Staff Product Manager, Confluent Cloud Kafka

We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them. It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together. One Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform. About the Role: As a Staff Product Manager in the Cloud Kafka team at Confluent, you’ll contribute to the mission of building the world’s best event streaming platform. We are seeking an experienced and strategic Product Manager to lead the vision, strategy, and execution for our Kafka Operator experience. This role is critical to simplifying the deployment, management, and scaling of Confluent Cloud Kafka environments for our enterprise customers. The ideal candidate has a strong technical background in cloud systems, familiarity with the Apache Kafka ecosystem, and a proven track record of delivering successful developer and operator-focused products. Key responsibilities include defining and owning the product strategy and vision for the Cloud Kafka Operator, conducting market research and competitive analysis, translating strategic objectives into comprehensive product and user experience requirements, collaborating with Engineering, UX/UI Design, Documentation, Support, and Field teams throughout the product lifecycle, and working with Product marketing to define and execute go-to-market. What You Will Do: You’ll be responsible for the success of major product initiatives, from initial conception and customer development to growth strategy. You’ll become the trusted resource for your product, making sure that the engineering, design, sales, and marketing have what they need to make the right trade-offs, build the right product, and grow it successfully in the market. What You Will Bring: Minimum 8 years of experience as a software product manager, ideally for a developer product Empathy for our enterprise customers, and a passion for solving their problems with the software Ability to craft a product strategy and roadmap in concert with customers, engineering, design, and go-to-market teams Excellent communication skills, including the ability to distill technical concepts to a non-technical audience Strong technical competency, especially with distributed data systems, public and private clouds, and stream processing Experience with data sharing technologies is a plus Experience engaging with an open-source community is a plus Bachelor's, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related technical field Ready to build what's next? Let’s get in motion. Come As You Are Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law. Privacy Statement Confluent is an IBM subsidiary which has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization. By proceeding with this application, you understand that Confluent will share your personal information with other IBM affiliates involved in your recruitment process, wherever these are located. More Information on how IBM protects your personal information, including the safeguards in case of cross-border data transfer, are available here .