Robert Turnbull | Senior Technical Product Manager

About

I am a Senior Technical Product Manager with over 20 years of experience specializing in healthcare technology, clinical ontologies, and regulated environments. I partner with engineering and platform teams at leading organizations like the CDC, MD Anderson Cancer Center, SNOMED International, and various healthcare SaaS companies, to tackle complex challenges. My focus is on enabling teams to deliver critical systems, even under significant constraints—from rescuing challenging modernization programs to achieving ambitious production delivery timelines and scaling delivery capacity while optimizing costs.

My technical background allows me to effectively bridge the gap between critical business objectives and robust technical execution. I ensure that product vision translates into well-architected solutions, and I am accountable for facilitating key technical decisions that drive successful outcomes. I am a dedicated point of accountability for stakeholders seeking clarity and success across both business and technical dimensions of complex initiatives.

Education & Certifications

MSc Information Systems Management - University of Liverpool (2011)
Building Leadership Practice - Cranfield University (2016)
Certified Scrum Master - Scrum Alliance

Contact

raturnbull@gmail.com | +1 (224) 875-8388

Featured Projects

MD Anderson Cancer Center | Clinical Research Ontology Automation

The Challenge

The existing toolset relied on manual curation of ontology content. Users needed a faster, more repeatable process that could scale laterally to multiple clinical domains and integrate easily with their internal terminology handling systems.

Strategic Approach

To demonstrate feasibility and accelerate innovation within a compressed timeline, I established the technical vision and foundational architecture for a 12-factor cloud-native system. This involved defining and integrating 24 services, including microservices, micro-UIs, and serverless functions. I led the technical design and proof-of-concept implementation, integrating AI-augmented development (e.g., Gemini 2.5 Pro for medical term normalization) to streamline complex tasks. The architecture was designed to support the full ontology lifecycle using OWL API, SNOMED CT, RxNorm, and UMLS, and was deployed on-premises within their regulated data center, demonstrating compatibility with Protégé and incremental reasoners.

Impact & Results

100% accuracy in validated outputs
85% reduction in manual QA effort
Production-viable ontology tooling ecosystem delivered within 16-week POC timeline
Validated repeatable pattern for integrating AI-assisted automation into regulated clinical research environments

Centers for Disease Control & Prevention | National Disease Surveillance Modernization

The Challenge

The National Disease Surveillance modernization program presented a significant challenge, having undergone multiple previous initiatives that did not achieve their goals. The pilot's success was critical for the program's continuation and for securing a multi-year contract.

Strategic Approach

Serving as part of the qualification pilot team, I facilitated the design of the cloud-native reference architecture and contributed to the final presentation to CDC leadership and US Digital Service evaluators. Upon contract award, I partnered with the VP of Engineering to establish a high-performing platform team. My role focused on structuring the team and defining their mission around three key pillars: production runtime infrastructure as code, a multi-team development platform-as-a-service, and comprehensive DevSecOps practices—treating engineering enablement as a product. This strategic platform enablement approach was foundational for the subsequent 3-year program. The team implemented Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform, Helm, and Kubernetes with robust CI/CD pipelines. I collaborated closely with federal Product Owners to translate application roadmaps into infrastructure roadmaps, ensuring platform capabilities were developed proactively to support feature development under strict federal security standards.

Impact & Results

Contributed to winning the subsequent 3-year modernization contract following a successful pilot demonstration
Established and scaled a platform team that delivered an operational FISMA-High production environment in Azure from first principles
The platform was designed as a standalone open-source product, enabling deployment in private cloud and on-premises environments, supporting mission-critical public health systems
Facilitated an improved delivery cadence across 9 distributed engineering teams, enabling progress despite heavy governance constraints

Experity | SaaS Merger Integration & Scaling

The Challenge

A challenging VC-driven merger of two asymmetric urgent-care SaaS companies (600 people) required aggressive targets: quadrupling EBITDA in 2 years. This necessitated decommissioning legacy platforms, migrating high-value features, scaling delivery capacity by approximately 4×, and restoring customer confidence—all while maintaining stringent HIPAA and HITRUST compliance in a healthcare environment.

Strategic Approach

I led the establishment of a unified delivery system by integrating human systems (Scrum discipline, backlog management, cross-team coordination) with technical systems. This included implementing CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) environments, Kubernetes platforms, and blue/green deployment strategies. My leadership spanned two cross-functional organizations: Agile Services (5 Scrum Masters supporting 24 teams across the US, Belarus, and India) and DevOps/Platform Engineering (6 SRE engineers). I enabled the platform team to build self-service CI/CD and environment platforms with delegated workflows, accommodating diverse team preferences and scaling enablement.

Impact & Results

Scaled Delivery Capacity: Enabled platform teams to support an approximate 5× increase in software delivery throughput after system integration and optimization, without loss of control
Accelerated Feature Delivery: Facilitated the delivery of $50M in new features over 18 months
Increased Release Cadence: Elevated release frequency from approximately 4-6 per year to ~12 per year across integrated teams
Reduced Operating Costs: Decommissioned expensive legacy cloud infrastructure and optimized cloud-native deployments, resulting in a ~75% reduction in operating expenditures within 2 years
Streamlined Environment Provisioning: Reduced environment provisioning time by 40× (cloud) and 10× (on-prem)
Enabled Safer Deployments: Facilitated blue/green deployments in a test-limited healthcare environment, improving stability and reducing risk

raturnbull@gmail.com | +1 (224) 875-8388

Core Competencies

AI-Augmented Development & Early Adoption

Early adopter with hands-on experience using agentic development tools (Claude Code, Cline, Windsurf, Roo Code) in paid client work and personal experimentation. Implemented LLM-driven medical term normalization via API integration for clinical research POC. Designed framework for integrating agentic AI into non-technical business departments with runtime management and safeguards. This practical experience provides working knowledge of capabilities and limitations—understanding what AI is good at, where it should not yet be used, and how to address legitimate business concerns about security vulnerabilities and legal liability from AI-generated mistakes.

Clinical Ontology & Standards Expertise

Deep working knowledge of SNOMED CT, clinical terminologies (CPT, ICD-9/10, LOINC, RxNorm, UMLS), and ontology engineering principles (OWL API, RDF/OWL, Protégé, HermiT, Pellet reasoners). This domain expertise enables effective collaboration with ontologists, clinicians, standards bodies (WHO, SNOMED International), and commercial software vendors—translating complex clinical requirements into implementable technical solutions.

Platform-as-Product Enablement

Establishing engineering enablement as a customer-facing product with self-service capabilities, continuum-based workflows, and infrastructure delivered ahead of application development. This approach scaled Scrum teams from 4 to 24 while maintaining predictability, supported 9 distributed engineering teams across 6 time zones, and reduced delivery friction while maintaining predictability under heavy governance constraints.

Turnaround & Rescue Leadership

Recovering stalled, politically sensitive initiatives by reframing scope, clarifying direction, and re-establishing delivery momentum. Contributed to winning CDC modernization contract after prior modernization attempts had stalled. Rescued geographically distributed expert groups (~30 participants), achieving more progress in 6 months than the prior 3 years. Delivered value at AAOS (American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons) by restoring engineering credibility through predictable, incremental delivery.

Regulated Environment DevSecOps

Establishing FISMA-High, HIPAA, and HITRUST-compliant infrastructure where security and compliance are embedded into CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure-as-Code—not manual afterthoughts. This systematic approach enables safe, rapid scaling: 100% compute coverage, repeatable (not episodic) compliance, and auditable deployment processes that support mission-critical public health systems.

raturnbull@gmail.com | +1 (224) 875-8388