Surabhi Malani

Product Enthusiast

Singapore

I build products that keep people safe online, and communities that help people grow.

About Me

I am a Product Manager with 5+ years of experience in the security and fraud domain, with a growing focus on building AI-powered products. I work closely with business teams, translating their ambiguous problems into clear specifications to build together with engineering teams. I drive end-to-end product strategy from discovery through to shipped features. My work in high-stakes, real-time environments has sharpened my thinking on reliability, evaluation, and what it takes to bring systems from prototype to production at scale. I have built novel CAPTCHA types and strengthened the platform security against malicious fraudulent activity. Lately, I am building an AI risk engine to integrate AI with online fraud case check. I've also been writing the front-end for our internal portals with the help of vibe-coding tools, which keeps me close to the technical work.

Outside work, I build communities. I'm a Community Builder Lead at The Product Folks in Singapore, co-founded Women in Tech @ NTU, and actively mentor aspiring product managers.

Experience

Jan 2022 – Present

Senior Associate Product Manager

Shopee · Business Security

  • Expanded PM scope into delivery: shipped front-end portal changes with AI coding tools and automated regression test cases before weekly release.
  • Extending the platform into an AI Risk Engine: an async pipeline that lets business teams apply AI analysis to orders/users and take online action, sized for 200K entities/hour and 100K+ monthly case reviews, running from preprocessing to AI assessment to deeper case analysis. Owning the prompt engineering, evaluation, and guardrails behind it, and setting the confidence thresholds that route each case to auto-treatment or human-in-the-loop review.
  • Shipped AI-powered Image Restoration CAPTCHA using generative AI image pipelines, cutting malicious pass rate while preserving a low-friction user experience for legitimate users.
  • Upgraded OTP CAPTCHA integration to block 200K OTP spam activities in TH over 2 months and suppressed large-scale malicious OTP attacks across regions.
  • Led anti-crawler Security SDK integration across 300+ APIs and 30+ business teams, working with each team’s engineers on rollout, testing, and monitoring to defend peak traffic of 10M+ requests, and obfuscated price, sales volume, and inventory data on high-traffic APIs across PDP, Item, Price, Search, and Recommendation pages.
  • Directed system rollout for new market expansions: gathered requirements with local ops teams, integrated across 10+ teams, ran validation, and migrated 1K+ fraud strategies with zero deployment issues.
  • Directed enhancements to real-time traffic monitoring dashboards, increasing monitoring efficiency by 90%.
  • Enhanced the alarm and monitoring platform with modular alert templates that removed repetitive configuration, tenant-based separation that restricted each business line’s alerts to authorised personnel, and real-time metrics to catch misfiring strategies quickly.
  • Delivered default alarm and circuit breaker initialisation on strategy activation: replacing manual creation and cutting set-up work by 80% across a library of 10K+ strategies.
  • Boosted investigation efficiency by 90% with automated tools executing 1K daily ClickHouse queries, reducing manual investigation processes for 500+ product support staff.

Competitor researchStakeholder managementBusiness impact of technical strategySecurity vs. user experienceAccessibility

Aug 2021 – Dec 2021

Product Manager Intern

Shopee · Marketplace Anti-Fraud

  • Ran market research and competitor analysis to identify the business needs and key metrics behind fraud such as order brushing.
  • Proactively improved efficiency and designed new anti-fraud strategies.

Competitor researchDocumentationAnti-fraud strategy

May 2021 – Aug 2021

Technical Consultant Intern

Ernst & Young

  • Wrote information-architecture documentation for better usability, findability, and consistency.
  • Implemented CSS fixes in OutSystems for a consistent design pattern across screens.
  • Wrote UAT scripts and aligned stakeholders on a common understanding of requirements.
  • Owned bug fixes against changing requirements on a strict timeline, managing the dev team through detailed Jira tickets.

CSSStakeholder managementUAT

May 2020 – Aug 2020

Applied AI Intern

Amaris.AI

  • Implemented full-stack development from idea to MVP (GUI prototype) for TestRig, an innovation project testing adversarial attacks on AI models, using FE React and BE FastAPI within 4 weeks.
  • Ran user research with internal teams using high-fidelity wireframes.
  • Built an MVP to validate the proof of concept, owning the React front end and integrating the FastAPI back end.

FigmaPythonReactMVPs

May 2019 – Aug 2019

Product Manager Intern

Grab · Funds Flow

  • Optimised the online banking user journey in MY by reducing the steps and latency, resulting in improved user experience and higher data accuracy.
  • Launched a new bank integration for payment processing, migrating traffic from the old bank and shipping in 4 weeks, on schedule.
  • Identified critical payment KPIs and co-created real-time dashboards for payout monitoring.

User storiesDocumentationBusiness to technical requirements

Education

Degrees

Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Highest Honours and Distinction. Specialised in Data Science & Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.

Bachelor of Social Sciences, Economics

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Highest Honours and Distinction. Focused on behavioural economics, policy analysis, econometrics and game theory.

Selected Projects5

Final year project

Digital Makeup with Machine Learning

A proof of concept for virtual makeup that uses fully convolutional networks (GluonCV, Face-Parsing.PyTorch, Caffe) to segment portrait images, then applies example-based skin and hair colour transfer.

  • Created a full digital makeup look in 284 seconds on average, versus about 1.5 hours for a professional (around 95% faster).

PythonMATLABPyTorch

GitHub

Technical project

Gamified Learning App

A mobile game to make learning software engineering social and competitive, and to give professors data on course mastery.

  • Built the Android game on Unity and designed the interface in Photoshop.

UnityC#PhotoshopGame design

Technical project

Instagram News Crawler

A search engine for the latest news from 11 top Instagram news channels. I built the dataset.

  • Scraped 1,000 top posts with metadata using Python and Selenium, and cleaned the data with NLP.

PythonSeleniumBeautifulSoupWeb scraping

GitHubVideo

Business project

Timely Buddy

A gamified app that helps people beat tardiness, using nudge theory, goal-setting and leaderboards from behavioural economics.

Behavioural economicsGamification

Video

Research project

Harm Minimisation in Gambling for Lower-Income Individuals

Proposed an income-based, government-enforced spending limit for venue-based gambling in Singapore, evaluated with an OLS difference-in-differences model in a randomised controlled trial.

EconometricsPolicy research

Skills

Product Management 10

  • Product Discovery
  • Product Strategy
  • Roadmap Ownership
  • 0-to-1 Product Development
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Competitor Analysis
  • Project Management
  • Requirements & PRD
  • UAT
  • Agile Delivery

AI & LLM Product 6

  • LLM Product Development
  • Prompt Engineering
  • Evaluation
  • Human-in-the-loop Design
  • AI Guardrails
  • Hybrid Rule-Based & LLM Systems

Technical Skills 4

  • Python
  • SQL
  • Front-End Development (React, AI-assisted)
  • Automated Test Coverage

Tools 6

  • Jira
  • Confluence
  • Figma
  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • Cursor

Soft Skills 5

  • Public Speaking
  • Executive Communication
  • Problem-Solving
  • Leadership
  • Detail-Oriented

Building

Outside work I build small apps for my own life, which is the fastest way I know to learn what makes a product worth using.

Doompet

In progress

A pet that lives in your screen and monitors your doom-scrolling. Coming soon!

Android

Rexipe

In progress

My personal recipe companion. Import a recipe from a link or a cooking video, cook along step by step by voice, and pick up techniques as you go. There's an Android app for cooking with what's in your pantry.

Next.jsLocal AIVoiceAndroid

Almanac

In progress

A calm, phone-first news reader. It gathers public feeds, groups the same story from different sources, and ranks them on my own device with rules I can read and edit.

PythonRSSCloudflare

Community

I am a bubbly intellectual who is driven to empower women in the field of technology. I also love actively working on building product communities in the little red dot of Singapore! Being an ESFJ, I enjoy speaking to new people and learning new stories. I also try to make some spare time to give back to society, either by volunteering in my neighbourhoods or at societies catered to friends with special needs. Where the time flies, I don't even realise!

Building Communities2

2022 – Present

Managing Community Lead

The Product Folks, Singapore

Building Singapore's product community, with events designed so attendees leave with new perspectives and genuine connections.

  • Grew the community from 0 to 1,000+ active members, from aspiring PMs to engineers, designers and founders.
  • Organised 20+ events, averaging 60+ attendees and a 100% satisfaction rate.
  • Partnered with experts from Wavestone, Rakuten, Grab, PayPal, Antler, Contentsquare, Mixpanel and more.

Building communitiesPublic speakingProductLeadership

2022 – 2025

Pillar Co-Lead

The Product Loft

Ran events that grow the skills of early-career product managers. They were networking events with a twist, built for genuine connections with experts in a safe space to learn.

  • Reached 150+ early-career product managers.
  • Organised 6+ events, averaging 40+ attendees and a 100% satisfaction rate.
  • Partnered with experts from NextBillion.AI, Mastercard, Homage, Pokémon Go, OKX, Thunes, StashAway and more.
  • Signature formats include AMA IRL: Exploring Tech Verticals (HealthTech, AI, FinTech, EduTech, TrustTech) and Product BnB, including a gaming edition with the creator of Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now.

Building communitiesPublic speakingProductLeadership

Women In Tech2

Aug 2019 – Dec 2021

Co-Founder & Chairperson

Women in Tech @ NTU

Co-founded the first student-led Women in Tech community at a Singapore university, encouraging female undergraduates to explore tech through events, workshops and mentorship. Similar communities later started at NUS and SMU.

  • Reached 1,000+ students and 10+ companies, and supported gender-diversity programmes with POWERS and SWE.
  • Launched SheShares, bi-weekly talks by women, for women, reaching 100+ students with speakers from Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and more.
  • Launched Learn Cloud with AWS with AWS Educate, with weekly sessions for 1,500+ participants.
  • Launched ProducTogether, a PM mentorship programme with Rakuten for 35 mentees and 7 Rakuten mentors.

FounderLeadershipWomen in tech

SheShares videoProducTogether video

Jun 2021 – Dec 2022

Pro-Tem Exco, Undergraduate Representative

Society of Women Engineers @ NTU

Nominated as undergraduate representative when the society launched under Prof Sierin, and gave talks on the path into tech as a student.

LeadershipWomen in techCommunity building

Mentorship2

Mar 2023 – Present

Mentor

ADPList

Mentored 14+ aspiring product managers through resume reviews, guidance and support.

Mentorship

2025

Mentor

Women in Tech @ NUS

Curated mentorship for two undergraduates aspiring to product roles.

MentorshipLeadership

Volunteering2

Dec 2021 – Jan 2022

Youth Corps Leader

Youth Corps Singapore

Selected for Cohort 26 of the Youth Corps Leaders Programme from 100+ applicants. Our Project Shine ran bi-weekly sessions on arts, sports and nature with young adults with special needs from Rainbow Centre, promoting the social inclusion of persons with disabilities.

  • Co-led publicity and design, and made many of the project's marketing materials.

LeadershipCommunity service

Commencement video

2020 – 2023

Resident Network Volunteer

Hong Kah North Community Club

Volunteered at community events such as the Family Day at Universal Studios Singapore.

LeadershipCommunity service

Leadership Programmes4

2021

Next Generation Women Leaders

McKinsey & Company

One of 200 women selected from 2,500+ applicants for McKinsey's two-day Asia Pacific leadership conference.

LeadershipWomen in tech

Aug 2020 – May 2021

College of Engineering Student Ambassador

Nanyang Technological University

One of 20 student ambassadors chosen to represent the College of Engineering.

  • Co-led HackAlliance 2021, NTU's first university-wide interdisciplinary 8-week hackathon, with Dell, for 100+ participants.
  • Co-launched a cloud computing interest group.

LeadershipInnovation

NTU article

Aug 2020 – May 2021

Student Leader, Student Leadership Development Programme

Nanyang Technological University

A year-long programme building leadership through one-on-one and group coaching and self-reflection.

LeadershipCoaching

My reflections

2021

Undergraduate Representative, oneNTU Diversity Taskforce

Nanyang Technological University

Shaped diversity, inclusion and sustainability plans for NTU's 2025 strategic plan.

LeadershipDiversity & inclusionCommunity

Speaking

Recognition

Best UI/UX Prize at SEA Hackathon

Won the best prize for UI/UX in an internal SEA Hackathon. Built an idea for an AI-powered platform aimed to foster community and strengthen shared intelligence.

Top Women Voices in Social Innovation by Centre for AI Innovation (CE:AI) and Y:WAIT

Recognises outstanding women who have made significant contributions to social innovation.

Valedictorian

SINDA Excellence Awards

Selected as valedictorian from 782 students.

Top 18 Girls in Tech

Singapore Computer Society & SG Women in Tech

Recognises young women who are rising stars in Singapore's tech scene, improve their communities, and are technically skilled role models.

Champion, AWS × Cognizant BuildOn Hackathon

Built Localish, an MVP portal for hyper-local communities that connects people who need help with neighbours who can offer it, rekindling the kampung spirit.

University Scholar

Hong Kah North Community Club

Awarded the neighbourhood's university scholarship.

  • Joined house visits with the MP to connect with residents in person.
  • During the COVID-19 vaccination drive, called elderly residents to encourage them to get vaccinated.

1st Runner-up, AWS Cloud Experience Case Competition

Placed 2nd of 39 teams with a cloud strategy for SMEs in advanced manufacturing: predictive maintenance, stronger security, and a go-to-market plan.

Dean's List

NTU College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Awarded for 2018–19 and 2019–20.

Interests

I love photography and travel and keep a travel diary on Instagram. I cook dishes from different cultures, and I'm always looking for good non-fiction. Recommendations for either are very welcome, and so is an invitation to coffee.

On My Bookshelf14

  • BecomingMichelle Obama
  • The Light We CarryMichelle Obama
  • Give and TakeAdam Grant
  • Think AgainAdam Grant
  • Hidden PotentialAdam Grant
  • Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us WholeSusan Cain
  • Crying in H MartMichelle Zauner
  • Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic MiscalculationCamonghne Felix
  • The Half Known Life: In Search of ParadisePico Iyer
  • This Is Going to HurtAdam Kay
  • Surrounded by PsychopathsThomas Erikson
  • Before the Coffee Gets ColdToshikazu Kawaguchi
  • Kintsugi: Finding Strength in Imperfection
  • Ichigo Ichie