Senior Product Manager, Cluster Linking

Job description

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: Cluster Linking is how Kafka clusters are replicated, and it sits at the very core of Confluent. When a global bank architects zero-data-loss disaster recovery, when an enterprise migrates petabytes off open-source Kafka, or when a multinational replicates event streams across three continents, they're running on Cluster Linking. This role will define the future of Cluster Linking: how we deliver seamless disaster recovery for Kafka workloads, how we build self-service migration paths into Confluent Cloud, and how we enable cross-organization data sharing to power real-time, operational data exchanges. Cluster Linking is one of Confluent's fastest-growing platform products and you'll own that growth. Our largest customers depend on it, and because it cuts across Kafka, cloud infrastructure, networking, and security, your work will have visibility and influence across the company. WHAT YOU WILL DO: - Launch and drive adoption for our one-click DR initiative. Take disaster recovery from a manually configured capability to a seamless, productized experience that customers can adopt with confidence. - Define the future of real-time stream sharing across organizations, including its security model, networking, access controls, and how it scales across organizations and use cases. - Power capabilities that let customers migrate to Confluent in a few clicks or API calls. Define the art of the possible and make the migration path a reason to choose Confluent. - Segment and re-package Cluster Linking. The product serves Disaster Recovery, migrations, data sharing, and cross-cloud replication, each with different customer needs and pricing dynamics. Define how we package, price, and position each so the offering works for customers and drives growth. - Partner closely with your engineering manager counterpart as a strategic partner. Use that partnership to understand tradeoffs, make decisions fast, and keep the product moving forward. - Work directly with customers. You'll be pulled in many directions, customers will ask a lot of you. Your job is to steer them toward the right architectures and models, get them excited about what's coming, listen to what they need next, and balance the present opportunity with where the product is headed. - Drive results. Run campaigns with sellers and solutions engineers, lead webinars, assemble teams of subject matter experts, and do what it takes to move your priorities forward. - Influence and energize the people around you. Confluent moves fast and people are ready to help. Harness that, get teams excited, rally cross-functional support, and turn organizational momentum into product momentum. WHAT YOU WILL BRING: - 5+ years of product management experience, ideally in infrastructure, data platforms, or cloud products. You've shipped technical products and driven measurable outcomes. - Genuine interest in distributed systems and cloud infrastructure. Kafka is not simple. You don't need prior Kafka expertise, but you need to be energized by technical depth, not put off by it. - A results-driven mindset. You don't wait for things to happen, you make them happen. You get on calls with sellers, you pull in the right people, and you keep pushing until the work is done. - Proven ability to influence. You get people excited and aligned, across engineering, field, sales, finance, and leadership, often without formal authority. - Strong ownership mentality. You take responsibility from day one. You drive ambiguous problems to clarity, remove blockers, and treat the product like your own business. - Business thinking beyond the backlog. You think about segmentation, packaging, pricing, and market impact, not just features. You understand that how a product is offered matters as much as what it does. - Clear communication. You can make technical topics understandable for executive audiences, write sharp product docs, and present confidently to customers and leadership. - LLM or GenAI knowledge is a bonus, but not required 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 http://ibm.com/careers/us-en/privacy-policy/.