Kelvin Liao

Product Manager · Turning ambiguity into shipped value

About

Product manager

I turn strategy into shipped outcomes through better decisions, tighter cadence, and small 0→1 tools.

Based in Melbourne. Building a portfolio of products and writing about product execution.

“Execution is strategy in visible form.”

I care about decision quality, operating cadence, and reducing coordination cost so teams ship consistently without relying on heroics.

Story

Why product

The pattern I kept seeing, and what pulled me into product.

My work history starts off as a software engineer. In this role which was also at a startup, I noticed that whilst speed was high, it didn't feel like we were all going in the same direction. This caused a great deal of frustration and I channeled that into bridging communication gaps within the team and with wider stakeholders.

This proactiveness gave me the opportunity to step into delivery management where my journey into product management truly began. I really enjoyed solving customer problems and ensuring we were doing the best we can each day to meet their needs and also enjoy our work.

This startup environment shaped how I think about product. Most strategies don’t fail because of bad ideas. It fails in execution. Priorities are unclear. Sequencing is off. Teams are busy, but momentum is low.

Moving into product management was a way to close that gap. Since then, my focus has stayed consistent: connect direction, planning, delivery, and outcomes into one coherent system.

Proof

Selected wins from my time at Orkestra

Concrete outcomes that reflect how I operate: speed, clarity, and leverage.

Built version 2 of the tariffs UX in 4 weeks

Mapped UK network tariffs to our tariff engine, closed the missing product gaps, and removed friction to the first a-ha moment.

Outcome

UK rollout in 3 phases

Internationalisation foundations that enabled broader expansion work in the UK.

Outcome

Billing ops scaled

Integrated Maxio, including dunning and multi-currency, to reduce overhead and support international scale.

Outcome

First AI features shipped

Co-led Bill Scan + AI Assistant for automated ingestion and context-aware support.

Outcome

Operating model upgrade

Partnered with Head of Product to shift from feature factory → product operating model; delivered Site Baseline v2 within 4 months.

Outcome

Experience

What I’ve done

Roles, responsibilities, and the operating systems I built around them.

Orkestra

Energy software startup · Jan 2022 - Nov 2025

Visit Orkestra

Product Manager

Apr 2024 – Nov 2025

Led product work across core UX, market expansion, AI features, billing operations, and operating model improvements inside Orkestra's startup environment.

Focus

  • Delivered Tariffs UX v2 in four weeks to reduce friction in the user's first a-ha moment
  • Drove internationalisation work for the UK rollout and led Germany market discovery and regulatory analysis
  • Co-led Bill Scan and AI Assistant, integrated Maxio with dunning and multi-currency, and partnered on the shift to a stronger product operating model

Impact

  • Improved first-value experience in the tariff workflow
  • Enabled market expansion foundations across the UK and Germany
  • Reduced billing overhead and accelerated delivery on high-leverage product initiatives

Associate Product Manager

Jan 2024 – Apr 2024

Owned feature definition, backlog quality, and prioritisation mechanics while building stronger alignment between stakeholders and the engineering team.

Focus

  • Delivered features including Carbon Emissions Accounting and Custom Docs from problem definition through execution
  • Introduced prioritisation frameworks such as cost of delay and value versus effort
  • Owned backlog triage, scoping, prioritisation, and capacity planning with engineering

Impact

  • Improved customer satisfaction and feature uptake
  • Created a shared language for comparing priorities and trade-offs
  • Embedded more flexible planning under changing priorities

Technical Delivery Manager

Sep 2023 – Jan 2024

Defined and improved Orkestra's product development cycle as the company scaled, turning scattered process into a clearer delivery system across product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

Focus

  • Partnered with product, engineering, marketing, sales, and customer success to define the target development cycle
  • Created a strategic plan for incremental workflow improvements as the engineering team scaled
  • Introduced Jira plus GitHub, Notion, and Slack integrations and documented existing bottlenecks

Impact

  • Increased delivery momentum across the engineering organisation
  • Reduced miscommunication and manual information handoff
  • Made process bottlenecks visible and easier to improve

Electrical Engineer & Backend Software Engineer

Jan 2022 – Sep 2023

Built product and modelling capabilities across Orkestra's energy software, working across electrical engineering, market research, backend systems, and cross-functional delivery.

Focus

  • Designed and tested optimisation features covering batteries, solar, loads, and grid power flow
  • Researched tariffs, LGCs, STCs, battery degradation, standby losses, and minimum state of charge behaviour
  • Built backend components to improve responsiveness, performance, security, and data protection

Impact

  • Expanded the modelling depth of the Plan app
  • Improved backend performance and responsiveness
  • Strengthened collaboration between product requirements, front-end design, and technical implementation

My software engineering background helps me operate comfortably at the intersection of product, engineering, and delivery, where most execution problems actually live.

Operating model

Systems I use

How I improve decision quality, cadence, and alignment. Tools change; systems stay.

Decision systems

  • Prioritization frameworks
  • Opportunity sizing
  • Trade-off mapping

Execution systems

  • Roadmap structuring
  • Delivery cadence design
  • Scope control and sequencing

Alignment systems

  • Clear product narratives
  • Documentation that reduces coordination cost
  • Stakeholder visibility loops

Principles

How I work

The rules I optimise for when things get messy.

Execution is strategy, visible.

If you can’t point at what shipped, the strategy is still theory.

Clarity beats complexity.

Docs, roadmaps, and decisions should reduce coordination cost, not create it.

Cadence creates trust.

Consistency builds confidence faster than bursts of intensity.

Small systems compound.

Tiny, shipped tools beat large, unfinished initiatives.

Write to think. Build to validate.

Words sharpen ideas; shipping tests them.

Direction

Product leadership

The scope I’m intentionally growing into.

I’m intentionally developing toward product leadership by widening my scope from feature execution to organisational leverage, from roadmap ownership to operating system design, and from team output to product outcomes.

I’m interested in building product organisations where strategy is clear and actionable, teams operate with high trust and high cadence, and progress compounds instead of resetting every quarter.

My goal is to become a product leader who creates clarity at scale and builds systems that make teams consistently effective.

Now

What I’m focused on right now

A living snapshot of the current season.

Currently building

Building

A portfolio of decision tools to aid in everyday life.

Writing

Decision quality, prioritisation, and operating cadence.

Exploring

How solo builders create leverage through systems.

Contact

Connect

If any of this resonates, I’m easy to reach.

I’m always up for conversations about product execution and operating models, 0→1 products, and building high-leverage teams and systems.