Confluent - Staff Product Manager, Cloud Networking

IBM
IBM

Product

Remote

Posted on Sep 10, 2026
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

Confluent's Cloud Networking team is responsible for making connectivity to and from Confluent Cloud reliable, scalable, secure, cost-efficient, and simple to use — across Kafka, Flink, Connectors, Data Governance, and Tableflow, on AWS, Azure, and GCP.

As Staff PM for Cloud Networking, you will own the platform strategy for how enterprises connect to Confluent Cloud. This is not a feature-level role — you will define the architecture of our networking product surface across all clouds and connection models, set the multi-year roadmap, and operate as a co-decision-maker alongside engineering leadership on the technical direction of the platform. You will work across all networking connection types — PrivateLink, VNet peering, Transit Gateway, Private Service Connect, and egress optimization — and drive alignment across engineering, field, and executive stakeholders on what we build and why.

What You Will Do:

• Own the platform strategy for Confluent Cloud Networking across AWS, Azure, and GCP, defining the north star, multi-year roadmap, and sequencing of bets that balance customer connectivity needs, cost efficiency, security posture, and engineering leverage.

• Define frameworks and standards that other PMs, designers, and engineers use to evaluate networking decisions, including connection model selection criteria, cost attribution models, security control frameworks, and launch readiness standards.

• Drive architectural decisions in partnership with engineering leadership, weighing trade-offs between user experience, cost, and operational complexity.

• Expand scope and create optionality by identifying adjacent areas the team should move into, such as network observability, cost transparency tooling, and next-generation isolation models, and building the business case for investment.

• Develop the product team by mentoring Senior PMs, providing feedback on product documents and roadmap thinking, and raising the bar on customer research and decision-making.

• Build senior stakeholder alignment across product, engineering, sales, field, legal, and security organizations, then present the platform vision to executive leadership to secure organizational investment. Develop compelling business cases, clearly communicate trade-offs, and earn commitment for multi-year platform bets.

• Define and own success metrics at the platform level, connecting technical milestones to business outcomes including revenue, retention, attach rates, and infrastructure cost efficiency.

• Engage directly with strategic customers and prospects, representing the product roadmap with credibility in technical conversations with enterprise CTOs, architects, and network engineers.

Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise

• 8+ years of product management experience, with at least 3 years owning a cloud infrastructure, platform, or networking product.

• Demonstrated track record of setting product strategy and roadmap at a platform or portfolio level, not just feature-level delivery.

• Deep fluency in cloud networking concepts, including PrivateLink, VNet peering, Transit Gateway, Private Service Connect, DNS, security groups, CIDR/IP management, and the trade-offs across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

• Experience owning products that serve enterprise customers with complex compliance, security, and connectivity requirements.

• Proven ability to partner with engineering leadership as a co-decision-maker on architectural direction, rather than simply translating engineering output.

• Strong analytical foundation with the ability to model unit economics, build business cases with cost and risk sensitivity, and measure platform health through leading and lagging indicators.

• Practices AI-native product management by using AI tools as a true thought partner throughout the product lifecycle, including research, prioritization, specification writing, and analytics. Demonstrates sound judgment on when to use, override, and validate AI-generated outputs, while also designing products, features, and APIs that are composable, observable, and easy for AI agents and automation to consume.

• Experience developing Product Managers and raising the bar on product thinking through direct mentorship, feedback, and team processes.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience with Envoy, Service Mesh, DNS, and Kubernetes networking.

• Familiarity with Terraform, API-first development, infrastructure-as-code workflows, and the networking automation practices used by enterprise engineering teams.

• Exposure to network traffic metering, data transfer billing attribution, cost transparency tooling, or pricing and packaging strategy for cloud infrastructure products, including defining packaging tiers, price points, and commercial models for enterprise buyers.

• Experience operating in a product-led growth (PLG) or usage-based pricing environment.

• MBA degree is a plus.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence—from machine learning to generative AI—to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM’s AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments—a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

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.

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.

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.

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