Todd Blocksom

Lynnwood, WA (Seattle area) · toddblocksom@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/toddblocksom · 47northtech.com

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Product Leader | AI Platforms & Agentic Systems

Twenty-five years turning ambiguous, cross-organizational initiatives into adopted platforms at Apple, Google, Nuance, and Microsoft. Led AI/ML, privacy, developer-platform, and consumer-product programs spanning global OEM ecosystems and a 65-person product organization. Most recently took a complete location-based consumer product from first commit to TestFlight beta in seven weeks using an AI-native development operating model.

Platform strategy and adoption | AI/ML privacy and governance | Cross-organizational leadership | 0-to-1 product systems | Developer leverage

47north Technologies

Oct 2023 – Present

Founder & Principal Consultant Seattle, WA

Independent product/program consultancy and R&D lab focused on agentic AI systems and local-first platforms.

HIDE/SEEK (My Neighborhood Games), sole builder, Apr 2026 – present

  • Took a privacy-first, location-based multiplayer product from first commit to public TestFlight beta in seven weeks, owning product strategy, game economy, interaction design, system architecture, implementation, operations, and release.
  • Created an AI-native delivery model built around committed specifications, parallel workstreams, automated validation, and explicit architectural and privacy reviews, then ran the build against it: full PRD, architecture spec, economy model, security and privacy review, and design system authored before and during implementation.
  • Designed production economics and privacy from the start: anonymous play, session-scoped identity, database-enforced location access, automated retention within 24 hours of game end, operational telemetry, and a measured marginal infrastructure cost of 7.3 cents per six-player match.

Totem Grid (Resilient Networks), founding contributor & principal PM (consulting), Apr 2025 – present

  • Decentralized offline-first mesh networking for large-scale events. Led product for a live 100-user deployment at Burning Man (geo-located messaging, P2P store-and-forward sync, zero infrastructure). The pilot converted into follow-on work supporting volunteer infrastructure and 2026 World Cup staff and volunteer operations in Vancouver, BC.

Apple, Commerce & Payments, engineering program manager (contract), Oct 2023 – Jan 2024

  • Scoped EU Digital Markets Act impact for the analytics organization and drove GDPR-aligned data anonymization and tokenization workstreams across engineering, privacy, and operations.

Google

Aug 2018 – Apr 2022

Senior Technical Program Manager, Google Cloud Seattle, WA

  • Sole TPM for the Data Analytics UI organization: 65 people across design, engineering, and product spanning more than a dozen Google Cloud analytics products.
  • Drove the shared design system program after an audit found 200+ separate implementations of a simple list control across the codebase. Built a shared component library with no authority to mandate adoption, so we earned it: highest-usage components on the busiest pages first, where switching paid off immediately. Teams went from building their own components to requesting ours, and front-end effort for common UI dropped 80% across the portfolio.
  • Directed VPAT accessibility certification across the Data Analytics suite, running the program while shielding engineers from competing feature pressure, and unblocked public-sector contracts representing $2B+ in potential revenue.
  • Established planning, status, and escalation rhythms across a dozen product teams and presented program strategy directly to VP leadership.

Apple

Oct 2016 – Aug 2018

Senior Engineering Program Manager, Siri (AI/ML) Cupertino, CA

  • Siri Data Privacy: documented the complete end-to-end Siri data pipeline (tables, retention, access, and audit at every stage), converting Legal’s blanket delete-everything stance into approved, PII-scrubbed training signal retention. Usable ML training data grew 4x while exceeding GDPR requirements. Presented to VP/SVP leadership.
  • Do Not Disturb While Driving (iOS 11): Siri-side DRI, taking the feature from executive directive to shipped in one compressed summer cycle. Co-inventor on the resulting “Operational Safety Mode” patent family. Do Not Disturb While Driving later became part of Apple’s broader Focus experience.
  • CarPlay messaging: led the in-car Siri overhaul, driving 300% YoY usage growth, 70% faster task completion, and 2x task success.

Nuance Communications

Jun 2013 – Oct 2016

Principal Product Manager, Automotive Seattle, WA

  • Owned the roadmap for Dragon Drive, the conversational AI platform behind BMW, Mercedes-Benz (MBUX), and Volkswagen voice systems, running in 200M+ vehicles today.
  • Primary technical evangelist for automotive AI/ML R&D across Asia, Europe, and North America, contributing directly to multi-million-dollar OEM closures. Joined via the Tweddle acquisition and was promoted to Principal.

Earlier: program and product leadership at RealNetworks (pitched, built, and led a 6-designer centralized UX studio), Tweddle Group (Toyota Entune, Lexus Enform, Chrysler Uconnect), Loudeye/Muze (product owner, O2 Germany mobile music store), and Microsoft, 2001–2005 (Office: Persona Menu, US Patent 7,634,732, plus an Event-Condition-Action cross-app automation prototype, an agent tool-calling architecture two decades early; MSN: $24M+ in delivered campaigns).

B.S., Computer Science · Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Patents: US 7,634,732 “Persona Menu” (Microsoft Office 2003) | “Operational Safety Mode” (Apple, co-inventor with C. Federighi et al.)

Agentic development systems, including Claude Code, LLM orchestration and multi-agent workflows, AI/ML data and privacy architecture, platform APIs, cloud data systems, realtime and location platforms, SQL, Swift/SwiftUI, and modern CI/CD.