KRYSTAL PUMA
Product Operations
AVAILABLE NOWSKILLS
● Live Operations · ● Internal Tooling · ● Product Operations · ● Metadata & Content Ops · ● People Leadership · ● AI-Native Workflows · ● Systems Thinking · ● Platform Strategy · ● Process Design
ABOUT
Product operator. Systems thinker.
Builder by default.
The best ops problems aren't technical — they're translational. Someone knows what needs to happen. Someone else knows how to build it. I'm usually the person in the middle, and I stopped waiting for someone to hand me the blueprint.
WHAT I BRING
A few things that don't fit in a job description.
I'm not always the most credentialed person in the room. But I'm reliably the most resourceful one — and I've learned those things aren't as related as people assume. Every tool I claim, I've used on something real. Every system I describe, I built. The learning curve is part of the evidence, not a disclaimer.
Wherever I land, I'll embed, embrace, and build — same as I always have.
I’m observant and I learn fast — GitHub, Cursor, and Next.js are all things I picked up by building real projects during this job search. Every tool I claim, I’ve used on something real.
I’m not a traditional product person on paper. I’m someone who builds. I don’t wait to be handed a spec — I notice the problem, map the system, and ship something. Then I document it so the next person doesn’t have to start from scratch.
FAVORITE PASTIME
I bake, I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I go to live music shows with an intensity that surprises people.
DREAM ROLE
Music operations, any capacity. If you work in this space, please say hello.
STAR CHART
Capricorn sun, Leo rising, Libra moon. Works hard, makes it look good, finds balance.
OPERATING MODE
Drop me into any environment. I will leave it better than I found it.
DEFAULT SETTING
Curiosity first, always. I ask what happens when you press the button before I ask why it exists.
HOME
Los Angeles, CA.
HOW I WORK
Notion
Claude
ChatGPT
Cursor
Figma
Airtable
Miro
Zapier
GitHub
Vercel
Next.js
SlackCURRENTLY
I came into this as someone who'd always believed in figuring out how things actually work — not just using them. Loop Work gave me a real environment to apply that instinct to AI. Not prompting. Not generating. Designing with it. Building this site the same way — directing Cursor and Claude to ship real code — was the second proof of concept.
The same technology I'm using to manage this search is part of why the search is this hard. I've been in final rounds for roles that disappeared mid-process — not because I wasn't the right fit, but because teams restructured around tools that didn't exist two years ago. I'm not immune to the disruption I'm designing with. I think that's worth saying out loud.
CAREER HISTORY
CBS Interactive
Content Operations Specialist
2018
CBS Sports
Technical Director
2018 – 2021
Apple
Live Streaming Manager
2021 – 2025
CBS Interactive
Content Operations Specialist
2018
CBS Sports
Technical Director
2018 – 2021
Apple
Live Streaming Manager
2021 – 2025
The timeline starts at 2018. The curiosity starts earlier — broadcast ops in college, DirecTV operator, bartender, all at the same time, always asking the same question: why is this done this way?
Each role sharpened a different dimension of how I work:
PHASE 01 · OPERATOR
Building the foundation for reliability at scale.
ChallengeScaling Apple’s live sports streaming from 4 to 120+ weekly feeds across 103 countries required systems that could hold under pressure — not just more headcount.
ApproachI built the operational infrastructure from the ground up — incident classification frameworks, runbooks, escalation protocols, and a pattern recognition system designed to identify failure patterns before they compounded.
PHASE 02 · STRATEGIC BUILDER
Creating tools that eliminate friction before it compounds.
ChallengeFragmented metadata, unstructured testing requests, and single-stream operator interfaces were creating drag that grew worse as feed volume scaled.
ApproachI designed and shipped tools that replaced the workarounds — a centralized metadata dashboard, a multi-event interface enabling 1:4 operator-to-stream ratio, and a testing intake system adopted across 3 organizations.
PHASE 03 · TRANSLATOR
Bridging the gap between what operators need and what engineers build.
ChallengeThe most valuable work at Apple happened in the gap between operations and engineering — where operational pain couldn’t be articulated in terms engineering could act on.
ApproachI became the person both sides trusted to represent the other accurately — translating operator pain into roadmaps, shaping tooling requirements without a PM title, and driving adoption across skeptical global teams.
AVAILABLE NOW · LOS ANGELES OR REMOTE
Product operations specialist.
I build the systems that make complex work scale.