of Program Management

    • Built a student analytics system to identify struggling students early. Withdrawal rates fell 20%.
    • Hired and led the team responsible for 1,000+ active students at any given time.
    • Redesigned onboarding from scratch, cutting new hire ramp time from three months to three weeks.
  • Independent 2019–present

    Product Consultant

    • Advised early-stage and growth-stage companies on product strategy, roadmapping, and technical implementation between engagements.
    • Active during a period of significant market contraction in tech, the same conditions that shortened several of the roles above.
  • Earlier
    • Lead Application Developer, National Geographic (2013–2016)
    • Senior UI Developer, NGP VAN (2010–2013)
    • Senior Front-End Developer, 720 Strategies (2009–2010)
    • Front-End Web Developer, National Geographic (2006–2008)
David Coulter smiling with arms crossed against a white wall

He grew up curious. He never stopped.

He was the kid who sketched constantly and took things apart to see how they worked. Always asking why. He studied design, worked as a UI designer, and carried that visual thinking into every line of code he wrote and every product he has shipped since. At National Geographic he led development teams. Product eventually became the right fit, and he has not looked back.

That instinct never went away. He still wants to know why the problem exists before he talks about what to build. He thinks visually, knows how code actually gets written, and cares far more about whether something works than whether it looks like he worked hard. Engineers trust him because he has been one. Stakeholders trust him because he does what he says he will do.

If you want to hear a genuine rant, ask him about accessibility.

Competencies

A broad toolkit. No dogma about how to use it.

Product

  • Discovery
  • Roadmapping
  • User Stories
  • Story Mapping
  • QA & UAT

Process

  • Agile / Lean
  • A/B Testing
  • OKRs
  • Stakeholder Mgmt
  • Cross-functional Leadership

Technical

  • HTML / CSS / JS
  • Python
  • SQL
  • JSON
  • REST APIs

Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • DevOps
  • Datadog
  • ETL / Pipelines
  • System Architecture

Markets

  • Enterprise B2B
  • B2SMB
  • B2C
  • SaaS
  • FinTech
  • EdTech

Design

  • Wireframing
  • Prototyping
  • User Research
  • Figma
  • Accessibility & 508
What colleagues say

Did he ask them to write something? Maybe. Did they? Yes.

  • "It's rare to find a deeply technical PM who can dive deep with engineers and dialogue with them in their language. David was just that guy, fully understanding and articulating technical tradeoffs in terms of their downstream UX and business impact. Incredibly valuable and rare skillset."

    Joel Foster · Senior PM · Boulevard, 2022

  • "David gets things done and is a joy to work with. He leads with clarity, purpose, and commitment. I appreciate his humor in challenging situations. He's the kind of coworker we all want: a high performer and a good friend."

    Ben Charboneau · Sr. Technical Program Leader · Hobsons, 2022

  • "Transparency, leadership, and purpose. He always has an eye for talent and thinks about how the organization can use it. If you have the privilege of having David lead your team, consider yourself very fortunate."

    Matt Shull · Senior PM · reported to David at Thinkful, 2019

  • "David made our jobs much easier when developing features that cross-collaborate with other teams. Any team would be lucky to have him at the helm of their product development."

    Jason Stewart · Senior Software Engineer · Boulevard, 2022

  • "David is dedicated to constantly improving, never content to rely on previous knowledge as a crutch. His energy is infectious. Whenever I'm asked to recommend someone, he's the first one that comes to mind."

    Asif Khan · CTO, Fifth Tribe

More on LinkedIn (opens in new tab), if you need more convincing.

He still has a lot of questions to ask.

And he probably has some answers, too. He is looking for a team that is curious, a little stubborn about quality, and does not take themselves too seriously. He does not have all the answers, but he knows how to find them.

David Coulter smiling against a white brick wall