Michael Gholson

As a passionate customer advocate, my destination is to build simple solutions for complex issues. I’ve been in engineering for 11+ years, sales for 5 years, and product management for 8+ years. I’ve been promoted multiple times and worked my way up from engineering to sales and finally to product management.

I’ve led strategies for enterprise software and IoT products and built software from the ground up. I’m skilled at building collaborative and productive partnerships both internally and externally. I’ve directed effective process improvement, cross-functional teams, and delivered measurable results. My success is driven by my ability to seek out and embrace new tools, processes, and techniques.

During my career, I have:

  • Secured funding and led all processes, planning, timelines, and deliverables for an ERP IoT software product.
  • Specialized in clients with customers seeking enterprise solutions from $1M to $20M.
  • Maintained a strong record of success increasing revenue and sales margins by optimizing customer experiences.
  • Successfully built and launched a new software product by effectively collaborating internally, setting realistic goals.
Hewlett Packard Hewlett Packard
Autodesk Autodesk
General Electric General Electric
United Technologies United Technologies
Safe Fleet Safe Fleet

Hewlett Packard

Project Team Manager Managing a team of 20 students at Oregon State University, I was responsible for executing automated and manual testing for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. In this role, I designed test procedures, documentation, trained students, and built resources in order to ensure timely project performance. We tested black box, white box, prototype, and legacy hardware and software.

Autodesk

Sr Quality Engineer

Established and directed an international program for quality assurance testing of a software monitoring solution for the injection molding industry.  Built a strong test lab in both the United States and Australia and trained engineers on the proper testing and automation techniques.  I also led the effort to localize products for English, French, and Spanish customer base.

General Electric

Sales Engineer

Spearheaded a new team of sales engineers for the mobile streaming and mobile fleet management market. Delivered products to meet Enterprise business objectives and presented products to large customer groups. Launched a new infrastructure plan for customer deployments, wireless communication, and secure database implementations.  Implemented disaster recovery plans and client training and project launch schedules.

Senior Quality Engineer

Led quality test data analysis on software and hardware datacenter products – including networked video, data storage and servers, firmware, and software integration. Interfaced with customers, performing beta and test programs. Worked as part of a high-performing and cross-functional team to develop and release global video management OVP solutions. Communicated and coached global teams on big picture goals.  Frequently led problem-solving engineering projects to proactively unearth risks and perform root-cause analysis.

 

United Technologies

Software Product Manager

I designed and directed a full enterprise SaaS solution for client, server, and mobile applications using on-premise and cloud infrastructures.  Product focus on consumer and business software for large server farms and over thousands of commercial IoT hardware devices.  Solution included GPS tracking, telematics, reporting, and automatic wireless evidence retrieval.  I designed a new interface for monitoring devices, playing videos and managing large datasets.  Fostered and maintained relationships with leaders of local and international teams, customer billing, and drawing down on them as necessary to complete large projects.  Created and managed the product roadmap, assuring the product vision and KPI’s were met.  Directed an international team of 30+, from US, China, India, Canada, and Poland, to develop new features.  Experience in Artificial Intelligence, cloud migrations, API, platform mergers, security audit process and compliance.

Sales Engineer

Developed and maintained integral customer relationships for infrastructure architecture including disaster recovery, networks, database, server integration, and mobile technology products.  Managed product implementation on site and in AWS and Azure cloud. Introduced and integrated scalable solutions and wireless communication, disaster recovery plans, and customer training. Conducted presentations to government organizations and worked closely with regional and area sales managers. Utilized knowledge of technology to assist with sales process and integration at customer sites, demonstrating hardware / software, answering technical questions, and led efforts meet RFP needs.

Safe Fleet

Product Manager

After being acquired from UTC, I continued leading our software product strategy for enterprise software.  We were tasked to build new features such as Artificial Intelligence, new IoT hardware, and data/analytics systems using Agile roadmap planning. I led inter-departmental efforts between the sales, marketing, third-party vendors, support, and development teams. I trained team members, presented to groups, and transferred product knowledge.  I also improve product strategy and security for enterprise level software. I design interfaces for software package for video playback and data reporting for remote devices. Team collaboration to optimize the user experience, and direct a team of 21 in software product development.