Product · Sydney
Great products start with why, not what.
Built on curiosity. Grounded in people. A +25-year career spent understanding human behaviour and building products that reflect it.
2M+
Annual Transactions
$1B
Acquisition Outcome
15M
Australians Reached
0→1
Zero to Shipped
About
Hello. I'm Matt, a Sydney-based product manager who is deeply curious about people and human behaviour.
For over 25 years I've worked at the intersection of design, marketing, product and communications — helping brands across retail, lifestyle and technology understand their audiences and ask why people do what they do before deciding what to build.
As a product manager I bring strategic clarity, cross-functional fluency, and user-centred thinking to building things people want to use. I work best close to engineering, close to data, and always close to the user — leading cross-functional squads from discovery through to delivery, with a bias for hypothesis-driven thinking and measurable outcomes.
I'm drawn to 0→1 problems and to the kind of products that need to be made both sharper and more human. I'm actively exploring how AI and data analytics are reshaping product thinking — from smarter segmentation and personalisation to experiment design and decision-making at scale.
"Some of the best PMs I've met didn't come from engineering. They came from places that forced them to understand people — what they need, what they'll actually do, and what story will move them to act."
Matt Allison / On Product Design
Skills
Product Strategy & Roadmapping
Translating business objectives into prioritised roadmaps. Outcome-driven, not output-driven — focused on value delivered, not features shipped.
Discovery & Problem Framing
Leading discovery to identify the right problems before committing to solutions. Defining opportunity spaces, validating assumptions, and ensuring the team is building for real unmet needs.
User Research & Insight
Qualitative and quantitative methods to build genuine empathy with users — and the discipline to turn that empathy into product decisions rather than just presentations.
Cross-functional Leadership & Delivery
Aligning engineering, design, and commercial teams around a shared product vision without authority — and then shipping. Managing scope, trade-offs, and momentum from discovery through to release.
Data-informed Decision Making
Using metrics to validate assumptions, measure outcomes, and drive growth. Comfortable defining success before building, and accountable for the numbers after.
Strategic Communication & GTM
Translating complex product concepts for every audience — from user interviews to executive briefings to launch narratives. Positioning products clearly in market and enabling commercial teams to sell them.
Experience
2022 – 2026
Symbio
Content & Communications Manager
- Owned external communications, investor relations, and tone of voice governance across a scaling B2B SaaS platform.
- Led the stakeholder engagement programme for the acquisition of Symbio by Aussie Broadband — designing and delivering communications strategy across four distinct groups: Board, Senior Leadership, Staff, and Investors, each with different priorities, timelines, and risk profiles. The merged entity is now a $1B company listed on the ASX.
- Coordinated a materiality assessment across five stakeholder groups and synthesised competing priorities into a three-pillar ESG framework, presented to the SLT and published externally in FY25.
- Embedded across Agile delivery sprints on an operational automation programme, managing backlog prioritisation and stakeholder alignment between ops and development teams.
2020 – 2022
Independent
Director of Home Affairs
- In February 2020, a contract role evaporated three weeks after starting — and the world changed completely. With my wife stepping into a new Directorship, I stayed home to run the most demanding cross-functional operation of my career.
- Two direct reports with competing priorities, zero interest in the roadmap, and a daily standup that started whether I was ready or not. Agile stopped being a methodology and became a survival strategy.
- Returned to the workforce in 2022 sharper, more patient, and significantly better at managing stakeholders.
2019 – 2020
City of Sydney
Technology Team Leader — Creative City
- Accountable for the product roadmap, technology strategy, and delivery for one of Australia's most active public library networks.
- Led product discovery across patron and staff user groups to define the self-serve opportunity. Designed and delivered a patron self-serve suite across five-plus touchpoints — mobile app, inline catalogue search, branch diversion, self check-in, and self check-out.
- Resulted in a platform handling over two million check-in and check-out transactions annually. Patron wait times fell. Service hours extended beyond staffed hours.
- Identified a critical data capture gap and led a cross-functional team to replace a fully manual paper process with a Power BI application — scaling data capture from hundreds of entries to tens of thousands.
- Owned BAU product roadmap across the full network, including sprint planning, backlog prioritisation, and multi-vendor coordination across four-plus vendors.
2016 – 2018
IKEA
Communications & Retail Design Manager
- Led the product experience and communications strategy for IKEA Rhodes through its transition to an omnichannel retail model. Delivered customer journey definition and touchpoint design, and drove change management across hundreds of staff.
- Conceived and briefed IKEA + you — an organisational first and the first fully integrated multichannel initiative of its kind in market. The programme reached 15 million Australians and won the IKEA Global Home Furnishing Award in FY18, beating 40-plus markets worldwide.
- Drove a 67% increase in inspiration traffic to IKEA.com.au.
- Took the store's Global Commercial Review benchmark from 8% in FY16 to 67% by FY18.
- Rebuilt team retention from 67% to 100% and held it for two consecutive years through structural changes to recruitment, onboarding, and development.
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Get in touch
Open to Senior PM roles, freelance product work, and interesting conversations.
matt@matt-allison.com