Karthik Arigela — Product Engineer

TL:DR I build products and close first customers. Product Engineering. Early stage execution. Customer acquisition. One person. End to end. Thank you for continuing further! ❤️ In November 2024, I got laid off from Model N as Junior Software Developer. What followed felt like dog years. Not calendar time. Survival time. The kind where you learn more in a week than most do in a quarter. I took a 60% pay cut to join an Early Stage Startup. Built a sales automation product from post MVP to 10 paying customers waiting to use Product. Owned the entire Email Tab - User Research, API integration, 31 user stories with acceptance criteria detailed enough for developers to ship without asking questions. Negotiated vendor pricing for Mailivery API myself. Closed customers on demo calls myself. Then the founder scrapped the product. With customers waiting. So I rebuilt with my product team. Led a 15 person team for a US payroll product. Delivered 75+ user stories across Org Onboarding, RBAC architecture, and CheckHQ API integrations. Got laid off without notice. Most people would call this a disaster. I call it a masterclass in building under chaos. When you've had two products killed under you, you stop romanticizing ideas. You start shipping what survives. After the layoffs, I went independent. Built an inventory system for an electrical contractor. Stopped ₹1.5 crore (~$180K) in material theft with daily image tracking and in person audits. Not fancy. Just effective. Then built a mini CRM for a coaching institute. 1,700 students. 3 campuses. 6 parent interviews. 70% reduction in customer complaints. Staff freed up for other departments. I don't just write specs. I interview customers, design flows in Figma, write API implementation docs, verify code against acceptance criteria, and get on sales calls to close. Technical founders - I finish what you started when you're pulled into fundraising. Non Technical founders - I translate your vision into shipped product without you learning to code. I speak both languages. Because I've been the developer who received bad specs. And the PM who wrote specs developers actually used. Currently looking for Founding Engineer roles where shipping matters more than titles.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Product Engineer specializing in SaaS and Fintech solutions.

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Experience: 2 yrs

Skills

Product Development
Customer Acquisition
Software Product Management
Collaborative Leadership
Teamwork

Career Highlights

Led product development under chaos.
Achieved 70% reduction in customer complaints.
Closed 10 customers while building a product.

Work Experience

Freelance

Independent Product Engineer (9 mos)

CODETRU

Product Management Intern (4 mos)

Product Space

Product Management Fellow (4 mos)

Model N

Associate Member of Technical Staff (1 yr 3 mos)

Swayam ED-cell,Vasavi College Of Engineering

Human Resources & Public Relations Coordinator (1 yr 8 mos)

GDSC Vasavi College of Engineering

Department Head (10 mos)

Education

Bachelor of Engineering - BE at Vasavi College of Engg

Karthik Arigela

Product Engineer

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India2 yrs experience

AI Enabled

Key Highlights

Led product development under chaos.
Achieved 70% reduction in customer complaints.
Closed 10 customers while building a product.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Product Engineer specializing in SaaS and Fintech solutions.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Product DevelopmentCustomer AcquisitionSoftware Product ManagementCollaborative LeadershipTeamwork

Other Skills

Rapid PrototypingClaude CodeVibe CodingVibe EngineeringProduct LaunchCursor AIClaude SkillsGoogle AntigravityArtificial Intelligence (AI)Management ConsultingAnalytical SkillsUser PersonasUser Story DevelopmentUser Experience (UX)User Interface Design

About

Experience

2 yrs

Total Experience

1 yr 3 mos

Average Tenure

9 mos

Current Experience

Freelance

Independent Product Engineer

Aug 2025 – Present · 9 mos · Hyderabad, Telangana, India · Remote

I stopped waiting for permission to build.
After seeing one product killed,
And getting laid off from another.
Went independent.
Found clients through personal network.
Figured out my niche:
Building Products that deliver Outcomes
for Small Businesses who can't afford to waste money on "Digital Transformation."
CLIENT 1: Electrical Contractor Business
Problem?
Material theft across multiple construction sites.
No tracking. No accountability.
Vendors unorganized.
Built: Inventory management system.
Material, tools, equipment tracked across sites
Vendor + purchase history for quick reordering
Daily image uploads as status proof
In-person enquiry workflows
Result: Stopped ₹1.5 crore (~$180K) in theft.
Not with AI.
With accountability systems and daily discipline.
CLIENT 2: Valley Oak - IIT JEE/NEET Coaching Institute
Problem?
Parents getting called multiple times by different sales reps.
Fee payment confusion. No tracking coordination.
Same parent, different reps, repeated calls.
Process: Interviewed 6 parents for pain points.
Audited entire business workflow.
Identified opportunity in sales + customer support.
Built: Mini CRM for 1,700 students across 3 campuses.
Standardized lead ownership + status tracking
Unified parent/student profiles
Fee payment tracking
Lecturer remarks consolidated
Result: 70% reduction in customer complaints.
Staff efficiency improved
People moved to other departments.
MD now has transparency into operations.
Also: Created detailed market study + pitching deck
for their competitive positioning in Hyderabad's coaching market.
This is what I do.
Find the actual problem.
Build the minimum that solves it.
Measure if it worked. Iterate or move on.
No feature bloat. No "nice to haves."
Just outcomes.

Rapid PrototypingClaude CodeVibe CodingVibe EngineeringProduct LaunchCursor AI+6

Codetru

Product Management Intern

Apr 2025 – Aug 2025 · 4 mos · Hyderabad · On-site

Joined after 5 months of job searching post layoff.
Took a 60% pay cut.
Not because I had to. Because I wanted to build.
PRODUCT 1: Ruto - Sales Email Automation
(Competing with Apollo, Instantly, Lemlist)
Owned the entire Email Tab as Product Owner.
Not "contributed to." Owned.
What I shipped:
Email Warmup feature from zero
Mailivery API integration (negotiated vendor pricing myself)
31 user stories with acceptance criteria detailed enough to include SMTP parameters, IMAP configs, API endpoints
Designed low-fidelity prototypes in Figma
Created technical flow documentation (Swim Lanes & User Flows)
Joined 15+ customer demo calls
Closed 10 SMB customers from $0 MRR to $300 MRR.
Then the founder scrapped the product.
With paying customers lined up.
Because "it wasn't his idea."
PRODUCT 2: Surf - US Payroll Platform
(Competing with Gusto, Deel)
After Ruto died,
I was moved to lead one of 3 sprint teams.
15 people: developers, interns, DevOps, architect, designer, PMO.
What I delivered:
75+ user stories for Employer Perspective Product
with RBAC architecture
CheqHQ API integration documentation
User flows, FRDs, high fidelity mockups
Learned US payroll from scratch
Delivered faster than peers despite being new to the domain.
Then I got laid off. Same day. No notice.
What I took from this:
I can own a product end-to-end under chaos
I can ship with teams that don't want to ship
I can close customers while building the product
Products die. Skills don't.
Title said intern.
Work said founding PM.

Software Product ManagementAnalytical SkillsUser PersonasUser Story DevelopmentUser Experience (UX)User Interface Design

Product space

Product Management Fellow

Nov 2024 – Mar 2025 · 4 mos · Remote

Model n

Associate Member of Technical Staff

Aug 2023 – Nov 2024 · 1 yr 3 mos · Hyderabad, Telangana, India · On-site

Orchestrated a 3-person product development team, delivering tailored solutions for over 20 clients, including AstraZeneca, J&J, and Pfizer, enhancing customer satisfaction by 15%.
Spearheaded cross-functional collaboration with Product Managers to implement numeric-only ASP validations, improving data integrity and reducing failure rates by 30%.
Resolved 25+ SAST security vulnerabilities using Checkmarx, adopting secure coding practices to lower security risk exposure by 30%.
Integrated Pendo with Orchestration Services using Postman APIs to enhance data analytics and user insights, boosting user engagement by 15%.
Developed comprehensive Grafana monitoring dashboards for JVM statistics, improving system visibility and performance tracking.
Implemented Graylog for security log analytics, successfully reducing the mean time to detect issues by 7%.

JavaSpring BootSQLTemporalProduct DevelopmentJira+10

Swayam ed-cell,vasavi college of engineering

Human Resources & Public Relations Coordinator

Nov 2021 – Jul 2023 · 1 yr 8 mos · Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Got amazing Opportunities to meet many Personalities & fellow Students from Various Colleges Nationwide
Received Huge Credibility from Professors & Students all around the college by Planning & Hosting VCE IPL auction with a record breaking participation of 450+ Students

Strategic PlanningCollaborative Leadership

Gdsc vasavi college of engineering

Department Head

Sep 2021 – Jul 2022 · 10 mos · Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Learned wide range of Technical topics by conducting 20+ Events Collaboratively through Networking with people of diverse backgrounds & different majors

TeamworkActive Learning