Director of Product Management - Data Streaming

HiveMQ

About The Position

HiveMQ is seeking an exceptional Director of Product Management to lead its Data Streaming portfolio. This role is crucial as it forms the connectivity and transport foundation for HiveMQ's Industrial AI Platform. The core product is HiveMQ Enterprise Broker, a high-performance MQTT server used by major enterprises. A key aspect of this role involves managing the extensibility system of the Enterprise Broker, ensuring seamless integration between OT and IT systems and maintaining a healthy process for feature absorption into the product roadmap. The Data Streaming layer is HiveMQ's primary revenue engine, facing competitive pressures that require a strategic response focused on making HiveMQ the default substrate for operational agents and AI. The Director will translate this strategy into a product roadmap, starting as an individual contributor with the potential to build and lead a team.

Requirements

8–15 years total work experience, with a significant portion in product management or consulting.
Track record with established enterprise infrastructure products at a meaningful stage of maturity, with real revenue, demanding enterprise customers, and significant growth potential.
Experience navigating the tension between meeting current customer commitments and making architectural investments for future adoption.
Data-driven product development: demonstrated success using quantitative and qualitative methods to drive product decisions.
Budget and resource management: experience allocating resources across teams and managing to budget.
Core domain expertise: Message-oriented middleware and event-driven architectures, with deep familiarity with MQTT and/or platforms like Kafka, Solace, RabbitMQ, or similar.
Understanding of throughput, latency, ordering guarantees, QoS tradeoffs, and differentiating design decisions in messaging platforms.
Meaningful experience with operational technology (OT) environments (e.g., PLC communication, OPC-UA, Modbus, SCADA, MES) through product management, systems integration, solution engineering, or hands-on work in industrial settings.
Credibility talking to plant engineers and IT architects.
Understanding of smart manufacturing / Industry 4.0: how manufacturers instrument facilities, manage device fleets, and move operational data from edge to cloud.
Direct experience with Tier 1 industrial companies in automotive, pharma, energy, or discrete manufacturing is a strong plus.
Self-managed enterprise software experience: products deployed on-premises or at the edge, including LTS release cycles, version management, upgrade path design, and enterprise procurement realities.
4+ years of people management experience, including leading distributed teams across geographies and time zones.
PLG for infrastructure or developer products: track record with product-led growth motions for technical products (trial flows, licensing enforcement, activation metrics, conversion funnel design).
Genuine appreciation for reliability, scalability, clustering, and operational observability at scale as customer outcomes.
Strategic thinking: ability to set vision, define strategy, and execute across multiple product lines.
Influence without authority: proven ability to drive alignment across senior stakeholders through data and compelling narratives.
Effective communication: creates clear executive-level communications; teams and stakeholders understand priorities and how work connects to company mission.
Decision-making under uncertainty: comfortable making and defending tough calls, saying “no” thoughtfully, and adjusting course based on data.
Empathetic leadership: delivers challenging feedback and news with honesty, empathy, and understanding.
Cultural steward: demonstrates and champions product management best practices and company values.
Product instrumentation: ensures products are measured effectively to monitor impact and progress toward goals.
Outcome-focused mindset: cares about achieving business goals, not just shipping features.
Risk identification: thinks ahead to identify risks and mitigation strategies.
Process design: identifies inefficiencies and proposes scalable solutions as business grows.
Stakeholder management: builds and maintains relationships across R&D, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Support, and executive teams.

Nice To Haves

IoT, robotics, or adjacent industrial domains: broader device connectivity experience that translates to credibility in industrial contexts; robotics, connected vehicle, energy systems, or industrial IoT all count.

Responsibilities

Define and drive product strategy for the Data Streaming layer with a clear thesis on investment for an "expert product for experts" that is easier to deploy, manage, and configure.
Work with customers, sales, and partners to identify key integration opportunities within broader customer solutions.
Own product scope and sequencing for the next-generation Core Broker, focusing on cloud-native, multi-tenancy, and Agent Experience (AX), while managing near-term LTS and expansion commitments.
Champion AX as a first-class design target alongside UX and DX, emphasizing on-demand broker provisioning via API, OpenAPI specs, and the "ceremony elimination" heuristic.
Think cross-functionally about how Streaming connects to PLG, SLG, Expansion, and Partner motions, making deliberate choices about market competition.
Establish clear, inspiring vision for teams derived from company strategy, prioritizing for organizational success.
Drive measurable business outcomes across adoption, usage, revenue, and customer satisfaction for the Data Streaming portfolio.
Own the data story: instrument products, measure impact, and report progress toward business objectives.
Communicate value effectively through data-backed storytelling to executives, customers, and stakeholders.
Identify and address organizational bottlenecks, proposing process improvements.
Determine when products or features should be terminated if they don’t deliver desired outcomes.
Partner with engineering leadership to ensure technical feasibility and delivery excellence for mission-critical releases.
Collaborate with GTM organizations (Sales, Customer Success/Support, Alliances, Product Marketing) at director and VP levels.
Manage strategic customer relationships and handle escalations.
Build consensus across departments on complex, cross-functional initiatives.
Develop and present roadmaps and proposals to senior leadership and C-suite executives.
Maintain intimate customer knowledge through ongoing strategic customer relationships.
Advocate for customer needs by framing capabilities in terms of customer outcomes and business priorities.
Validate product-market fit through continuous discovery and customer feedback loops.
Drive customer intimacy beyond strategic accounts to understand broader market needs.