Dominic Simpson

About

Systems Builder.
Strategic Operator.

I'm a Product Owner at Lightspeed DMS, where I run four engineering squads: Internal AI, AI Platform, Dev Platform, and Phoenix.

Most of my focus right now is AI. Internal AI builds the agents and tools our engineers use every day — AI code review, defect remediation, and the agent pipeline behind our AI-assisted development process. AI Platform builds the infrastructure under the AI features in our customer-facing products. I also own how we measure AI's effect on delivery speed and quality, so we can show leadership what's working and what isn't.

Before Product, I spent five years running Technical Operations — the team that took our hardest customer escalations. That taught me where systems break and what it costs when they do, and it still shapes how I work: I know exactly where organizational friction lies, and how to architect the technical solutions to eliminate it.

I start every piece of work the same way — find the real problem, check it against live data, and write requirements engineers can build from. That technical depth extends into the environments my squads operate within — backend services, API integrations, and modern frontend frameworks — making me a credible engineering partner, not just a prioritization layer.

Current Role Product Owner

Organization Lightspeed DMS

Focus Area Internal AI, AI Platform & Developer Tooling

Location Draper, UT

Experience

The Arc.
Operations to AI.

A deliberate career trajectory — from managing the highest-tier operational crises, to architecting the systems that prevent them, to bringing AI across how the whole organization works.

2026 — Present Lightspeed DMS

Product Owner — Internal AI, AI Platform & Developer Platforms

Own the product vision, roadmap, and delivery across four engineering squads — Internal AI, AI Platform, Dev Platform, and Phoenix — after taking on Phoenix in February 2025 while still leading Technical Operations, then moving into product full time in March 2026.
AI Strategy & Tooling: Stood up Internal AI as its own squad and own the roadmap for our AI-assisted development platform — agent-driven code review, closed-loop defect remediation, agent metrics, and AI test tooling.
AI Product Infrastructure: Own the backlog for AI Platform — the architecture and infrastructure behind the AI features in our customer-facing products.
AI Governance & Measurement: Built the intake framework that vets new AI initiatives before they get resourced, and designed how we measure AI's effect on delivery speed and quality — expected results committed up front, misses reported alongside wins.
AI Enablement: Extended AI beyond engineering — from a quick-reference assistant for frontline support to org-wide standards for Jira ticket and spec quality.
Platform Roadmap: Own Dev Platform priorities, including readiness for a major PostgreSQL upgrade and the structure of our 2027 technical roadmap.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Partner with Engineering leadership, architecture, Support, and executive stakeholders to keep technical work tied to business goals — and created an internal technical newsletter to share what's shipping, and why, across Engineering and Product.
Technical Discovery & Agile Delivery: Trace issues to root cause in code and data before they become tickets, and run backlog and planning for all four squads alongside their Scrum Masters — turning quarterly planning into structured, sequenced backlogs teams can deliver against.

2021 — 2026 Lightspeed DMS

Technical Operations Manager

Served as the primary strategic conduit between the Customer Support organization and internal Engineering/Product departments, driving interdepartmental alignment to expedite resolution of complex, high-tier technical issues.
Managed the highest-level critical escalations, partnering directly with technical teams to identify underlying system architecture issues and actively influencing product roadmaps to implement permanent, preventative solutions.
Championed and implemented scalable best practices and process optimizations that streamlined team workflows and reduced resolution timelines.
Collaborated with executive leadership to define and execute operational strategies aligned with overarching company goals.
Directed a specialized team of Ops Center Analysts and Client Account Managers, fostering a culture of high performance through structured coaching and technical mentorship.
Acted as interim Product Owner for the Phoenix engineering squad beginning February 2025, managing the backlog and defining technical requirements while maintaining full Technical Operations responsibilities.

Expertise

Grounded in Operations.
Fluent in Product.

Years of frontline Technical Operations, now applied to product ownership — combining deep knowledge of where organizations break down with the engineering fluency to build systems that fix it.

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AI & Agentic Workflows

Leading AI as its own product surface — building the agents and tools engineers use every day, and embedding AI into how teams across the organization actually operate.

Own the roadmap for an AI-assisted development platform spanning agent-driven code review, closed-loop defect remediation, agent metrics, and AI test tooling. Extend AI beyond engineering into support and spec quality, and own how we measure its effect on delivery speed and quality — expected results committed up front, misses reported alongside wins.

Agentic Workflows
AI Code Review
Defect Remediation
AI Measurement & Governance

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Product Ownership

Roadmap prioritization, backlog management, stakeholder alignment. Running Agile/Scrum squads to ship the platforms that teams actually depend on.

Practiced in translating executive strategy into sprint-ready requirements. Experienced in Jira, Confluence, and direct engineering collaboration to maintain velocity without sacrificing quality.

Agile / Scrum
Backlog Grooming
Stakeholder Alignment
Sprint Planning

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Systems Architecture

Designing workflows and tooling ecosystems from the ground up. Eliminating sprawl, reducing technical debt, and engineering for long-term scalability.

Approach every system design with a long-horizon lens — prioritizing composability and low maintenance overhead over short-term convenience. Focused on integration surfaces and reducing cross-team dependencies.

API Design
Tool Consolidation
Tech Debt Reduction
Internal Tooling

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Operational Intelligence

Years of frontline Technical Operations and tier-1 escalation management means I see exactly where the friction is — before it becomes a crisis.

Managed the highest-tier critical escalations across enterprise SaaS — building a pattern library of failure modes that directly informs how I scope and prioritize product work today.

Escalation Management
Root Cause Analysis
Cross-Functional Triage
Process Hardening

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Workflow Optimization

Translating complex bottlenecks into streamlined processes by identifying what's redundant, automating what's manual, and eliminating what's brittle.

Applied across support workflows, engineering handoffs, and interdepartmental communication pipelines. The mechanism is always the same: map the current state, identify the redundant steps, then automate or eliminate them.

Process Mapping
Automation
Cross-Dept Coordination
Outcome-Focused Design

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Enterprise SaaS

Deep familiarity with enterprise-grade SaaS platforms — their capabilities, limitations, and integration surfaces across an organization.

Worked extensively with DMS platforms, CRM tooling, support infrastructure, and internal productivity suites. Understand not just the feature sets, but how they behave under load and at scale within complex organizations.

DMS Platforms
CRM / Support Tools
Integration Design
Platform Governance

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Technical Fluency

Technically fluent enough to engage in architecture discussions, read and reason about code, and contribute meaningfully to how solutions are scoped — without needing things simplified.

Bring enough technical depth to participate actively in design discussions, identify implementation risk in requirements, and help engineering teams visualize the full scope of a project before work begins. Fluent in the environments my squads operate within: backend services, REST APIs, and modern frontend frameworks.

Backend Services
API / REST
SQL / Data Querying

Systems Builder.Strategic Operator.

The Arc.Operations to AI.