Senior Product Manager, Confluent
Cluster Linking
CA$163.9-192.6k
Offers equity
Data streaming platform
Posted today
Data streaming platform
1001+ employees
Posted today
CA$163.9-192.6k
Offers equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help every organization harness data in motion so they can compete and thrive in the modern world.
Role
Who you are
- 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
What the job involves
- 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
- 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
Our take
Confluent is a commercial company built on top of the open-source Apache Kafka project. Confluent and Kafka have developed a streaming data technology that processes massive amounts of information in real-time. The streaming database technology was developed at LinkedIn as a way of moving massive amounts of messages. The company decided to open-source that tech in 2011, and Confluent launched as the commercial arm in 2014.
While the base open-source component remains available for free download, it doesn’t include the additional tooling the company has built to make it easier for enterprises to use Kafka. Confluent's value add is in those additional tools, including a cloud version of the product and a marketplace for sharing extensions to the platform.
Confluent expanded strategic partnerships with Microsoft and acquired Immerok, and in 2023 expanded its cloud platform. 2024 saw further product expansions with the launch of the Confluent Migration Accelerator, all exemplifying how the company is living up to its name by rocket-boosting the benefits of Apache Kafka integration for companies.
Now, it looks like IBM is eyeing the company for acquisition and Confluent looks to be a natural fit. Long positioned as the real-time backbone behind modern application, Confluent would gain global scale and an even deeper enterprise reach under iBM, while cementing its role at the center of AI-driven architectures. For COnfluent, the deal would marka shift from fast-growing independent disruptor to foundational infrastructure player powering the next wave of enterprise AI.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Apr 2020
$250m
SERIES E
Jan 2019
$125m
SERIES D
Total funding: $455.9m
Company HQ
Old Mountain View, Mountain View, CA
Leadership
Jay Kreps
(Co-Founder & CEO)Prior to co-founding Confluent in 2014, Jay spent 7 years at LinkedIn, holding various roles including Principal Engineer and Principal Staff Engineer.
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