Dominic Simpson

About

Systems Builder.
Strategic Operator.

My career operates at the intersection of frontline reality and backend infrastructure. As a Product Owner at Lightspeed DMS, I manage the engineering squads that design, prioritize, and deploy the systems that keep internal teams moving.

Because I spent years leading Technical Operations and managing the highest-tier escalations, I bring a unique lens to product management: I know exactly where organizational friction lies — and I know how to architect the technical solutions to eliminate it.

My focus is always on reducing system sprawl, modernizing core library dependencies, and translating complex bottlenecks into streamlined workflows — automating how information moves across departments and migrating a core internal tool's frontend stack from jQuery to Vue.js.

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 Platforms & Engineering Systems

Location Draper, UT

Experience

The Arc.
Operations to Ownership.

A deliberate career trajectory — from managing the highest-tier operational crises to architecting the systems that prevent them.

2026 — Present Lightspeed DMS

Product Owner — Internal

Own the product vision, roadmap, and delivery across multiple Agile/Scrum squads — with a mandate to improve how the organization works from the inside out.
Currently serving as Product Owner across four distinct squads: Phoenix (core internal tooling), Steps (customer onboarding and implementation), Dev/Platform (backend architecture and Agentic workflow adoption across the SDLC), and Performance — leading the team's final initiative this quarter to deliver an AI-driven observability tool connecting DataDog performance traces to the responsible engineering teams.
Translate frontline user friction into sprint-ready technical requirements — reducing system sprawl by consolidating redundant tooling, modernizing legacy dependencies, and automating how information moves across departments.
Go beyond backlog management to actively engage in technical design discussions — contributing a perspective grounded enough to challenge assumptions, scope work accurately, and surface implementation risks before they become sprint blockers.
Facilitate core Agile ceremonies — Sprint Planning, Grooming, Retrospectives — and serve as the primary shield for the engineering team.

2020 — 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

Driving adoption of AI-augmented ways of working — not just building AI-powered tools, but embedding them into how teams across the organization actually operate.

Actively championing AI and Agentic workflow adoption across Engineering, Product, and Customer Support. Currently leading initiatives that bring Agentic capabilities into the SDLC and connecting real-world performance data to the teams responsible for acting on it — with a broader mandate to push the organization toward AI-augmented operations at every level.

Agentic Workflows
AI Integration
Workflow Automation
Organizational Adoption

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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. Actively championing AI and Agentic workflow adoption across Engineering, Product, and Customer Support — pushing toward AI-augmented ways of working at every level of the organization.

Backend Services
API / REST
SQL / Data Querying

Systems Builder.Strategic Operator.

The Arc.Operations to Ownership.