Daniel Hollands
Product Manager · Cannock / Remote
My Name is Daniel.
I am probably the Product Manager you are looking for.
Welcome to my curriculum vitae.
About Me
Product Manager with five years of hands-on experience working within cross-functional teams across nine concurrent client engagements. Originally a Ruby engineer, I bring technical fluency that lets me engage meaningfully with development teams -- understanding trade-offs, challenging estimates, and translating between business needs and engineering constraints.
I'm looking for a product role where I can own meaningful problems end to end, working closely with engineering and design in an environment that values discovery as much as delivery. Where product practices are still maturing, I'm equally comfortable stepping in to build the right structures from scratch.
Career Highlights
- Identified the need for a dedicated Product function at Foxsoft and built it from scratch, making the case to leadership, defining the role, and establishing the processes to run a multi-client portfolio
- Delivered product outcomes across up to nine simultaneous client engagements, managing competing priorities across a cross-functional team of ten
- Progressed from Ruby software engineer to Product Manager, building technical depth that makes me a genuine partner to engineering teams rather than just a go-between
Key Skills
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Product Discovery
Finding the right problem before committing to a solution, through research, interviews, and a healthy scepticism about assumptions.
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Roadmapping & Prioritisation
Turning strategy into a plan people can actually follow, balancing user needs, business goals, and what the team can realistically deliver.
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Stakeholder Management
Keeping clients and stakeholders aligned, building trust, and managing expectations without losing sight of what actually needs to ship.
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Facilitation
Running sessions that produce real decisions, not just discussions, whether that's a discovery workshop, a roadmap review, or a difficult conversation.
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Leadership
Creating the conditions for cross-functional teams to do their best work, with clear ownership and no ambiguity about what matters.
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Technical Fluency
Enough of an engineering background to have conversations with developers, understand trade-offs, and spot complexity early.
Employment
Product Manager for Foxsoft Ltd.
- Remote / Tamworth
- Jun 2020 - Present
- Conceived and proposed a dedicated Product function to the leadership team, then built and implemented it from scratch
- Sat on the company leadership team as the Product representative, shaping strategy and delivery practices
- Worked as the Product Manager within a cross-functional team of ten -- a service designer, two team leads, and six developers -- across up to nine client engagements simultaneously
- Established processes for stakeholder alignment, discovery, and prioritisation across the portfolio
Ruby Software Engineer for Foxsoft Ltd.
- Remote / Tamworth
- Jan 2016 - Jun 2020
- Built and maintained custom Rails applications modernising legacy FoxPro business systems for commercial clients
- Led requirements discovery and solution design directly with clients, bridging technical delivery and business needs
Ruby Software Engineer for Intercity UK
- Birmingham
- Nov 2014 - Dec 2015
- Contributed to a Ruby on Rails team building a customer billing and information portal
- Acted as liaison between the Ruby team and legacy Java developers to integrate data from multiple systems
- Delivered self-service reporting tools, giving clients direct access to their data without needing to raise requests
Education
University of Worcester
2006 - 2010BSc (Hons) Web Development, First Class Honours
Hobbies
I have an interest in running, cycling, and my own health and fitness in general. I've been running on and off since 2015, but picked it up again as a regular habit in 2023 when I joined Chasewater Runners. Since then I've competed in multiple 5k and 10k races, the Stratford half marathon, and an off-road sprint duathlon.
Living in Cannock means I have easy access to the mountain biking single track trails across Cannock Chase, which I ride on a regular basis. But I'm just as happy on my gravel bike riding along greenways such as the Tissington Trail, or along the many miles of canal in the local area.
Fun Facts
- I'm currently building Unknown Tales, an interactive story site where the choices you make shape the narrative. It's a side project that sits at the intersection of writing, game design, and software, and gives me a creative outlet outside of day-to-day product work.
- During my final year at university I was chairperson of the Worcester Ideas Network (WIN), a student entrepreneurship society. Taking on that role gave me my first real taste of stepping into a leadership position and getting people genuinely engaged in something.
- I founded Birmingham.IO and grew it from nothing into a thriving online community for the Birmingham tech scene, sustaining it for three years. An early lesson in product thinking, audience building, and knowing when to ship.
- I later revived the dormant Worcester Source meetup and ran it for two years, wrangling speakers, growing a regular audience, and keeping the momentum going month after month.
- When I graduated from the University of Worcester in 2010, I was featured as a success story on the university's website.
- I've had four articles published in HackSpace magazine (issues #13, #22, #25, and #40) and one in .NET magazine. Writing clearly about technical subjects for a non-specialist audience is a skill I've since found invaluable in product work.
- I used to own a CNC machine and made a variety of woodworking projects with it. There's something satisfying about turning a precise set of instructions into a physical object, which probably explains a lot about why I ended up in product.
Certificates
The Facilitator School certificate reflects professional development in running workshops and structured sessions.
The following three come from my role as a volunteer run leader with Chasewater Runners, where I completed the training required to lead and support other runners safely.
Contact
If you like what you see and want to get in touch, you can contact me by telephone on 07887 521 229 or you can email me.