Director, Product Management

Cockroach Labs•San Mateo, NY

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Cockroach Labs is seeking a Director of Product Management, a senior product leader responsible for end-to-end user journeys across their products. This is a player-coach role, requiring hands-on product management skills and the ability to build and develop a team of Product Managers. The ideal candidate will be deeply customer-focused, strategically clear, and driven to improve user outcomes throughout the developer lifecycle. An AI-first mindset is essential, leveraging intelligence to enhance both product development and product management practices. The role demands a leader who uses evidence, empathy, and clarity to enable teams to move with speed and purpose.

Requirements

8-12+ years of experience in Product Management
3-5+ years in leadership roles managing PMs
Proven experience in database, infrastructure, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or distributed systems products
Track record of elevating PM craft and team output
Deep fluency in user journey thinking — owning end-to-end experiences across multiple surfaces (UI, CLI/API, Docs)
Strong evidence-based decision-making: use telemetry, NPS, RICE, and customer research
Excellent written communication skills
Demonstrated ability to drive cross-functional alignment through influence, data, and clarity
An AI-first mindset: in how you think about product experiences and how you operate day-to-day
Experience working in a SaaS, enterprise software, or open-core business model preferred

Nice To Haves

Experience working in a SaaS, enterprise software, or open-core business model

Responsibilities

Own the product strategy and portfolio of investments across user journeys, making explicit tradeoffs across user segments, product surfaces, and time horizons, while balancing investments across different deployment options.
Define a North Star metric and leading/lagging indicators for success that reflect real user progress, not just feature output.
Develop and manage a team of Product Managers (Staff PMs and/or Senior PMs), focusing on their development, accountability, and craft.
Conduct deep customer and journey discovery, using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Create clear, concise Outcome Briefs (3 pages or less) focused on WHAT, WHY, and WHO, rather than feature specifications.
Maintain a living (now/next/later) roadmap that reflects reality, tradeoffs, and strategic focus.
Establish and manage the PM operating rhythm for the area, including weekly triads, biweekly roadmap syncs, monthly insights reviews, and quarterly planning and reflection.
Define a clear product vision for journeys that connects user problems to business outcomes, translating 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.
Balance short-term fixes with long-term bets, ensuring the team works on the highest-leverage problems.
Partner with Engineering on feasibility and tradeoffs, owning the WHAT and WHY.
Establish an ongoing rhythm of customer engagement, including calls, support ticket review, field shadowing, and journey shadowing.
Define Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) and user personas across journeys.
Use AI to synthesize qualitative feedback, support tickets, and telemetry at scale.
Maintain a product backlog grounded in validated, quantified pain points.
Mentor and develop PM talent, elevating the consistency of craft, accountability, and outcomes.
Foster a culture of curiosity, continuous learning, and customer-first thinking.
Set the standard for great PM work, producing clear Outcome Briefs, effective roadmaps, and impactful insights.
Drive alignment across Engineering, Design, Docs, Field, and GTM.
Partner with PMM and GTM to craft compelling launch narratives and post-launch success stories.
Influence through data, clarity, and narrative.
Identify opportunities to embed AI across user journeys.
Define AI Evals and measurable AI metrics for every AI-powered feature.
Embed AI tools in the team's day-to-day workflows for discovery, spec writing, synthesis, and roadmap planning.