Principal Product Manager, Kubernetes

Aerospike is the real-time database for mission-critical use cases and workloads, including machine learning, generative, and agentic AI. Aerospike powers millions of transactions per second with millisecond latency, at a fraction of the total cost of ownership compared to other databases.

Global leaders, including Adobe, Airtel, Barclays, Criteo, DBS Bank, Experian, Grab, HDFC Bank, PayPal, Sony Interactive Entertainment, The Trade Desk, and Wayfair, rely on Aerospike for customer 360, fraud detection, real-time bidding, profile stores, recommendation engines, and other use cases. 

 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.

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

In Bengaluru we follow hybrid models with expectation of  two days’ work from office.

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