Mike Saia

Experience

Technology Strategy Senior Associate

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

January 2023 to Present

As a Senior, I've been focused on executing major tech initiatives - from launching new products to managing $10M+ programs. I've built processes from the ground up for financial and resource management, developed business & technical requirements for enterprise systems, and handled everything from UAT testing to production support.

Some of my proudest moments came from solving problems nobody asked me to fix:

Our client needed to align a new acquisition with enterprise tech ops and cybersecurity standards but lacked implementation guidance. After spending weeks on discovery with app owners and security leads, I built an automated onboarding survey that triggered Jira workflows and assigned compliance tasks to the right teams. The client was so impressed they locked us in for their next acquisition integration, securing a $1M+ deal.

Our client's Quote-to-Cash implementation was losing customers due to a messy email-based escalation process. I took the initiative to build an automated intake system using PowerAutomate and Python that pinged relevant business and engineering teams via chat, tracked approvals, and maintained a prioritized backlog. The tool has processed 800+ escalations to date and helped retain $10M+ in at-risk recurring revenue.

Cloud & Digital Strategy Associate

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

August 2021 to January 2023

As an associate, I dug into assessment work across Tech, Financial Services, and Telecom industries. Some key projects included:

A large creative technology company’s approach to “return to office” after covid, answering questions like “How do you enable employees to collaborate effectively when have the team is in office and the other half is working remotely?”, “How do we make the technology experience for team members returning to the office as easy as possible?”

A large payment processor’s approach to future proofing their employee onboarding and directory services whose growth strategy was inorganic, acquisition based (i.e. their tech stack was full of totally disparate unintegrated tech from prior acquisitions)

PwC’s approach to designing an outsourcing strategy for a massive financial services engagement that included talent from 4 continents, while optimizing for skillsets across geographies, ensuring compliance with client requirements, and ensuring profitability of the engagement.

I was promoted in only a year and a half to senior associate!

Software Engineer Contractor - Advanced Technology

Software Engineer

March 2021 to July 2021

After graduating in fall 2020 and taking a 2-month siesta to snowboard all of the mountains on the IKON pass out west with friends, it looked like I wouldn’t have much on my plate for a few months prior to my August 2021 start date at PwC. Instead, I took the opportunity to learn and found a contractor / intern role at the advanced technology group at UPS as a Software Engineer. The 5 months I spent at ATG prior to joining PwC I was able to work on some awesome tech:

I developed a PoC for a self-service package inventory iOS application that serves both location administrators and end customers using the OutSystems platform. The self-service UPS kiosk locations you see today began with that PoC!

I built a new system for tracking and maintaining reference to UPS’ patents! Julio, the stakeholder I was working with held 20+ patents of his own.

I was able to explore Waymo’s autonomous driving APIs and propose use cases to UPS R&D for an Autonomous Package Delivery Proof of Concept!

Projects

Current Project: Bops

Launching soon: A mix of Beli, Reddit, and Instagram for music and podcasts taste credentialing and discovery I've been working on. The app will allow you to share both music and podcast media you love with friends, save recommendations directly to your Spotify account, and receive karma for others saving your recommendations to their libraries. Currently, building in React & Django

Future Projects

Agentic AI for College Consulting

Think Crimson College Consulting, but more accessible and always available. LLM-powered platform to guide high school students in university selection and financial aid applications.

Crowdsourced Public Development Mobile App

An app enabling citizens to report infrastructure damage for government renovation work prioritization. I have actually begun building this out in Flutterflow

LLM enabled SOP Updates

Automating natural gas compliance work by fine-tuning foundational LLMs to update Standard Operating Procedures based on changes to the Code of Federal Regulation.

Past Projects

Linkd Supply

Co-founded B2B group purchasing platform. Led product discovery through 100+ customer interviews, developed automated lead generation system, and participated in Georgia Tech CREATE-X accelerator. Here was a preview video my co-founders and I made in college explaining the concept.

Climate Impact Reporting for UPS

As a part of my senior design for graduation from Georgia Tech, I built out an Alteryx analytical app that standardized emissions reporting against all UPS subsisdiaries and delivered the total climate impact in a single CSV file. See a UX demo of the app here

This site!

I built this site from scratch and am hosting it on github pages. Check out the repo here.

Skills

Languages

Python

SQL

JavaScript / Node.js

VBA

Methodologies

Agile Program Management

Product Management

Data Analysis

Product Strategy

Prompt Engineering

User Research

Financial Modeling

Software

Microsoft Office (Expert)

Tableau

Jira

OpenAI's ChatGPT & APIs

Anthropic's Claude, APIs, and Model Context Protocol

Github / Git bash

AWS

Smartsheet

Miro

Power Automate

Certifications

ITIL v4 Foundation

Alteryx Core Certified

IDC Cloud Business Essentials

Outside Work

I spent 3 months after graduation with some of my best friends snowboarding out of a van in the rockies

The culmination of the Salkantay trek in Peru took me to Machu Picchu in July 2024

Ran my first marathon with buds in Chattanooga in October 2023

My friends Chris and Jai with me at my favorite DJ's concert, Fred Again