ENES

Emilio J. Páez Cajas

Download PDFPortfolio PDFCV en español

Senior Technical Project Manager | Product Owner | Scrum Master | Technical Lead

Quito, Ecuador (remote, US time zones) | +593 98 750 6045 | emilio@afterep.com | linkedin.com/in/emilio-j-paez-cajas-0b783687 | upwork.com/freelancers/~013fd9c34e03ec0213

Professional Summary

Senior Technical Project Manager and Mechatronics Engineer with 11+ years delivering software, SaaS, data, VR and web products for US companies from a fully remote setup. Product Owner and Scrum Master for distributed teams of up to 50 across engineering, QA, design, marketing and compliance. Hands-on technical lead and web developer (WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Webflow, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, SQL, Python) who can still ship, debug and review. Jira expert who builds delivery frameworks (single source of truth integrated with GitHub and Zapier) that cut QA incident response time by 50% and reporting time by 40%. AI-augmented project management: Claude, ChatGPT, Lovable, Figma AI, n8n, Make and Zapier for documentation, prototyping and workflow automation. AWS Partner accredited (Technical and Business), Upwork Expert-Vetted, experienced with HIPAA, WCAG 2.x and WAI-ARIA requirements. Bilingual Spanish and English.

Core Competencies

  • Technical Project Management, Program Management, PMO Leadership, Portfolio Triage
  • Product Ownership: roadmaps, product backlog, user stories, acceptance criteria, Definition of Ready and Definition of Done, MVP scoping, release planning
  • Scrum Master: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, retrospectives, planning poker, velocity and capacity planning
  • Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Hybrid and Waterfall delivery; Lean and Six Sigma (PDCA, DMAIC)
  • Risk Management (RAID logs, risk matrix), Root Cause Analysis, Path-to-Green recovery plans, Change Orders and Change Requests, Change Approval Board
  • Stakeholder and Executive Communication, Client and Account Management, Vendor and Contractor Management, SOW and MSA, RFI and vendor evaluation
  • Budgeting, Earned Value Management (SPI, CPI), KPIs and OKRs, Executive Reporting and Dashboards
  • SaaS, Healthcare and Clinical Software (HIPAA), Data Warehousing and Analytics, API Integrations, CRM and ERP Implementations, E-commerce and Website Management, VR and Mobile Apps
  • Technical Leadership, SDLC, CI/CD, Release Management, QA and UAT, Accessibility (WCAG 2.x, WAI-ARIA)
  • AI and Automation: LLM workflows (Claude, ChatGPT), prompt engineering, AI-assisted documentation and QA, Lovable, Figma AI, Zapier, Make, n8n
  • Remote and Distributed Team Leadership (US, LATAM, Europe, India), Hiring and Technical Interviewing, Onboarding and Training

Professional Experience

Upwork (Expert-Vetted) | Senior Technical Project Manager, Product Owner and Scrum Master | Remote, US clients | Aug 2022 to Present

Lead concurrent engagements for US companies through Upwork, with 5-star client ratings and repeat business: a clinical genomics SaaS startup, a website management agency, a product company, a project management consultancy and a creative agency. Experience and knowledge built on these engagements:

  • Clinical SaaS delivery and HIPAA-regulated data (clinical genomics startup, 2025 to present, Technical Project Manager and Scrum Master): lead delivery of a clinical decision-support platform with a distributed team of engineers, designers, AI specialists and QA; own the clinical rulebook as the single source of truth that turns clinical and genomic language into technical requirements; run sprint planning, backlog refinement, daily stand-ups, retrospectives and Friday executive demos with clinical stakeholders.
  • Technical transitions and contractor oversight (same engagement): coordinated a PostgreSQL migration and the handover from a departing third-party front-end team without losing sprint velocity; manage contractor performance against committed estimates with Clockify reports, weekly variance flags and path-to-green plans.
  • AI-augmented project management (across engagements): AI onboarding prompts and continuity systems (Claude) so project context survives long engagements; AI-assisted documentation, release notes, QA planning and hiring materials; Lovable and Figma AI for prototypes; Zapier, Make and n8n for workflow automation.
  • Website management and e-commerce operations (US website management agency, 2025 to 2026, Project Manager and Account Manager): managed a book of 20 to 40 client websites on WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify: intake, scoping, Jira tickets, QA, releases, hosting, DNS, plugin governance, Core Web Vitals, SEO fixes and redirects; translated client requests into developer and designer tickets and reviewed sites with the team to propose improvements; first PM moved into the dedicated Project Manager track when the agency split Account Manager and Project Manager roles; stack: Jira, Slack, Superhuman, Toggl.
  • Hiring and technical interviewing (same agency): designed the technical interview program (question banks, answer keys, scorecards, live exercises) and interviewed Project Manager candidates with leadership.
  • PMO leadership and documentation systems (product company, 2025 to present, Technical Project Manager and PMO lead): run leadership sessions and syncs with the founder who owns the product vision, track open decisions to closure, plan future features in phases, and stood up a document management system and technical documentation program.
  • Digital growth and AI site builds (project management consultancy, 2025 to present): SEO, Google Ads, landing page optimization and conversion tracking; rebuilt the consultancy's website with Lovable (AI app builder); drafted consulting agreements and streamlined client billing workflows.
  • Web and SaaS delivery with accessibility (creative agency, Oklahoma, Aug 2022 to Mar 2024, Senior Project Manager): delivered web and SaaS projects within tight deadlines and budgets, including back-end web development for B2B clients with security and scalability requirements; Figma design reviews, WCAG and WAI-ARIA compliance and usability testing; recruitment and hiring for project staff, cost monitoring and stakeholder conflict resolution.

AfterEP | Founder, AI and Web Development Studio | Remote | 2025 to Present

  • Fractional technical PM and web consultant for small businesses: led a WordPress store security incident response and a scaled-back migration to Shopify for an e-commerce retailer; produced branding and a proposal for a marketplace platform rebuild.

TRIPP, Inc., Los Angeles, CA | Senior VR Project Manager and Product Owner | Remote | Feb 2024 to Jan 2025

  • Directed end-to-end delivery of TRIPP's VR wellness platform (Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, iOS, Android; Unity) from requirements to global rollout in under 12 months.
  • Built the delivery framework: a single Jira source of truth integrated with GitHub, Zapier and Plastic SCM across DevOps, QA, development, design, marketing and compliance, with 1,000+ tickets per sprint filtered per department through JQL dashboards.
  • Cut QA and bug incident response time by 50% and reduced post-launch bugs by 30% through risk management and release processes.
  • Product Owner for the mobile app: backlog prioritization, sprint planning, release management, and Apple, Google and Samsung compliance including confidential pre-release devices.
  • Scaled ceremonies for about 50 developers, 10 QA engineers and 6 designers: team working agreements, planning poker, GitHub PR reviews, and a daily call trimmed from 60 to 15 minutes.
  • Contributed VR environment design with ShapesXR, Unity, 3D worldbuilding and GoogleXR.

Data Sleek LLC, Los Angeles, CA | Technical Project Manager (Data and Analytics) | Remote | Aug 2022 to Mar 2024

  • Managed SaaS integration, data warehouse and analytics projects for enterprise and e-commerce clients: Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, AWS (S3, Snowpipe), BigQuery and MySQL pipelines, delivered through a 7-phase plan (discovery, infrastructure, ingestion, governance, dimensional modeling, dbt development, data quality).
  • Built dashboards, scorecards and KPI tracking in Power BI, Tableau and Looker Studio; introduced automation that cut manual reporting by 40%.
  • Led offshore engineering resources in India, managed Zapier-based pipeline integrations, and handled underperformance with fact-based path-to-green plans.
  • Applied WCAG and WAI-ARIA standards, managed API integrations and ran usability testing; tracked work in Jira, monday.com, MS Project and Trello.

Kruger Corp, Quito, Ecuador | Senior Technical Project Manager | Mar 2020 to Sep 2022

  • Led an ERP implementation and API integrations that improved operational efficiency by 18%; implemented Single Sign-On (SSO).
  • Directed cross-functional teams with Agile, owning roadmaps, product backlogs and release quality; tracked KPI and CPI to prioritize features.
  • Defined project vision and strategy with business and customer needs, adjusting the roadmap to market objectives; kept design consistency with Sketch and Adobe XD.
  • Authored the xTrim project summary on agile methods and AI and machine learning adoption.

Universidad Internacional del Ecuador (UIDE, Arizona State University partner), Quito | Technical Lead Engineer | Jun 2018 to Feb 2020

  • Led EdTech integrations (LTI) for the university's SaaS learning platform, working with UX teams and tracking KPIs; designed platform experiences in Sketch and Adobe XD.
  • Technical lead for the design and build of an automated pruning machine: stiffness-based design, finite element safety verification, electronics selection, SolidWorks simulation and the user communication interface, plus full technician documentation.

CELEC EP, Esmeraldas, Ecuador | Assistant Project Engineer | Feb 2018 to May 2018

  • Supported control-room operations and engine maintenance at a thermoelectric plant; built the activity and asset database and led the digitization of company files.

Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, Quito | Project Manager (Feb 2017 to Feb 2018) and Junior Project Manager (Nov 2015 to Feb 2017)

  • Managed academic and multidisciplinary engineering projects: timelines, budgets, resource allocation and stakeholder communication; transitioned from mechatronics engineering into project management.

Technical Skills

  • Project and product tools: Jira (expert: JQL, automation rules, dashboards, GitHub and Zapier integrations), Confluence, ClickUp (certified), monday.com (certified), Asana, Trello, Smartsheet, Notion, Microsoft Project, Wrike, TeamGantt, Zoho Projects, Workflowy
  • AI and automation: Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Lovable, Figma AI, Notion AI, Superhuman AI, prompt engineering, AI-assisted documentation and test planning, Zapier, Make, n8n, Clockify and QuickBooks automations
  • Web and e-commerce: WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Drupal, GoDaddy, IONOS, Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Google Analytics (GA4), Google Tag Manager, SEO, Google Ads, Cloudflare and DNS management, Core Web Vitals
  • Data and cloud: AWS (S3, EC2, VPC; Partner accredited), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL, Python, Power BI, Tableau, Looker Studio
  • Engineering and design: Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, Jenkins, Plastic SCM, CI/CD, Unity, ShapesXR, GoogleXR, Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, InVision, SolidWorks, SCADA and industrial automation
  • CRM and ERP: HubSpot, Salesforce, monday CRM, Zoho CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ERP implementations
  • Compliance and quality: HIPAA, WCAG 2.x, WAI-ARIA, Apple App Store and Google Play compliance, QA and UAT planning, release runbooks
  • Collaboration: Slack, Superhuman, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Microsoft Lists, Toggl, Clockify, Deel

Education

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.), Mechatronics, Robotics and Automation Engineering | Universidad Internacional del Ecuador (UIDE, Arizona State University partner), Quito | 2015 to 2021

Publications: Design and Construction of a Knee Rehabilitation Prototype; Design and Construction of a System Capable of Playing an Electric Guitar; Design and Construction of a Detergent Dosing System. Presented at the X Jornadas Científicas en Investigación, Ciencia y Tecnología.

Certifications

  • AWS Partner Accreditation (Technical), Amazon Web Services, 2022
  • AWS Partner Accreditation (Business), Amazon Web Services, 2022
  • Upwork Expert-Vetted Talent (top 1% of the marketplace)
  • Agile Project Management Certification (Agile Scrum + Jira)
  • monday.com Certified Partner; ClickUp Certified Partner; Atlassian Certified Partner (Jira, Confluence, Trello)
  • IBM Agile Explorer; IBM Digital World; Google Data Studio (Looker Studio); Open University Leadership and Followership; IPMA Project Management
  • PMI-ACP and CAPM certification training (PMI-ACP exam in progress)

Languages

Spanish (native) | English (fluent, professional working proficiency; US clients since 2018) | Portuguese (basic)