Meet Megan McDonald, Product Manager at GoCardless

Megan McDonald, from the United States, joined GoCardless in March 2021, swapping Chicago for London.

How did you become a Product Manager?

I started my career working at media buying agencies. My boss at the time said to me, “We need to build this product, and I think you might be good at it.”

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I worked with a team of developers and got to work with stakeholders and clients to work out what we were building and why.

I just fell in love with developing products, and that led me to go get my MBA in business management from the University of Chicago — Booth School of Business, after which I got a job at Tripadvisor, and from there made my way to GoCardless.

What is a Product Manager?

My parents ask me that all the time. I tell them it’s like being a CEO of a product, working with a team to figure out and solve problems for our customers. It’s about bringing practical solutions from ideation through to creation and delivery.

How did you come to work at GoCardless?

I moved to London from Chicago earlier this year when I joined GoCardless. My partner works in the UK and so we’d had a long-distance relationship for a while before I began looking for opportunities in London.

I hadn’t heard of GoCardless before I met someone who worked in sales here. When I mentioned I was looking for new opportunities, she said, “The product team at GoCardless has really strong leadership, I think you’d really like it.”

I had an interview with GoCardless and just loved everyone I spoke to. People here are incredibly smart but also incredibly humble. What was exciting was the immediate sense of how much growth the business was anticipating, and the meaty problems that it was trying to solve.

I’m so glad it worked out.

What’s it like working at GoCardless?

I sit on the Data Infrastructure team, which includes engineers, a tech lead and an engineering manager, whom I work very closely with. We work very closely with our stakeholders which include the security and privacy teams, engineering teams as well as with our business intelligence group and data scientists. I work across a whole subset of the business that engages with data.

One of the things I’ve been most impressed with is how generous people are with their time and expertise. One of the worries I had about joining a FinTech company was that I didn’t have specific experience in this field, and I wondered if that would be a hindrance.

During my first couple of months here my colleagues seemed to totally understand that not everyone comes from a FinTech background, and were really willing to share their knowledge and make sure I was up to speed.

I’ve never worked in data infrastructure before either, but the people around me have made sure I have the tools and information I need to succeed.

What’s your day to day like?

Every day is so different, which is what makes it so exciting. It kind of depends where you are in the product life cycle, but I usually try to start off my day by learning something new, either about data infrastructure or product management craft.

Typically, we then have a stand up meeting with the team, where we talk about what we’d like to accomplish, any feedback on the day before and any blockers.

I spend a lot of my time talking to stakeholders, chatting with data scientists, business intelligence analysts and engineers to gather all the information our team needs to understand our problem space and ensure our solutions will meet their needs.

What are your relationships with colleagues like?

We have mostly been working together remotely due to pandemic life, but it wasn’t as awkward getting to know people remotely as I’d expected.

The onboarding at GoCardless is really well structured, so you have lots of opportunities to find out about the business, how things work and my boss always made sure I knew who I needed to talk to.

We’re not currently required to be back in the office but we’ve slowly been trickling back in and my team have also met up for dinner and drinks, so it’s been really nice getting to know people in person as well as online.

GoCardless has a buddy programme for new starters and because I’m new to London as well as to the UK, it’s been great as my buddy has helped me find out about the area where I live, giving me advice on where to get a haircut and that sort of thing.

What problems are you solving with GoCardless products?

One of the things we’re focused on right now is how we can improve data quality and reliability. It’s quite a big topic which is also very exciting. I think that we as a whole team are really eager to figure out how we can address some of the liabilities and challenges that we have around data, before we scale up as a business even more.

We want to treat our data in the same way you would an Application Programming Interface (API), making data understandable and reliable for our users. I feel like that analogy has really helped hone in on what we’re trying to tackle across our whole product development across the organisation.

We’re still working on the first release and we’re anticipating a major step-change in how we handle and manage data. This first iteration is coming up in the next month or so and I’m really excited for the impact it will have. There’s certainly lots of enthusiasm around the project internally.

What do you like doing outside work?

I love to travel, which has been a bit harder during the pandemic. But even getting to explore parts of London I didn’t know has been great, and travelling around the UK.

I love food and getting to eat out at different restaurants.

I’m a big reader and I’m currently working my way through the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels, which is a lot of fun. I’ve just started Anthony Powell’s A Dance to The Music of Time, which is about English life in the 20th century.

Are you interested in joining GoCardless? See our jobs board here.