Senior Product Manager

Job description

Vectara provides an Agent Platform that allows organizations to rapidly create AI applications that are grounded in the context from their data and knowledge. Our end-to-end platform provides critical capabilities required for enterprise adoption: high accuracy even with incredibly complex data, powerful agent harness, comprehensive observability, ability to run in any environment (cloud, VPC, on-premise), and a flexible security model. We build AI for doing. We are passionate about helping users take advantage of breakthroughs in applied AI to solve problems and get stuff done. Our team is a group of unquestionable all-stars in their respective fields of computer science, design, and business. We are curious and always learning. Join us in our mission to help the world find meaning through trusted Generative AI. ## Role Overview: Vectara is looking for a Senior Product Manager based in Palo Alto to bridge the gap between our technical capabilities and our commercial success. As our leading PM, you will navigate the space between Product, Sales, and Engineering, translate market signals into a concrete roadmap, continuously refine our competitive edge, and align our go-to-market strategy with our product direction. You will leverage your sales acumen to anticipate the needs of your colleagues in the field and keep them armed with what they require to be successful. You will rely on your technical expertise to deeply understand our product and how customers use it to drive value. You will maintain a strong, collaborative relationship with Engineering and ML to maximize the impact of their work on roadmap delivery and customer success. As a Product Manager for a customer-obsessed company, you will relentlessly focus on the customer, framing everything in terms of the value we provide to them. ## Responsibilities: - **Product Strategy & Execution**: You’ll be responsible for the success of priority initiatives, from initial concept to market delivery. You will align our long-term company goals with customer requirements and competitive trends. - **Product Roadmap**: You will maintain a roadmap that is compelling to customers and exciting to the market. You’ll strike the right balance between tactical customer needs, competitive differentiation, sellability, and product vision. - **Customer Engagement**: You will be the product lead in key customer conversations and discovery sessions. You’ll validate our value proposition in real-time and communicate our product direction with authority. You’ll be responsible for ensuring fruitful design partner engagements, driving the process when needed. - **Competitive Intelligence**: Maintain an expert-level understanding of the AI landscape, especially around agents. You will turn these insights into actionable product decisions and sharper positioning for our sales team. - **Commercial Strategy**: Contribute to our packaging and pricing models as they evolve. You’ll help define value metrics and pricing approaches that balance revenue acceleration with margins, while acknowledging practical sales realities. - **Product Definition**: Maintain a problem-oriented product development process, first developing a deep understanding of the customer problem, then identifying a solution space, selecting options, weighting tradeoffs, and working jointly to find the best solution that achieves the goal within the constraints. - **Cross-Functional Alignment**: Serve as the primary point of coordination between internal teams, ensuring stakeholders are updated and aligned. You will ensure that product launches are well-supported with all required assets, that Marketing is saying the right thing, that Sales is selling the product the right way, and that Field Engineering effectively handles the customer feature requests. - **Market Engagement**: Effectively participate in our Analyst Relations program by influencing analysts in our favor and leveraging them for insights. Participate regularly in Field Marketing events, sharing the Vectara story. ## Qualifications: - 7+ years in Product Management (or equivalent experience) in B2B SaaS / enterprise software; meaningful experience working on AI/ML/Data products strongly preferred. - Located near Palo Alto and able to participate in customer meetings in-person when needed; comfortable representing our product and company externally. - Strong business and GTM instincts and experience shaping strategy, packaging, and pricing. You understand how products are sold and adopted in enterprise contexts. - You’re technical enough to collaborate effectively with engineers and AI teams. You can discuss concepts like agent harnesses, retrieval, embeddings, evaluation, hallucinations, latency, devops, and deployment models. - Track record of driving cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing. - Articulate and clear communicator when writing and speaking. You’re able to reframe the same idea in various ways to suit an audience and can succinctly summarize complex ideas. - You’re scrappy and tenacious. You’ll always find a way to accomplish a goal. You don’t accept failure. - Comfortable operating in ambiguity. You can create structure, prioritize ruthlessly, and keep teams moving without perfect information. - Bonus: familiarity with semiconductor / hardware-adjacent industries or enterprise buyers (e.g., manufacturing, regulated industries). - Bonus: prior experience in competitive markets against modern AI startups, search, knowledge management, or enterprise platforms. Salary is just one component of Vectara’s employee compensation. Our full-time employees are also equity owners in the company, which although not an immediate cash component, can have positive impacts on long-term total compensation for each participating employee. We would be remiss if we didn’t highlight and celebrate our focus on engaging many of our employees in being economic co-owners of the business. Vectara welcomes all. We value the collective wisdom of people from different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. We never discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. Vectara has a positive and supportive culture—we look for people who are inventive and work to be a little better every single day. We seek to be smart, humble, hardworking and, above all, curious. After all, we are on a mission to find meaning. ## Perks and Benefits: 100% paid Medical, Dental, Vision for employees. Option of Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Savings Account (FSA). Generous paid time off (PTO) plus paid sick time and holidays. Professional development and training opportunities. A supportive, caring company culture that treats each team member with respect and empathy.