Confluent - Senior Product Manager, Cloud Networking

Introduction At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You'll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM's product and technology landscape. Here, you'll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world. Your Role and Responsibilities About the Role: Confluent Cloud delivers a complete end-to-end streaming experience via a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. To deliver a simple, understandable, and scalable product experience requires abstracting the complex interactions of underlying cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, and compute powering a stateful distributed system. As a Senior Product Manager on the Cloud Networking Product team, you'll contribute to the mission of making connectivity to and from Confluent Cloud reliable, scalable, secure, cost efficient and simple to use so that users can focus on building streaming applications instead of managing infrastructure. Cloud networking with focus on private networking is an enabler for all services offered on Confluent Cloud and is a strategic investment area for Confluent with the potential to impact the company's top and bottom lines. You'll be responsible for the success of major product initiatives, from initial conception to execution and launch. 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 tradeoffs, build the right product, and grow it successfully in the market. What You Will Do: * Understand our users: Conduct interviews and analyze data to define personas, user journeys, and key jobs to be done. * Drive crucial aspects of Confluent Cloud Network Roadmap supporting Confluent Cloud services like Kafka, Flink, Connectors, Data Governance, etc with a heavy focus on user experience and cost efficiency. * Define flexible interfaces powering API, CLI and Terraform, data models, and processes and launch a variety of new network options and rapidly iterate on existing ones * Be responsible for the whole lifecycle: Drive multi-team, cross-functional initiatives from conception through initial delivery and ongoing iteration after launch. * Close the loop: Define quantitative and qualitative targets, measure performance against them, share results with stakeholders, and incorporate those learnings into the product. * Manage complexity: Deliver value while handling the surprises and challenges of a quickly evolving product, ambitious partnership targets, and a rapidly growing organization. Required Skills * 5+ years of experience as a Product Manager with focus on cloud technologies. * Experience building and supporting enterprise-grade products as a product manager, engineer or solutions architect. * Experience building, writing, maintaining and defending a clear product roadmap and backlog backed by user stories and customer research. * Excellent analytical, communication & collaboration skills. * Ability to build relationships with co-workers and customers located around the world. * Demonstrated ability to drive business outcomes through product changes. Preferred Skills * 6+ years of experience in Networking in a PM or technical role * Experience with enabling AWS/Azure/Google Cloud Platform private networking features such as Private Link, VPC Peering, Transit Gateway, etc for a SaaS product. * Experience with Envoy, Service Mesh, DNS and Kubernetes Networking. * Experience with network traffic metering and billing. * Domain expertise in networking technologies combined with Product Management experience. An MBA degree is a plus. Additional Details (US) IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to: - 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, and 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. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law - Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals - Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law. This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role. Compensation, Benefits and Work Authorization The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year. IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.