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Dara Afraz

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About

Dara Afraz

Senior PM, BeyondAI — industrial AI, agentic systems, Tier 1 energy operators

I am a senior product manager with more than twelve years of experience building products, platforms, and AI systems alongside scholars and domain experts at UCLA, NASA, DoD, and Caltech. I have also been involved in engagements and projects with Fortune 500 clients such as Aramco and BP.

Today I lead the Industrial AI workstream within Product at BeyondAI. We focus on industrial AI—including anomaly detection—as well as conversational UIs, agentification, and industrial workflows. Earlier in my career I worked on EdTech focused on cognition and perceptual learning.

Writing: daraafraz.substack.com

Dara Afraz
Fig. 01 — Portrait

Experience

Two eras, one career—split at the public launch of ChatGPT. Overnight, product work rewired from bespoke ML and careful UX toward foundation models, agents, and operator trust at industrial scale.

B.C. / A.C. = Before Chat / After Chat (a wink at the usual calendar abbreviations).

B.C.

Before Chat

Research platforms, government programs, adaptive learning—when "AI" usually meant custom pipelines and domain-heavy interfaces, long before chat became the default surface everywhere.

  1. September 2013 — December 2022

    Product & Design Leadership – Government & Research Systems

    UCLA Psychology Department & Insight Learning Technology

    9 years leading product development for learning technology platforms serving NASA, DoD, and research institutions (Caltech, UCLA, AAA Foundation):

    • Shipped training systems for NASA technologists and DoD educators
    • Led technical product management for adaptive learning platforms deployed across government and academic research environments
    • Managed cross-functional teams through complex R&D-to-production transitions

A.C.

After Chat

Industrial AI at BeyondAI—knowledge bases, RAG, symbolic agents, and mission-critical UIs where operators still have to trust what the model implies.

  1. June 2024 — Present

    Senior Product Manager – Platform & Agentic AI

    BeyondAI

    Leading product development for AI-powered industrial systems serving Fortune 500 energy and manufacturing clients:

    • Lead development of anomaly detection systems deployed in process-critical industrial environments, improving operational safety and reducing unplanned downtime
    • Architect RAG-enabled knowledge bases serving operational decision-making for energy sector clients
    • Design symbolic agent workflows and agentification patterns for industrial operations
    • Establish cross-functional alignment across engineering, operations, and commercial teams on multi-year product roadmaps
    • Define success metrics and KPIs for measuring operational impact in safety-critical deployments

  2. December 2022 — December 2024

    Product Design Lead – Knowledge-Base Operations Initiative

    BeyondAI

    • Designed and shipped knowledge management systems enabling faster operational decision-making
    • Led R&D partnership with Caltech on autonomous racing program (Indy Autonomous Challenge)
    • Delivered ground station UI for real-time telemetry and vehicle performance monitoring at 200+ mph
    • Translated research prototypes into operator-centric mission-critical interfaces

Get in touch

dara@dara.pm

Resume — available on request.