- Users interviewed
- 50+
- Requirements written
- 15+
- Engagement lift
- +40%
- Retention lift
- +18%
- Budget tracked
- $8–10K
- Students taught AI
- 20+
- Hackathons entered
- 2
- Hackathons won
- 1
- Status
- Open to Summer 2027
Sara JainProduct and program management, UC Santa Cruz
I find the tedious part of a workflow and make it disappear.
I study Technology Information Management and Cognitive Science. I interview the people doing the work, write down what they actually need, and build AI tools that take the manual steps out.
Selected work
Four projects from the last year. Each started with someone stuck on a manual, frustrating task and ended with something they could use.
1st place
Splitcart
- The problem
- Splitting a shared grocery run means someone typing every line item into a spreadsheet and arguing over who had the cheese.
- What I did
- Built a Python and Claude API pipeline that reads line items straight from a receipt photo and assigns each one to a person. We benchmarked model accuracy against API cost to pick the production model, then shipped a working Flask demo in 24 hours.
1st placeat the Gallo Campus Hackathon 2026, built in 24 hours
One home for GDG
- The problem
- Over 100 members were hunting through chat threads and expired links to find events, slides, and how to join a project.
- What I did
- Ran user research to map where people got stuck, wrote a PRD with 15+ requirements and success metrics, and took a centralized club website from wireframes through engineering handoff to launch.
+40%member engagement, with 60% less time spent looking things up
Fewer dead ends at Tech4Good
- The problem
- Users at three client sites were dropping off partway through the app, and the team didn't know why.
- What I did
- Interviewed 50+ users and mapped their workflows to find 10+ friction points, then turned the findings into testable Figma prototypes. I also built the documentation system that eight designers and engineers use for handoff.
+18%user retention, with iteration cycles 30% shorter
Pathwise
- The problem
- Most people know their goals but not the month-by-month steps to get there.
- What I did
- On a team of three, built an AI agent that turns a plain-English financial profile into a monthly plan, using multi-step Claude reasoning, persistent memory, and live market rates. A Flask and Chart.js dashboard shows debt payoff and net worth over time.
24 hoursfrom idea to a working agent with live data
Also at UCSC
Teaching, budgets, and the communities I spend the rest of my week with.
Kode With KlossyAI/ML instructor assistant
Teach LLM workflows and model pipelines to 20+ students, and use their performance data to shape the curriculum.
Society of Asian Scientists and EngineersTreasurer
Closed the chapter's funding gap and keep an $8–10K annual budget fully accounted for.
Alpha Kappa PsiMember
Professional business fraternity at UC Santa Cruz.
Before college
Where I first learned to start things, lead people, and teach.
Bright MindsFounder and program director
Started a program teaching coding and math to underserved students.
Advocates for Equality ClubPresident
Grew membership 30% and expanded service to three local community centers.
FDA Horner Civics ProgramLead mentor
Guided students through civics projects and built lessons on government and policy.
Academic tutoringTutor
Tutored 50+ K–12 students in math and reading.
Awards
DECA Professional Selling, 1st place 2024
DECA ICDC qualifier 2024
DECA Food Marketing, 2nd place 2025
DECA Business Model, 3rd place 2021
Presidential Service Award, Bronze 2022, 2023
About me
I'm a student at UC Santa Cruz, double majoring in Technology Information Management and Cognitive Science. The combination is the point: one half is how systems and software get built, the other is how people think, decide, and get frustrated.
Most of my work starts the same way. I talk to the people doing a task, map where it breaks down, and write requirements that an engineering team can build from. More and more, the fix involves an AI agent doing the repetitive part. I'm looking for a Summer 2027 internship in product or program management.
Product
- User research
- PRDs and requirements
- Process mapping
- Success metrics
- A/B testing
- Figma
AI
- Claude API
- GPT-4o and Gemini
- LLM agents
- Prompt iteration
- Model evaluation
Code and data
- Python and Pandas
- SQL
- JavaScript
- Flask
- Git
- Excel and Google Sheets
Languages
- English
- Hindi
Let's work on something together.
I'm looking for Summer 2027 product and program management internships. Email is the fastest way to reach me.
sjain95@ucsc.edu