Skip to content
VT
All work
BackendFrontendAI

Solo, from PRD to a premium feature in production

The only engineer on a premium feature — I reviewed the PRD, built the POC, wrote the design doc, then implemented batch writes to a third-party API with partial-failure semantics, plan gating and analytics.

When
Apr — Jun 2025
Role
Sole engineer
Context
Turning competitor data into Google Ads audience segments

The problem

Optmyzr’s Top Competitors widget surfaced auction-insights competitor data, but customers couldn’t act on it. Product wanted a premium differentiator: build Google Ads custom audience segments from that competitor data, straight from the dashboard.

What I did

I reviewed the PRD, built the POC, wrote the design document and reworked it through review rounds — then implemented, gated and instrumented the feature alone.

  • A React side-tray with debounced search over existing segments, card and table views, and create / edit flows.
  • The C# backend for segment creation via the Google Ads API, including intermediary audience creation.
  • Both association paths: directly to segments, and via an intermediary audience to ad groups and asset groups — Demand Gen included.
  • Partial-failure semantics: one bad association never rolls back the batch.
  • Optimization-history records for create and edit so users can audit changes, plus unit tests for the association logic.
  • Premium-plan gating (high-tier plans only) with a locked state for everyone else, and analytics from day one.

The sibling feature: “Summarize with AI”

On the same widget I built an AI summary of competitor data end to end — prompt design, caching keyed on date range, an animated CTA — iterated through founder review and launched in the May 2025 release.

Outcome

Shipped as a premium-gated feature; 100+ segments were created in its first two months.