Tom Arra Email & Phone Number

Chicago, IL, US

New York, NY, US

Creating the first Product Development team at VGV focused on delivering internal and external tools and products to help product teams move fast and scale quickly.

New York, NY, US

• Created the Program Management team at Very Good Ventures focused on project delivery and business efficiency.
• Grew the team to have 6 team members spread across the globe in order to best support our growing team and clients.
• Managed the Program Management team along with all client project deliverables and established “The VGV Way” of program delivery.
• Responsible for all tooling around the PM process including resource planning, time tracking, reporting and invoicing. Completed 2 major migrations in toolsets to move entire company to be driven from Kantata for.
• Part of the management team which was tasked with the acquisition of CreateThrive (June 2023) in order to expand VGV into the global leader in Flutter consultant services.

Munich, DE

• MyBMW/MINI Application
• Doubled size of development team to 9 developers and 1 automation engineer to increase product output based on business demand.
• Managed a total of 15 resources across 2 development teams.
• Worked directly with development and architecture to establish the use of Flutter within BMW for fast and reliable updates across mobile OS platforms (iOS & Android) simultaneously.
• Had ownership of core features from the engineering and product side including Login, Account Create, and Vehicle Mapping.
• Completed initial launch of a brand-new code base and application in 6 markets around the world with no customer/production incidents during the launch phase, with a gain of over new 35,000 users in 7 days. Aftersales

Munich, DE

• Part of initial product management team for the new BMW Technology Corporation office in Chicago, IL.
• Led 2 teams of approximately 6 engineers each during the development of the new BMW Connected application for iOS.
• Designed and ran BMW’s first external beta test with 1,000 users. Gathered valuable feedback from real users that helped shape the new BMW Connected application.
• Drove design and development teams for the BMW Connected debut at CES 2016. Attended CES as BMW Technology Expert.
• Served as release manager for iOS. Included setting up metadata delivery process for fast and easy App Store updates.

Redmond, Washington, US

• Focused on bringing Microsoft Services to the 100 Million Monthly Users’ of the Xpress Browser.
• Drove backlog for one development team.
• Defined requirements and led team through development of new browser landing page content utilizing the MSN Weather API.
• Led definition, development, and deployment of OneDrive integration with the Xpress Browser for Asha Devices.
• Represented and evangelized the Xpress Browser team during company wide and external events including trade shows.
• Ran technical training sessions for large groups (30+).

Espoo, Southern Finland, FI

• Recruited to the Product Owner position for the Nokia Xpress for Windows Phone product after organization changes.
• Led the redevelopment of Nokia Xpress for Lumia for Windows Phone 8 in a new Agile based methodology.
• Drove backlog for two development teams.
• Created a new UX/UI paradigm which allowed users to access their content faster.
• Worked with many offsite teams, including phone program management and application technical readiness, to secure Nokia Xpress as a mandatory preloaded application on Lumia devices.
• Launched Nokia Xpress on Lumia and acquired over half a million users in less than one year.

Espoo, Southern Finland, FI

• Windows Phone
• Prototyped and then led development of Nokia Xpress for Windows Phone. Prototype was developed in spare time with two other colleagues before being picked up for full time development.
• Developed main application architecture and led feature design.
• Led team in adopting Agile practices including moving to a DevOps model.Asha
• Provided architecture guidance on all feature implementations as a senior member of the Web Apps platform team.
• Executed the ScrumMaster role while still also being an individual contributor on the team.

Espoo, Southern Finland, FI

• Implemented a JavaScript library used for client-side manipulation.
• Created templates, samples and code snippets for the Nokia Web Tools product.
• Took on role of ScrumMaster for the S40 Web Apps team during our program’s transition to Agile.
• Represented Xpress at Nokia World 2011 and participated in Nokia World Hackathon as a technical expert.
• Published, on my own time, two S40 Web Apps to the Nokia Store.

Lisle, Illinois, US

• Taught CIS-170C (Programming with Lab) with 20 students. Course content included introduction to C++ & Visual Studio, programming concepts, and a final project that demonstrated basic programming ability.
• Taught SEC-360 (Data Privacy and Security) with 7 students. Course content was focused around enterprise security including hardware, software, and security policies.

Itasca, IL, US

• Daily tasks included HTML, JavaScript, and PHP start page design and development.
• Created new server components to help achieve new start page features.
• Represented Novarra and won the Tech in the Middle Day of Mobile 2010 Hackathon. Created an Android on-device clipping program that interfaced with the Novarra Vision clipping product.

Itasca, IL, US

• Performance testing the Novarra Vision Server and Client product in both a manual and automated fashion.
• Managed and performed maintenance on the automated unit testing code using Java and Apache Ant.
• Led design and development of Vault, a Ruby on Rails application used to track test cases, test suites, and test results.

Lisle, Illinois, US

Coordinate and manage approximately 15 faculty assistants and tutors. Responsibilities included schedule planning and managing day-to-day issues on the tutoring floor. Obtained College Reading and Learning Association Advanced Tutor Certification and DeVry University Writing Tutor Certification.

Lisle, Illinois, US

Tutored students, both one-on-one and in groups, in various subjects including college algebra, English, and software programming and design. Obtained College Reading and Learning Association Tutor Certification and DeVry University Math Tutor Certification.

Master Of Business Administration With Concentration In Information Systems Management

Cis, Computer Programming With A Concentration In Computer Forensics