Federico Volonteri, Fractional Product & Design Lead. AI-native builder for fintech and complex B2B products.

Fractional Product & Design Leadership

Ongoing, embedded. You need a senior product leader for an extended period, not a single deliverable: continuous leadership, setting priorities, making the daily calls, designing key flows as they come up, growing the team. Typically 2 to 4 days/week, 3 to 9 months.

Product & Team Structuring

A defined, bounded fix. Engineering has scaled faster than product, roles are unclear, there's no roadmap process, or you're hiring your first PM. In a few weeks I audit how product actually works, define roles and process, build the roadmap, and prepare your next hires. I leave you with a well oiled machine.

Complex Product Initiatives/Launches

Defined scope, one deliverable, critical KPI to move. You have a problem to solve in mind: a new onboarding flow, a new lending or payments product, a regulated workflow, an API, an internal platform, back office automation. I own it end to end, from strategy to shipped product, on a timeline tied to the launch date.

Defacto, Product Lead (2023–2025)

Owned lending and partner products end to end, taking onboarding, web application, and recovery from broken to best in class.

• Redesigned the self-serve onboarding flow from scratch, improving conversion by 20% and contributing to a doubling of the customer base within 6 months alongside go-to-market efforts
• Rebuilt the core direct lending application end-to-end, halving support ticket volume and increasing customer satisfaction by 30 points while supporting a doubling of the customer base
• Owned the direct lending roadmap, driving a 20% increase in activation among lending customers
• On Defacto Connect, delivered a full partner-facing product, reducing partner support requests by 70% and meaningfully improving indirect user satisfaction. Live with partners including Qonto, Malt, Pennylane, and Leano
• Automated most of recollection operations end-to-end (email sequences, legal procedures, AI calling agents), improving recovery rates from 35% to 50% in 6 months while keeping the team at 1.5 FTE
• Shipped Pulse, Defacto's first product beyond lending, a company scoring tool based on public data, delivered to 20 beta customers to help them assess counterparty risk before engaging with clients or suppliers
• Structured the product org: hired the design function, organized engineering (~20 engineers) into squads, and co-owned the company-wide roadmap with the founders

Checkout.com, Senior Product Manager, Issuing (2020–2023)

One of the first product hires on a new business line, owning card issuing APIs, the client-facing dashboard & back-office from zero to general availability.

• One of the first PMs on Issuing, Checkout.com's first product initiative beyond acquiring, helping build the business line from scratch. Issuing has since reached general availability and become a core product offering.
• Led the Card Management squad (~5 engineers): designed and shipped the full suite of card creation, management, and spend control API endpoints, webhooks, and developer documentation
• Led a cross-functional build vs. buy analysis on the risk engine, coordinating across product, engineering, legal, and compliance
• Led the Experience team (5–6 engineers, 1 designer): shipped the client-facing issuing dashboard and built internal tooling for BIN management and client configuration
• Standardized product discovery practices and product review processes across the issuing teams
• Onboarded and supported Jow as the first live beta client on the issuing platform
• Contributed to the Booking.com RFP process, scoping product requirements for one of the largest potential issuing clients in the pipeline

Qonto, Product Manager (2019–2020)

Led a high-stakes migration for 45,000 active customers with zero acceptable margin for customer-facing failure.

• Led the full migration of Qonto's 45,000 active customers from banking partner Treezor to an in-house banking infrastructure, a 12-months program spanning product, engineering, ops, design, and growth
• The core challenge: migration required customers to change their IBAN, cards, and entire banking setup. Result: 98% of customers made at least one transaction on the new platform post-migration
• Built fine-grained customer segmentation to personalize every touchpoint throughout the migration
• Shipped weekly production deployments across 9 months: in-app migration flows, card reordering, automated account transfers, and back-end automation of regulatory checks

Kantox, Product Manager (2017–2019)

FX automation platform. Helped reshape the product from brokerage to software, a repositioning that preceded acquisition by BNP Paribas.

• Led a full platform redesign to reposition Kantox from a brokerage tool to a modern SaaS FX management application, hired the company's first designers and owned the end-to-end product overhaul
• Structured and launched Currency Accounts, a 0→1 initiative in partnership with Citi Bank enabling Kantox customers to hold and manage money in 20+ currencies
• Helped structure the Citi partnership from the ground up, product scoping, integration requirements, and cross-company alignment

AI operating system for small jewelers

It all started with a quoting tool. I ended up building an AI operating system for jewelers. I initially built JewelQuote, a quotation tool for high-end jewelers doing bespoke, but as I iterated, users kept asking for one place to run their business. Built for jewelers with 1–15 people. Value from day one. AI does the work, you take the actions.

Surfwise: Next-generation surf forecasting.

Built solo from concept to live product. Surfwise is a mobile-first product designed to simplify a core decision for surfers: when and where to surf. Instead of exposing users to raw forecast data (swell, wind, tide), Surfwise translates it into clear, actionable guidance. The product is intentionally focused: it is not a data platform or social network, but a decision engine.

Surfwise currently covers France, Morocco, and Portugal. Current traction: ~30 weekly active users. Built using an AI-native development workflow with Replit and Cursor. AI systems include a Localization Agent and a Spot Ingestion Agent creating a scalable, semi-automated content pipeline.

JewelQuote: Configure-Price-Quote tool for jewelers.

A niche with real purchasing complexity. JewelQuote is a workflow product designed for jewelry houses and workshops to structure and streamline the creation of bespoke and semi-bespoke quotes. Core flow: select or define a model → input key parameters → review and adjust internal costs → define final pricing → generate a client-ready quote document → convert accepted quotes into invoices. Currently deployed as a single-tenant production pilot with one jewelry house, generating real quotes for real clients.