kunal@portfolio:~$
kunal@portfolio — ~/intro

Kunal Kumar

I turn vague requirements into things that ship. Streaming platforms, healthcare products, advertising strategy. Engineer first, which means I know what breaks before it breaks.

cat work.log

4 entries · newest first · click to expand

2026 — now Product Strategy Analyst · Google

YouTube Connected TV · Industry project with Large Customer Sales and Global Customer Sales · South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria

problem

Advertisers in three emerging markets still treated YouTube as a phone-only platform, so living-room budget kept going to linear TV.

decision

Rather than argue from platform data alone, I ran primary research end to end — survey design, interviews, analysis — and tested the assumptions advertisers actually hold about age, income, attention and engagement.

outcome

A benchmarked view of YouTube against linear TV and rival platforms, plus a recommendation set now used to guide above-the-line video spend and creator-led marketing.

2025 — 2026 Product & Operations Consultant · Clickmate Lifecare

Healthcare · Node.js / Firebase · WhatsApp live location · 200+ active users

problem

Field staff and patients were coordinating over voice calls. Support tickets were mostly "where are they", and four developers were fixing symptoms reported second-hand.

decision

Owned a WhatsApp live location feature from requirements to launch — spec, payloads, error states, UAT criteria — and put myself between stakeholders and the team so complaints became prioritised tickets instead of interrupts.

outcome

Clean rollout to 200+ active users, regression patterns caught early in Firebase, and roughly 18% fewer support requests.

2024 — 2025 Associate Product Engineer · Xperi Inc.

Android TV streaming platform · Agile / Scrum · Product analytics · 3 regional markets

problem

Three regional launches, one shared codebase, and incident response that depended on whoever happened to be online.

decision

Took the release cycle end to end and made the process legible: build checklists, a triage path through Jira, stakeholder comms during live incidents and post-mortems that actually changed the next release. Wrote SQL against the BI pipeline so feature proposals came from behaviour, not opinion.

outcome

Incident response down 20% over two quarters, engagement up close to 15% from analytics-led features, and a four-module refactor that cut update turnaround by around 30%.

2023 — 2024 Software Engineer Intern · Xperi Inc.

Fire TV · Android TV · Mobile · Kotlin · REST APIs

problem

Integration defects were surfacing late, during pre-release checks, on platforms serving millions of users.

decision

Tracked build status across every environment and flagged issues before they reached the pipeline, while keeping acceptance criteria and API contract notes current across five sprints.

outcome

Three consecutive regional deployments landed on schedule, with the squad working from one shared source of truth.

ls ~/builds

selected work · code, specs and shipped features

screenshot → assets/projects/live-location.png

Clickmate Lifecare · shipped

WhatsApp live location

Real-time location sharing between field staff and patients, built on Node.js and Firebase. I wrote the spec, defined the payload and error states, set the UAT criteria and ran the rollout to 200+ active users.

Node.js Firebase WhatsApp API Spec + UAT
screenshot → assets/projects/ctv-research.png

Google · industry project

YouTube CTV market study

Primary research across South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria testing what advertisers assume about living-room viewing. Survey design through to a recommendation set that informs above-the-line video investment.

Primary research Survey design Benchmarking Strategy
screenshot → assets/projects/release-pipeline.png

Xperi · shipped

Release and incident pipeline

Three regional markets on one Android TV codebase. Build checklists, a triage path through Jira, live incident comms and post-mortems that fed the next release. Response time down 20% across two quarters.

Release ops Jira SQL Post-mortems

./measure.sh

outcomes, not activity

20%

Faster incident response across two quarters

15%

Lift in platform engagement from analytics-led features

30%

Shorter update turnaround after a four-module refactor

18%

Fewer support requests after roadmap changes

stack --list

what I reach for

product/

  • Agile
  • Scrum
  • Kanban
  • Backlog management
  • Sprint planning
  • Release coordination
  • Roadmapping
  • Stakeholder management
  • PRD writing
  • UAT

analysis/

  • SQL
  • ReTA
  • Countly
  • BI reporting
  • KPI tracking
  • A/B testing
  • Hypothesis testing
  • Root cause analysis
  • Primary research
  • Firebase Crashlytics

technical/

  • Kotlin
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • REST APIs
  • Firebase
  • AWS
  • Python
  • C++

tools/

  • Jira
  • Confluence
  • Figma
  • Git
  • GitHub
  • Bitbucket
  • Jenkins
  • Android Studio
  • Excel

cat education.md

degrees, certifications, awards

2025 — 2026

MSc Management, Bayes Business School

Product Management · Business Analytics · Advanced Strategy Analysis · London

2020 — 2024

BE Computer Science, Chitkara University

9.79 / 10 · Data Structures · Algorithms · Database Management Systems

awards/

Certifications and recognition

IIBA, 2026 · AWS Academy Graduate, 2023 · Gold Medal, Xperi employee recognition award, 2025 · Winner, internal ideation challenge, 2023