Tommy Rodda Email & Phone Number

Cupertino, California, Us

Drove product roadmap strategy across 5 business verticals (TV, Music, Podcasts, Books, and Sports), launching 4 new projects and driving 2 additional initiatives to secure executive direction and alignment.Reduced operational costs by 25% through the development of automated processes, while overseeing a portfolio of 10 ongoing initiatives, including 3 active, fully featured software products.Managed vendor partnerships and cross-functional teams, onboarding 1 new vendor management company, engaging 2 previously onboarded companies, and overseeing ~20 vendor employees (engineering, design, and project management) to streamline vendor onboarding and increase development efficiency.Mentored and managed a Junior Product Manager, accelerating their development from requiring full guidance to working autonomously on key aspects of product discovery and kick-off, resulting in improved team capacity and morale.

Cupertino, California, Us

Drove strategic evaluation of over 20 initiatives, evaluating and prioritizing ideas, with 5 initiatives greenlit for active product roadmaps.Saved up to 75% of product discovery time by providing strategic guidance, product plans, and clear executive recommendations, helping teams accelerate decision-making.Launched a crowdsourcing quality review program that improved content quality in Music, enhancing Apple's industry-leading content standards.Led several cross-functional workshops with up to 25 participants each, resulting in actionable recommendations that influenced product roadmaps.

Cupertino, California, Us

Supported 16 product launches, driving operational efficiency, revenue growth, and cost reduction, including a DJ mix processing tool that enabled electronic music rights detection and payment and the voting tool that drove the Apple Music Top 100 Albums event, impacting millions of Apple Music users.Reduced production costs by 85% through a localized copy app, cutting production time and eliminating unnecessary copy creation.Orchestrated cross-functional collaboration with over 60 teams and 150 vendor employees, streamlining vendor onboarding, improving vendor performance, and fostering strong relationships with internal Apple engineering teams.Launched the Workflow & User Management Platform, adopted by over several teams and engineers across Apple, driving an estimated 50% product development savings and 50% operational cost reduction through improved workflows and automation

Cupertino, California, Us

Launched 2 major products that impacted hundreds of operational, business, and editorial teams, with user adoption growing to hundreds, post-launch.Improved artist discovery within Apple Music with a search term & audio gathering tool, supporting the addition of search terms for 100+ artists' songs or albums each week.Facilitated alignment with several departments, including engineering, business, and legal, reducing product discovery and kick-off time by over 6 weeks through cross-functional workshops.Reduced development costs by leveraging vendor support, working with ~20 vendor employees to execute key projects, and minimizing reliance on full-time employee bandwidth.Pioneered and scaled the product management function, serving as the first product manager and growing the team to 10 product managers to support a rapidly expanding portfolio.

Cupertino, California, Us

Oversaw R&D initiatives for short-term objectives, proof-of-concepts (PoCs), and custom development projects, driving technical discovery and modular reusability for future applications.Delivered impactful internal tools and reports, including automation for iOS Apple Music app screenshots, metadata assessment reports, album de-duplication, localized artist reports, storefront web tools, and TV App sports logo workflows.Fostered strong cross-functional partnerships, working with AMP business and engineering teams to identify gaps, propose new tools, and drive cross-departmental collaboration.Leveraged a diverse technical stack including Orchard, Rio, internal UI automation libraries, public and internal APIs such as the MusicKit API, and Wikidata API to support R&D efforts and streamline tooling development.

Cupertino, California, Us

Was a lead QA for the launch and evolution of News, driving comprehensive testing of the platform’s infrastructure and ensuring quality for a flagship Apple service.Owned QA for partner-facing APIs, creating Python-based test scripts and automation to support seamless content delivery from partners like Conde Nast, ESPN, CNN, and Fox.Pioneered automation and plugin validation for critical content delivery tools, including Drupal and WordPress plugins, while spearheading manual and automated testing for the News ingestion pipeline.Drove end-to-end testing across multiple core areas, including external REST APIs, iOS paywalls, partner web portals, iOS analytics, and subscription workflows, ensuring seamless functionality and a premium user experience.

San Jose, California, Us

Led QA for Symantec's cross-platform PKI application, ensuring seamless functionality across macOS and Windows, while managing test plans, regression matrices, and end-to-end testing coverage.Developed and scaled the QA team, mentoring interns, contractors, and a new QA engineer, and driving the creation of an automation framework to improve testing efficiency.Released 11 successful iterations of the PKI Client using Agile Scrum methodologies, while conducting demos and feature presentations for Directors, Sales, and Support (EME) engineers.Strengthened partnerships with external stakeholders, including the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), facilitating product use, obtaining test materials, and supporting customer success.

Developed ASP.NET / C# web-based applications for business and wellness management portalCreated a browser-based instant messaging service for web portal using AJAX and ASP.NETWorked alongside strong, experienced developers to learn development and release practices

Indianapolis, In, Us

Worked closely with skilled designers to develop web pages using HTML/CSS/JS/PHP hosted on an internally developed CMSDirectly communicated with CEO’s on how to conduct communication with clients and partners