Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. IBM is hiring a Staff Product Manager to own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the core streaming analytics engine underlying Confluent's real-time data platform. The role spans storage, materialization, query serving, performance, and developer experience, and includes partnering with engineering, customers, and product teams to bring the engine to market.
Responsibilities
- Own the product strategy for Confluent's streaming analytics engine: storage, materialization, query serving, performance, and developer experience
- Develop competitive strategy against established real-time analytical databases, articulating Confluent's differentiated value as a streaming-native alternative
- Drive key architectural and product tradeoffs across consistency, latency, query performance, cost, and developer ergonomics
- Partner deeply with engineering to navigate the technical complexity of building a new cloud-native data system at scale
- Collaborate with peer product managers who own downstream experiences including AI, context delivery, and application integration, to ensure the engine meets the needs of the products built on it
- Work with customers and design partners to validate use cases across real-time analytics, operational applications, and AI, shaping the developer experience and refining go-to-market positioning
- Collaborate with Confluent's broader product and platform teams to ensure tight integration with Kafka, Flink, and Confluent Cloud
- Define success metrics, cost models, and pricing strategy for a new product area
- Influence Confluent's company-wide platform strategy through executive-level communication and cross-functional leadership
Skills
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of experience in product management or related technical roles
- 5+ years of experience taking technical infrastructure or data products from conception to launch
- Deep familiarity with real-time analytics, database internals, or streaming data platform architecture, either through product management or hands-on engineering
- Experience defining and launching products in the data infrastructure, analytics database, or stream processing space
- Strong technical judgment, comfortable navigating tradeoffs in distributed systems, storage engines, query performance, and cost optimization
- Track record of leading cross-functional initiatives with executive-level visibility and communicating technical strategy to senior leadership
- In order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship
- Engineering background in analytical databases, stream processing, or distributed storage systems
- Experience with real-time OLAP engines (e.g., ClickHouse, Apache Druid, StarRocks, Apache Pinot) as a builder, product manager, or power user
- Familiarity with Kafka, Flink, or similar streaming infrastructure
- Experience building products that serve AI/ML workloads for retrieval, feature serving, or context delivery
- Prior experience with cloud-native infrastructure products and consumption-based pricing models
- Experience working on open source data infrastructure projects
Benefits
- Remote work arrangement
- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage
- Opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs
- Paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform, including opportunities to grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications
- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups
- Giving & volunteer opportunities
- Discounts on retail products, services & experiences
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