Senior Product Manager Cloud Research Platform

Location: Washington, DC
Work Arrangement: 100% Onsite Day 1
Duration: 3 Months
Employment Type: Contract

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Senior Product Manager to lead the strategy, development, and delivery of a cloud-based research computing platform.

The ideal candidate will have a strong technical product management background combined with hands-on experience working with cloud infrastructure and modern platform engineering practices. This individual will work closely with engineering, architecture, security, data, researchers, and business stakeholders to define product strategy, prioritize capabilities, and deliver scalable enterprise platform solutions.

Candidates with only project or program management experience and no technical product management background will not be considered.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Minimum 6 years of technical product management experience.
• At least 4 years of direct experience working with cloud infrastructure, including AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, in a product or engineering capacity.
• Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure and services, including:
  • Compute
  • Storage
  • Networking
  • Security
  • Containers
  • Orchestration
• Hands-on experience with cloud-based system design and architecture.
• Strong understanding of platform engineering principles, including:
  • CI/CD
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
  • Observability
  • Monitoring
• Strong understanding of modern AI-based development workflows.
• Proven track record of taking enterprise or research-focused products from concept through launch.
• Experience collaborating with security and compliance teams on:
  • Data governance
  • Access controls
  • Risk assessments
  • Security and compliance reviews
• Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, security, data, business, and end-user stakeholders.
• Experience defining product strategy and roadmaps for enterprise platforms.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to effectively communicate with technical, non-technical, and executive stakeholders.
• Experience with academic or research-based workflows is highly preferred.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end product strategy and roadmap for a cloud-based platform supporting research and data-intensive workloads.
• Partner with researchers and end users across multiple business functions to understand requirements and translate them into clear product specifications and priorities.
• Develop a deep understanding of user needs, pain points, workflows, and use cases to drive product prioritization and solution development.
• Partner with architecture, cloud engineering, enterprise data, security, and platform delivery teams to design and develop secure, scalable platform capabilities.
• Ensure platform solutions meet user needs while maintaining appropriate data governance, security, and access controls.
• Lead product discovery activities, including:
  • User research
  • Journey mapping
  • Workflow analysis
  • Requirements gathering
  • Solution discovery
• Drive cross-functional alignment and maintain accountability for timely delivery of product outcomes.
• Balance short-term delivery priorities with long-term platform strategy and scalability.
• Define product success metrics and continuously measure, evaluate, and improve the platform using usage data and user feedback.
• Manage stakeholder expectations and establish effective processes for communicating product information, decisions, risks, and progress.
• Clearly communicate product vision, roadmap, progress, priorities, and trade-offs to technical, business, and executive stakeholders.
• Collaborate with engineering and technical teams to ensure product requirements are translated into effective technical solutions.
• Support continuous product improvement based on user feedback, analytics, and evolving business needs.

Preferred Experience

• Experience supporting academic, scientific, economic, or research-oriented workflows.
• Experience building cloud platforms for enterprise or data-intensive environments.
• Experience working with highly regulated or security-sensitive data.
• Experience with modern AI/ML development environments and tooling.
• Experience delivering internal developer platforms, research computing platforms, or enterprise cloud platforms.