Makeup artist
Clients rarely describe exactly what they want, so you learn to listen closely, ask good questions and check in as you go. I still run discovery that way, and I still notice the small details.
Vikash Panjiyar
Senior Product Manager at American Express
- Based in London
- Former freelance makeup artist
I own the Amex Experiences roadmap, used by 397k people a month across 24 EMEA markets, and run discovery and delivery with engineering, design and market teams. I studied Computer Science at UCL, so I'm at home in the technical detail, and I use AI tools to take manual work out of product operations.
- 397kmonthly users on the Amex Experiences platform
- £3.6mpre-tax income from eight strategic initiatives
- 2,000+ hrssaved a year through new internal tools
- 1.5m cardsmigrated with zero customer disruption
A bit about me
I'm Vikash, Viki to most people. I like finding out what someone actually needs and then building the thing that gets them there, properly.
That habit started with a makeup brush, got sharper with a computer science degree, and is now how I run product at American Express. Outside work I cook, and I build side projects: a rail sandbox, a roadmap tool, an app that plans a night out. Most of them start as a question I can't stop thinking about.
Computer Science at UCL
I graduated with a First and spent my placement year at Amex writing test automation in Java. I'm comfortable in an architecture review, and engineers don't have to translate for me.
Product at American Express
Since 2021 I've grown from Product Owner to Senior Product Manager. I own a platform used by 397k people a month across 24 markets, get legal, engineering and market teams behind one plan, and line manage a Product Owner.
Experience
American Express
2019 to presentSenior Product ManagerInternational Card Services Technology
- Own the Amex Experiences capability roadmap, used by 397k unique users a month across 24 markets.
- Led a 12-month rollout of OIDC login across all 24 markets.
- Delivered eight initiatives across growth, efficiency and compliance that generated £3.6m in pre-tax income.
- Planning a six-market integration with TheFork, from partner requirements to a phased rollout.
- Built an intake and prioritisation system in Airtable with LLM triage for 15 to 16 initiatives a year. It cut manual steps by 66% and gave the region its first single view of demand.
- Set roadmaps for 11 smaller EMEA markets deprioritised by enterprise teams. Line manage a Product Owner.
Product ManagerInternational Card Services Technology
- Delivered a UK regulatory remediation in three weeks with legal, compliance, operations and engineering.
- Ran user research with internal teams, prototyped in Figma, and shipped tools that save 2,000+ hours a year.
- Wrote requirements and funding proposals for a 16-person group across two squads.
Product ManagerGlobal Loyalty & Benefits
- Shipped a Salesforce-based integration that cut setup time for internal users from 17 days to 50 milliseconds.
- Launched 28 credit and redemption products with 13 business units, and set strategy for five applications.
- Won funding through data-led business cases. Launched the first UK Product Graduate Programme (8 graduates).
Product OwnerGlobal Loyalty & Benefits
- Delivered the migration infrastructure that moved 1.5 million active cards with no customer disruption.
- Led two cross-functional teams (UI, backend, QA) with 80%+ delivery predictability.
Junior Engineer & Product OwnerGlobal Loyalty & Benefits (placement)
- Built Java/Cucumber test automation that made regression 5x faster. Fixed recurring issues; support tickets fell 9%.
Skills
Product
- Product strategy
- Roadmapping
- Discovery and user research
- Prioritisation
- KPIs and outcome metrics
- Business cases
- Go-to-market
- Partner integrations
Technical and AI
- APIs and platform products
- Identity (OIDC)
- Data integration
- AI-assisted workflows
- LLM prototyping
- CI/CD and test automation
Leadership
- Stakeholder alignment across markets and business units
- Regulated delivery
- Coaching
- Hiring
Tools
- Figma
- Jira
- Confluence
- Airtable
- Power BI
- Postman
- Swagger
- GCP
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- GitHub Copilot
Education
BSc Computer Science
University College London, with a Year in Industry. Graduated 2021.
First Class Honours
