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Director, Product Management

New York, NY; San Mateo, CA
 

 

 

Category-defining tech. Career-defining work.

Lots of tech companies disrupt. But, many fail when they try to scale. We're different. CockroachDB makes it easier for companies to build and scale apps. This is how and why we're helping some of the most innovative companies on the planet. We tackle problems head-on and focus on solutions that create lasting impact. 

Because when our customers win, we all win. 

 

The Role

The Director of Product Management at Cockroach Labs is a senior product leader who owns end-to-end user journeys across Cockroach Labs’ Products. This is a player-coach role: hands-on enough to set the standard for great PM craft, and senior enough to build and develop a high-performing team of Product Managers.

This leader brings deep customer obsession, strategic clarity, and a relentless drive to improve user outcomes at every stage of the developer lifecycle — from onboarding and activation through scale, observability, and governance. They operate with an AI-first mindset, using intelligence as a force multiplier for both the product they build and the craft of product management itself. We seek someone who leads with evidence, listens with empathy, and creates the kind of clarity that lets teams move fast with purpose.

What You'll Own

  • Own the product strategy and portfolio of investments across your journeys, making explicit tradeoffs across user segments, product surfaces, and time horizons, while balancing investments across different deployment options.
  • The picture of success for your area: a North Star metric plus leading and lagging indicators that reflect real user progress, not feature output
  • A team of Product Managers (Staff PMs and/or Senior PMs) — their development, accountability, and craft
  • Deep customer and journey discovery: qualitative and quantitative, continuous and structured
  • Clear, concise Outcome Briefs (3 pages or less) anchored in WHAT, WHY, and WHO — not feature specs
  • A living (now/next/later) roadmap that reflects reality, tradeoffs, and strategic focus
  • The PM operating rhythm for your area: weekly triads, biweekly roadmap syncs, monthly insights reviews, and quarterly planning and reflection

What You'll Do

Strategy & Execution

  • Define a clear product vision for your journeys that connects user problems to business outcomes, and translate it into a 12-month strategy and 90-day outcome bets
  • Drive evidence-based prioritization using frameworks like RICE and customer signals — making tradeoffs explicit, not implicit
  • Balance short-term fixes with long-term bets, ensuring the team is always working on the highest-leverage problems
  • Partner with Engineering on feasibility and tradeoffs — owning the WHAT and WHY; Engineering owns the HOW

Customer & Journey Obsession

  • Establish an ongoing rhythm of customer engagement: calls, support ticket review, field shadowing, and journey shadowing sessions
  • Define Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) and user personas across your journeys — developers, DBAs, SREs, platform engineers, AI engineers
  • Use AI to synthesize qualitative feedback, support tickets, and telemetry at scale — surfacing patterns, not just data points
  • Maintain a product backlog grounded in validated, quantified pain points

Team & Craft Development

  • Mentor and develop PM talent — elevating the consistency of craft, accountability, and outcomes across your team
  • Foster a culture of curiosity, continuous learning, and customer-first thinking
  • Set the bar for what great PM work looks like: Outcome Briefs that become models of clarity, roadmaps others want to follow, and insights that shape company decisions

Cross-Functional Leadership

  • Drive alignment across Engineering, Design, Docs, Field, and GTM — building shared context, not just shared calendars
  • Partner with PMM and GTM to craft compelling launch narratives and post-launch success stories
  • Influence through data, clarity, and narrative — not title or escalation

AI-First Product Development

  • Identify opportunities to embed AI across user journeys — from schema design to observability to operational intelligence
  • Define AI Evals and measurable AI metrics for every AI-powered feature from day one
  • Embed AI tools in your team's day-to-day workflows: discovery, spec writing, synthesis, and roadmap planning

The Expectations

First 30 Days

  • Deeply understand our user journeys, the Developer Lifecycle framework, and the product areas you'll own
  • Meet your direct reports, Engineering partners, and cross-functional stakeholders across Field, Support, Design, and GTM
  • Participate fully in the PM operating rhythm — triads, journey reviews, and prototype reviews
  • Get grounded in the current roadmap, active bets, and near-term priorities

First 90 Days

  • Fully own your user journeys — running rituals, driving prioritization, and setting clear success criteria
  • Deliver your first Outcome Briefs, Journey Maps, and an updated now/next/later roadmap
  • Develop an informed hypothesis on the highest-impact investments for your area and socialize it with your manager and key partners
  • Identify and close gaps in customer discovery, telemetry visibility, or cross-functional alignment
  • Establish a clear development cadence with your team — 1:1s, growth conversations, and shared expectations

You Have

  • 8-12+ years of experience in Product Management, with 3-5+ years in leadership roles managing PMs
  • Proven experience in database, infrastructure, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or distributed systems products
  • A track record of elevating PM craft and team output — not just managing headcount
  • Deep fluency in user journey thinking — owning end-to-end experiences across multiple surfaces (UI, CLI/API, Docs)
  • Strong evidence-based decision-making: you use telemetry, NPS, RICE, and customer research — not instinct alone
  • Excellent written communication — our strategic product meetings rely on written docs, not slides
  • Demonstrated ability to drive cross-functional alignment through influence, data, and clarity
  • An AI-first mindset: in how you think about product experiences and how you operate day-to-day
  • Experience working in a SaaS, enterprise software, or open-core business model preferred

The Team

  • Reporting to Igor Stanko, VP of Product, you will lead the Product Management team and serve as a key member of the R&D leadership group.

Cockroach Labs is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you need additional accommodations to feel comfortable during your interview process, please email us at accessibility@cockroachlabs.com.

Cockroach Labs has a hybrid work model, with Roachers that are local to one of our offices coming in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and working flexibly the rest of the week. While we’ve learned valuable lessons working remotely, nothing can replace the connection, creativity, and fun that occurs when Roachers get together and we are committed to fostering a workplace that encourages collaboration and allows us all to do our best work.

Benefits

  • Stock Options
  • Medical Insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Life and Disability Insurance
  • Professional Development Funds
  • Flexible Time Off
  • Paid Holidays
  • Paid Sick Days
  • Paid Parental Leave
  • Retirement Benefits
  • Mental Wellbeing Benefits
  • And more!

The annual anticipated base salary range for U.S. candidates for this role is listed in USD below. Salary is one component of the Cockroach Labs’ Total Rewards package, which also includes, for each employee: stock options, medical insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, life and disability insurance, funds towards professional development resources, flexible paid time off, 11 paid holidays a year, 10 paid sick days a year, paid parental leave, a 401(k) plan, and wellbeing benefits.  

We set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. Actual salaries may vary and fall outside of this range depending on factors such as a candidate’s qualifications, geographic location, skills, experience, and competencies. In addition, we are often open to a wide variety of profiles, and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted. 

Salaries for candidates outside the U.S. will vary based on local compensation structures. 

This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our Careers Page.

Annual Anticipated Base Salary Range (U.S)

$270,000 - $358,200 USD

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