Tucker Stern

Role
Director of Product Development
Based
Austin, Texas
Since
2013–2026

I've created and grown products with great teams, from brand new to mature. E-commerce and SaaS. A consumer VPN to ten million users on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows, with a product organization of up to five product managers. A commerce rebuild for six-figure purchases. I want to lead high achievers who want to build useful products. That's where you make money.

United States Gold Bureau

Tucker Stern
01 Work

Three decisions, and what they cost.

Each is a call I made, the tradeoff it carried, and what happened next, including the parts I'd do differently. Some are design-led and some are systems-led; in practice they were the same work.

  1. Rebuilding VyprVPN so it just works VyprVPN's apps had aged: feature accretion, confusing onboarding, and shaky connections had pulled the store rating to 3.2. We refreshed the brand and rebuilt all four native apps around one expectation, that a VPN has to just work, and the rating climbed to 4.7. Native apps · UX · Onboarding · Consumer SaaS · Retention Golden Frog, GmbH 2015–2022
  2. Rebuilding the buying experience for a six-figure purchase Rebuilding precious-metals e-commerce end to end: a faster storefront, a clearer buying experience, and an integration layer so the price and inventory on the page are the ones we can honor. E-commerce · UX · Conversion · Performance · ERP integration United States Gold Bureau 2023–present
  3. Taking an engineering org AI-first, in stages Cycle time halved and substantive pull requests per contributor tripled. Over more than a year I moved the United States Gold Bureau's engineering org onto an AI-first model in stages: early Codex, then a Cursor and Claude Code mandate as the models got good, a shared knowledge base in Notion, and a move off Jira to Linear. Engineering leadership · AI adoption · Developer tooling · Delivery · Knowledge management United States Gold Bureau 2025–present
02 Positions

Where I stand, and when that moved.

Each one states a position, the reasoning under it, the work that taught me it, and where it breaks. Dated on publication; when one changes, the change is logged rather than quietly folded in.

  1. What I optimize for A checkout flow that converts and then double-charges is not a design success. The interface and the systems under it are one job with two ways to fail. This is how I break the tie when two good options conflict. Design · Design thinking · Buy versus build Rev.
03 Career

Thirteen years, five companies, one throughline.

Consumer security, regulated lending, and high-value commerce. In each, the same job: the product people use, and the systems that have to keep its promises.

Domains

Select a domain to trace it

1 role 1 case study 1 position 2023–now

2 roles 1 case study 2022–now

2 roles 2015–now

2 roles 1 case study 2014–now

1 role 2 case studies 1 position 2015–2022

2 roles 1 case study 2014–2022

  • 2023now United States Gold Bureau Director of Product Development Product · Engineering · Technology strategy
    • Led an end-to-end rebuild of the e-commerce platform, raising checkout conversion and average order value through a faster storefront and a clearer buying experience.
    • Head of Development and Technology Strategy for the Texas Bullion Depository, the only state-administered bullion depository authorized by statute, owning technical architecture and third-party integrations that grew non-taxable deposits and revenue.
    • Designed an integration layer synchronizing ERP, CRM, and e-commerce data, replacing manual reconciliation across systems.
    • Moved the development organization to an AI-first model on Cursor, Claude Code, Linear, and Notion, halving cycle time while raising delivery standards.
    • Built agents across the delivery path: triaging feature requests and bug reports, reviewing the codebase, scoping issues, writing implementations, and opening pull requests for human review.
    • Built a company knowledge base from years of transcripts, meeting notes, and documentation, searchable from Notion and Slack, and source- controlled by humans so accuracy stays owned rather than inferred.
    • Tripled substantive pull requests per contributor through a roughly 30% headcount reduction, with higher median PR size and less trivial work. Holding output through the cut led the board to fund budget and headcount back up.
    • Launched an industry-first ChatGPT application alongside strategic third-party integrations.

    E-commerce · Payments · ERP integration · AI-first delivery

  • 20222023 The Savings Group AUTOPAY · RateGenius · Tresl Product Director Product · GTM · Partnership integrations
    • Owned go-to-market and end-to-end technology delivery for multiple strategic partnerships: personally negotiating the deals, designing the system architecture, and running delivery.
    • Launched an industry-first partnership with Lyft, integrating the loan origination system directly with Lyft's operations team to create a new vehicle purchase channel.
    • Built and shipped the US Bank vehicle syndication and listing system, giving real-time inventory, applications, and approvals across The Savings Group's LOS, US Bank, and TrueCar.
    • Led GTM and technical integration for Axos Bank's full vehicle purchase and refinance channel.
    • Raised consumer loan approval rates by reworking the LOS application funnel end to end.
    • Managed in-house engineering and data teams alongside external contractors.

    Fintech · Auto finance · Loan origination · Partnerships

  • 20152022 Golden Frog, GmbH VyprVPN · Outfox Vice President of Product and Development Product · UX · Support · Global
    • Led product, user experience, and customer support globally for a consumer VPN that reached ten million users during my tenure, building a team of up to five product managers.
    • Led product and engineering for native applications on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows, shipping industry-first WireGuard support and Chameleon 3.0 obfuscation, and creating the VyprVPN SDK.
    • Took iOS and Android store ratings from 3.2 to 4.7 by fixing connection reliability, reworking onboarding, and designing for habit formation.
    • Designed and launched a multi-tenant billing system serving four products on a hybrid custom and third-party architecture.
    • Launched VyprVPN Business-Cloud, extending a consumer SaaS product into enterprise, while owning global payments, fraud detection, and compliance.
    • Ran GTM, partnerships, monetization, and post-launch optimization for Outfox, a gaming product embedded on ASUS ROG routers: one million users in its first year.
    • Established a full-circle Voice of the Customer program feeding directly into the roadmap, and continuously optimized web and mobile purchase and onboarding flows.

    Consumer SaaS · Native apps · Security · Global payments · Fraud

  • 20142015 Simply Confirm Senior Product Manager Product ownership · GTM · Product marketing
    • Owned go-to-market for a business operations platform spanning unified communications, team chat, and encrypted file storage.
    • Grew customer retention 150% through person-to-person customer experience processes.
    • Sourced and grew the beta to 1,000+ commitments ahead of release; served as product owner and sprint master for both frontend and backend teams.
    • Ran the full marketing mix: PPC, email, inbound, display, remarketing, and social.

    B2B SaaS · Go-to-market · Agile delivery

  • 20132014 SIG Senior Business Analyst Product-market fit · Advisory
    • Evaluated product-market fit for early-stage startups and built advisory action plans for portfolio companies.
    • Partnered with founders and CEOs on product roadmaps and monetization strategy.

    Early-stage · Strategy

04 Stack

What the work actually ran on.

Systems I've specified, integrated, or run, not a list of things I've read about.

Commerce & ERP
  • Adobe Commerce Cloud
  • Magento
  • NetSuite
  • Feedonomics
Payments & billing
  • Stripe Payments
  • Chase Paymentech
  • Stripe Billing
  • Recurly
  • Plaid Payments
  • GoCardless
  • SEPA
  • Alipay
Fraud & risk
  • Kount
  • Riskified
  • Stripe Radar
  • Plaid IDV
Integration
  • Boomi
  • Workato
Data & analytics
  • Snowflake
  • ThoughtSpot
  • Tableau
  • Mixpanel
Design
  • Figma
  • Zeplin
  • Claude Design
AI & delivery
  • Claude Code
  • Cursor
  • OpenAI
  • Workato Agent Studio
  • Linear
  • Jira
  • Notion
  • Confluence
Quality & testing
  • Xray
  • Qase
Customer
  • HubSpot
  • Zendesk
Infrastructure
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Vercel

40 platforms · 10 categories

05 Endorsements

What the people who reported to me, and alongside me, say.

Engineering and design leads from Golden Frog and VyprVPN. Every name links to the person who said it.

  • Tucker is someone I relied on heavily for both direction and feedback when it came to understanding where our products stood and where they should be headed. His willingness to work across the organization to improve not only our products, but also our internal operations made him one of my favorite people to work with.
    Chris Brennand Design Director, Golden Frog
  • His great sense of what is important combined with solid pragmatism make him a pleasure to collaborate with, and lead to positive outcomes. He keeps everybody moving towards a shared goal, adapting seamlessly to everything from surprises from third party vendors to evolving product ecosystems.
    Cory Forciea Lead Software Engineer, Golden Frog
  • Tucker always has a clear vision for where he wants to take our products, and because of the effort he puts into establishing this vision, I always have confidence in where we are going as a business. Tucker also goes above and beyond to make sure other departments (including mine) are successful — this is another area I know I can always count on Tucker.
    Dehron Hite-Benson Director of Engineering, VyprVPN
06 Profile

Austin, Texas.

Tucker Stern
Portrait Tucker Stern, photographed in Austin.

I have run native apps on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows, and the billing, payments, and fraud systems behind them. Consumer security, then auto lending, then high-consideration commerce. More about how I work →