Principal Product Manager, Elastic
OpenTelemetry, Observability, App SDKs
$159.8-303.5k
Salary applicable for US candidates, may vary in other locations + Stock program
Open source platform powering search, observability, security, and more
Job no longer available
Open source platform powering search, observability, security, and more
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$159.8-303.5k
Salary applicable for US candidates, may vary in other locations + Stock program
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help turn endless data possibilities into real results with the power of Search AI.
Role
Who you are
- An OTel Enthusiast: You are passionate about OpenTelemetry and a true believer in open standards. You don't just know what OTel is; you've used it, you understand its components (APIs, SDKs, Collector, OTLP), and you have strong opinions about its future
- A Technical Product Leader: You have 3+ years of product management experience, ideally with a highly technical, API-driven, or developer-focused product. You are comfortable diving deep into architecture diagrams and code samples with engineers
- A Former Practitioner (or have the approach): You have hands-on experience in the observability world. Maybe you were an SRE, a DevOps Engineer, a Software Developer, or a Solutions Architect who spent years instrumenting and monitoring complex, distributed systems
- Customer-Obsessed: You think in terms of user journeys and experiences, not just features. You have a consistent track record of turning customer insights into a successful product roadmap
- An Outstanding Communicator: You can effortlessly shift from a high-level strategic discussion with executives to a deeply technical debate with engineers. Your written communication is clear, concise, and compelling
- A Community-Minded Collaborator: You thrive with working with cross-functional teams and understand the nuances of contributing to and working with open-source communities
Desirable
- You have experience contributing directly to an open-source project (especially OpenTelemetry) or have deep familiarity with the Elastic Stack, Datadog, or other major observability vendors
What the job involves
- As the Principal Product Manager for OpenTelemetry Instrumentation, you will lead the most fundamental part of our customer's journey: the first mile
- You will be responsible for crafting a world-class developer experience for instrumenting applications, services, and infrastructure using OpenTelemetry
- Your role is to make data collection so seamless that it feels like magic, enabling our customers to unlock the full power of our observability platform
- This is a high-impact, deeply technical product role at the intersection of open source, developer experience, and business strategy
- You will be our voice and our ears within the OpenTelemetry community, shaping the future of the standard while simultaneously defining the direction for our OTel-native SDKs, exporters, collectors, and documentation
- You are dedicated to the developer workflow, obsessing over everything from our "Getting Started" guides to the performance overhead of our instrumentation libraries
- Own the Vision & Strategy: Define and evangelize the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for our entire OpenTelemetry instrumentation experience, ensuring it aligns with our broader observability goals and the evolving OTel landscape
- Champion the Developer: Live in the shoes of our users. Engage deeply with developers, SREs, and platform engineers through interviews, community channels, and analytics to understand their struggles and build solutions they love
- Lead in the Open: Be an active and influential member of the OpenTelemetry community. Participate in SIGs (Special Interest Groups), contribute to specifications, and build relationships to ensure our platform is the best place to send OTel data
- Drive Execution: Work hand-in-hand with our brilliant engineering, design, and developer relations teams to translate user needs into clear requirements, scope compelling features, and drive them from inception to a successful launch
- Define Success: Establish and analyze Key Performance Indicators focused on instrumentation adoption, time-to-value, ease-of-use, and data quality to ensure your product is delivering real impact
- Enable the Ecosystem: Collaborate with marketing, sales, and solution architects to craft differentiated messaging and technical content that clearly articulates the value of using OpenTelemetry with our platform
- Be the Expert: Serve as the internal and external spokesperson for our OpenTelemetry Instrumentation strategy, presenting at conferences, webinars, and customer meetings
Our take
Organizations are dealing with exploding data volumes increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, and the growing expectation tha ttechnology should help act on problems, not just report them. Ai is moving from experimentation into real operations, especially in security and observability where speed and context are critical. So now, both enterprises and governments are looking for simpler, shared platforms that sale easily and reduce complexity rather than add to it.
And Elastic sits at the intersection of these needs with its Search AI Platform that helps organizations turn large amounts of structured and unstructured data into clear insights and actiontions across search, security, and observability. Elastic's strength lies in its open, flexible approach, which breaks down data silos and provides a context people and AI systems need to make daster, better decisions. The goal is straightforward: help teams see what's happening, understand it quickly, and respond confidently.
Recently, the company worked with CISA to deliver a unified, cloud-based SIEM for US federal agencies, this highlights strong trust in Elastic's security and scalability. Alongside this, its AWS Agentic AI Specialization also reflects leadership in making autonomous AI system practical and reliable. Together, these milestones position Elastic well for the future, as organizations increasingly rely on shared platforms and intelligent systems to manage ris, complexity, and growth.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
8% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jul 2016
$58m
SERIES D
Jun 2014
$70m
SERIES C
Total funding: $162m
Company benefits
- Toast to your health: Fully paid health coverage for you and your family, in many locations.
- Craft your calendar: Flexible location and schedule for most roles.
- Create space for you: Distributed by design workforce, plus generous number of vacation days each year.
- Embrace parenthood: Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave, plus generous family formation benefits.
- Give back your time: 40 hours each year to use toward volunteering with organizations and causes you’re passionate about.
- Amplify your impact: Double your charitable giving — we match donations up to $1500 USD (or local currency equivalent).
Company HQ
Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Ashutosh Kulkarni
(CEO)Ashutosh joined Elastic in 2021 as CPO, becoming CEO in 2022. Prior to this, he was an EVP and CPO of Enterprise at McAfee, a Senior VP and GM of Web Performance and Web Security at Akamai Technologies, and a Senior VP and GM of Informatica Cloud at Informatica.
Shay Banon
(Co-Founder & CTO)Shay co-founded Elastic in 2012 and has served as the CTO since.
Navam Welihinda
(CFO)Prior to joining Elastic in 2025, Navam was the CFO at Grammarly. He also spent nearly 8 years at HashiCorp as VP of Finance and CFO and was the Head of Finance, Compose at IBM for 1 year.
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