Director, Product Management

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 schem