A man wearing glasses, a blue checkered blazer, and a light blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, sitting with arms crossed against a plain gray background.

I’m Rob Padilla and I lead teams building AI-powered products for B2B scientific R&D. I’m currently Director of Product Management at Springer Nature, where I own the P&L for our €16M Digital Life Science Solutions portfolio. I lead a global product team distributed across the UK, Germany, and India.

Before product, a decade as a chemistry researcher with a Ph.D. in chemistry from Berkeley and as a scientist at BASF. I then pivoted to be a technical editor at Thieme and Wiley before my first product role in the materials science space.

This site is where the longer stories of my work live: the case studies, the lessons, the bets that worked, and the ones that didn't.

Expertise and Experience

Accelerating scientific R&d

Ex-chemistry researcher and technical editor leading digital product teams delivering solutions for lab researchers

artificial intelligence

Extensive experience with AI products and platforms: ontologies, knowledge graphs, and generative AI systems

Serving Global markets

Extensive B2B experience serving top tier academic and corporate R&D organizations in the physical and life sciences

people management

Managing, coaching, and developing talent; actively involved in the product management community

Empowered product management

Successfully implementing product operating models - continuous discovery and delivery, product trios, and OKRs

leadership

Serving on business unit leadership teams to create successful product visions and strategies