Upwork Uma Gen AI Project Manager

Upwork is a global, two-sided platform that connects clients and independent freelancers across thousands of skill sets, such as software and web development. The core SaaS product includes HR tech and financial services that span the entire lifecycle of a given job contract, from interview to offer to secure payment across dozens of currencies.

For this new feature, our goal was to improve offer acceptance metrics across the entire platform. More than a quarter of the offers sent by clients were completely ignored by freelancers due to misaligned timelines, unclear project scope, and unexpectedly low payment rates. The team set out to use proprietary platform data and our large language model, Uma, to automatically generate more-relevant offers.

In our 0-to-1 MVP, I researched user pain points, collaborated with a UX designer on wireframes and end-to-end flows, analyzed qualitative and quantitate research from user testing, and wrote UI and UX copy for the new gen AI project manager. After I gathered some learnings from the launch, I presented our findings and gen AI guidance to an audience of 200 at an Upwork Marketplace All-Hands .