Principal Product Manager, Kubernetes

At Aerospike, we dream big and deliver even bigger. Our mission is to unleash the power of the world’s real-time data with a database built for infinite scale, speed, and sustainability.

We empower companies to tackle seemingly insurmountable challenges and achieve what’s never been done before. That’s why we developed the world’s leading real-time database—powering mission-critical applications for the most innovative, category-disrupting organizations.

Aerospike enables extreme-scale, real-time applications that:

• Fight fraud in microseconds.
• Drive dramatic increases in shopping cart size.
• Power global digital payments.
• Deliver hyper-personalized user experiences to tens of millions.

Industry leaders like Airtel, Experian, Nielsen, PayPal, Snap, Verizon Media, and Wayfair trust Aerospike as the foundation for their future. They rely on us to act in the moments that matter.

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, Bangalore, and Tel Aviv, Aerospike is the uncontested leader in next-generation, always-on, hyperscale data solutions. Unlike legacy NoSQL systems, our patented Hybrid Memory Architecture unlocks today’s hardware to deliver unimaginable performance and value for the most demanding data workloads—from the edge, to the core, to the cloud.

If you're ready to shape the future of data, join us.

Reports To: Chief Product Officer

We’re hiring a Principal Product Manager to lead the strategy and roadmap for the Aerospike Kubernetes Operator (AKO) — a foundational part of how we deploy, operate, and scale Aerospike in Kubernetes environments. This is a high-impact IC role at the center of our product delivery model, touching both self-managed deployments and Aerospike Cloud.

AKO is already GA and widely adopted. It’s used extensively by enterprise customers in production and serves as the control plane for our managed cloud offering. Your job is to evolve it into a world-class Kubernetes Operator — with a clear roadmap, strong business alignment, and a focus on long-term quality and adoption.

Key Responsibilities

Product Ownership

• Own the end-to-end roadmap for the Aerospike Kubernetes Operator — including architectural direction, cross-product integration, and feature evolution.
• Ensure AKO continues to meet the needs of self-managed Kubernetes users while enabling Aerospike Cloud to scale reliably and predictably.
• Drive investment clarity by articulating what’s required to build and scale key features — including engineering scope, sequencing, and expected customer or business impact.
• Own and maintain business reporting for the product — including usage metrics, adoption trends, and roadmap visibility — and ensure stakeholders have a clear, up-to-date view of what’s planned and why.

Execution & Quality

• Work directly with engineering to define and deliver high-quality features — across deployment automation, lifecycle operations, upgrades, and observability.
• Hold a high bar for quality, security, and operational robustness — ensuring the Operator works across diverse customer environments, including hybrid and regulated infrastructure.
• Ensure documentation, onboarding, and configuration patterns are usable, discoverable, and production-ready.

Customer Engagement & Field Partnership

• Engage directly with enterprise customers, support teams, TAMs, and solution engineers to understand usage patterns, surface challenges, and prioritize improvements.
• Stay ahead of customer requests by anticipating needs based on deep engagement with platform teams and Kubernetes operators in the field.
• Partner with Cloud Platform, Support, and Customer Success to ensure AKO enables the broader Aerospike experience to scale cleanly.

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 5+ years of product management experience in developer infrastructure, cloud platforms, or enterprise software.
• Track record of delivering technical products used by engineering teams — with focus on orchestration, automation, or operational tooling.
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes — including core primitives like controllers, CRDs, Helm, RBAC, and multi-environment lifecycle management.

Skills

• Ability to work at depth with engineering while clearly articulating roadmap rationale, trade-offs, and resource needs to stakeholders.
• Comfortable with usage metrics and adoption data — able to frame business impact as part of product planning.
• Strong communicator, particularly across engineering, platform, and field teams. Comfortable managing a broad set of internal and external inputs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience managing Kubernetes Operators or similar cluster-level orchestration tools.
• Familiarity with hybrid cloud environments and enterprise IT constraints (e.g., network isolation, security policy, VPCs).
• Exposure to OSS project delivery models and lifecycle policies.

Why This Role Matters

The Aerospike Kubernetes Operator is a core part of how we deliver our product — across customer-managed infrastructure and Aerospike Cloud. It’s mission-critical, and it’s evolving fast.

This is a high-trust, high-accountability role focused on building and scaling a product that engineers depend on. You’ll own the roadmap, engage deeply with customers, drive clarity on investment, and make sure we’re always shipping something that moves us forward — not just something that works.

Aerospike is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing an environment free from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law