Curriculum vitae
Nik Sartain
Senior Data Product Manager · Builder · Cofounder of Roost
[email protected] · linkedin.com/in/niksartain · github.com/mephlol
Experience
Candid
- Lead data acquisition product across multi-vendor partnership strategy and a fiscal-sponsorship product surface that brought hundreds of previously-invisible projects into national philanthropic data infrastructure.
- Ran rapid AI prototyping studies (Lovable) for funder-data and fundraiser-tooling product surfaces; design hypotheses tested and folded into roadmap within a sprint. → Studies.
- Authored data-source onboarding governance applied across new philanthropic data partnerships.
Classy / GoFundMe
- Led 0-to-1 data migration and payments product driving $15M+ in transactions and 4–10% retention. Defined vision, strategy, and roadmap for executive stakeholders. → Case study.
- Spearheaded stealth post-merger AI/ML initiative; shipped an LLM search experience to alpha for 4,000+ customers in six months.
- Evolved financial reconciliation feature: support caseload −68%, NPS +20 points on the lowest-scoring persona.
- Redesigned reporting UX targeting $10M+ in account retention, validated through user research, usage data, prototyping, and customer success collaboration.
- Earlier: managed team of 3 across 40+ concurrent service deliveries; supported 200+ customers through SaaS onboarding, with $10s of millions in revenue realization. +214% sprint velocity through agile coaching.
Achieve Internet
- Navigated ambiguity for an elder-care startup through product-market fit. Product Owner across 100+ providers.
- Productized services (open-source CMS) producing $90k MRR. Took an API developer portal MVP to market in three months for customers including Moody's Analytics and Experian.
- Founded the PMO, establishing project management framework and standardizing for scale, bringing delivery excellence to $280k MRR across 8 clients.
Fairfield Residential
- Established the first analytics suite. Collaborated with executive stakeholders in agile metric development to optimize a $10B real estate asset portfolio at unit and amenity levels.
- Designed accounting software migration and process re-engineering for 46% reduction in process time for a team of 10.
Selected projects (independent)
- Roost · Cofounded with Josie Moss in 2024. Community platform for renters. /work/roost · roost.design
- Valet · Author, maintainer (2025–). Operating system for human-AI collaboration. /work/valet
- Floodplain · Author (2025). Slack bot for communication coaching at the moment of friction. /work/floodplain
- Macro Observe · Designer, builder (2025). Macro-economic dashboard with behavioral-finance-aware UI. /work/macro-observe
Education
- University of Utah · Master's, Information Systems · Dec 2016
- University of Utah · Bachelor's, Political Science & Sociology · May 2013
Skills
Data: Data analysis, SQL, AI/ML productization, search and discovery, Power BI, Looker, Excel, product analytics, data pipelines, AWS.
Product: UX research, systems thinking, customer empathy, strategy, agentic AI tooling and orchestration, Jira, agile, FinTech, process improvement, product discovery.
Outside work
- Climate-policy volunteer with San Diego 350; legislative engagement with California and federal-level offices.
- Earlier: refugee resettlement, primary-school English teaching abroad, international policy and federal elections.