Staff Product Manager (Real Time Data Analytics Platform)

As a Staff Product Manager, you’ll own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the core streaming analytics engine underlying Confluent’s real-time data platform

This system sits at the intersection of stream processing, real-time analytical databases, and modern serving infrastructure, continuously transforming data in motion into low-latency, queryable materialized views that power AI agents, dashboards, operational queries, and event-driven applications

You’ll own the engine: the storage, materialization, query layer, and performance, while partnering with peer product managers who own the downstream product experiences built on top of it

This is a foundational, high-leverage role. You’ll define a new product category that brings together concepts from streaming analytics, real-time OLAP, materialized views, and modern database systems into a cloud-native, streaming-first architecture

You’ll partner directly with engineering, design, and senior leadership to bring this to market and position Confluent as a compelling alternative to standalone real-time analytical databases

Own the product strategy for Confluent’s streaming analytics engine: storage, materialization, query serving, performance, and developer experience

Develop competitive strategy against established real-time analytical databases, articulating Confluent’s differentiated value as a streaming-native alternative

Drive key architectural and product tradeoffs across consistency, latency, query performance, cost, and developer ergonomics

Partner deeply with engineering to navigate the technical complexity of building a new cloud-native data system at scale

Collaborate with peer product managers who own downstream experiences including AI, context delivery, and application integration, to ensure the engine meets the needs of the products built on it

Work with customers and design partners to validate use cases across real-time analytics, operational applications, and AI, shaping the developer experience and refining go-to-market positioning

Collaborate with Confluent’s broader product and platform teams to ensure tight integration with Kafka, Flink, and Confluent Cloud

Define success metrics, cost models, and pricing strategy for a new product area

Influence Confluent’s company-wide platform strategy through executive-level communication and cross-functional leadership- Strong technical judgment, comfortable navigating tradeoffs in distributed systems, storage engines, query performance, and cost optimization

8+ years of experience in product management or related technical roles

Experience defining and launching products in the data infrastructure, analytics database, or stream processing space

Deep familiarity with real-time analytics, database internals, or streaming data platform architecture, either through product management or hands-on engineering

Track record of leading cross-functional initiatives with executive-level visibility and communicating technical strategy to senior leadership

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

5+ years of experience taking technical infrastructure or data products from conception to launch

Engineering background in analytical databases, stream processing, or distributed storage systems

Experience with real-time OLAP engines (e.g., ClickHouse, Apache Druid, StarRocks, Apache Pinot) as a builder, product manager, or power user

Familiarity with Kafka, Flink, or similar streaming infrastructure

Prior experience with cloud-native infrastructure products and consumption-based pricing models

Experience working on open source data infrastructure projects

Experience building products that serve AI/ML workloads for retrieval, feature serving, or context delivery