Denis Zhurba

Denis Zhurba — CV

Product leader — AI/ML & P&L at scale. Nine years launching 0–1 products and scaling AI/ML products to 100M+ users. Background in strategy at EY-Parthenon. MBA, London Business School.

Experience

Principal Product Manager / Head of Product — International Expansion · 2026–present Run product end-to-end for the international expansion — growth, monetisation, and the AI/ML roadmap.

Product Lead — Communications & AI/ML — Avito · 2024–2026 One of the world’s largest online marketplaces (60M+ monthly users). Led communications and buyer-engagement products across multiple teams; authored the board-approved investment case to scale the communications platform; GenAI lead for marketing and communications. Shipped ML/GenAI initiatives — ranking, bandits, uplift models, LLM-generated personalised content — across messenger, email, push, and in-app, at billions of messages a month; 5% incremental lift in buyers on Android against a global control group; 1.5x annual revenue uplift.

Founder, CEO & Head of Product — BOXR / Kinetic · 2022–2024 (acquired by a PE roll-up) Built and exited AI coaching for boxing — a consumer app plus in-gym software, sold as a bundle. On-device computer vision (Google ML Kit / MediaPipe, 97%+ tracking accuracy), RAG-LLM feedback, fine-tuned TTS. Reached Top Free and Top Grossing in Health & Wellness; ~250k installs in first 6 months, 4.6 rating. A/B-tested onboarding and paywalls lifted trial starts ~5x to ~13%.

Product Strategy Manager → Product Manager — VK · 2019–2021 One of the largest technology companies in the region (100M+ monthly users). Owned strategy, investment assessment, and go-to-market for AI smart-speaker hardware (Capsula) and the Marusya voice ecosystem; ran growth on a 100M-user portal; built portfolio/investment frameworks, planning, and OKRs.

Senior Analyst → Senior Consultant — EY-Parthenon · 2017–2019 Strategy consulting. Led 10+ growth, product, and digital-strategy engagements across e-commerce, retail, telecom, and smart-city/PropTech.

Selected projects

  • Head of Product, Sidekick Browser (acquired by Perplexity) — MBA internship
  • Product Manager, Factory14 (acquired by Razor Group) — MBA internship

Education

  • MBA, London Business School — Entrepreneurial Management (2020–2022)
  • MSc Strategic Management, HEC Paris (2016–2017)
  • BSc Engineering Management, Kuban State University

Skills

Python, SQL, Kotlin · Amplitude, Mixpanel, Tableau, Figma, Jira · ML / LLM / Computer Vision product delivery