Principal Product Manager (Technical)

Akamai•Cambridge, MA

2h•$159,600 - $287,400•Hybrid

About The Position

This role bridges business and technical strategy, requiring deep architectural and systems expertise. Success involves transforming customer-focused goals into achievable outcomes, delivering value incrementally. Key responsibilities include supporting internal teams, developers, and stakeholders while scaling systems to meet evolving product needs. Define long-term objectives for essential system components and address technical debt effectively.

Requirements

15 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or its equivalent.
Possess mandatory experience managing cloud technologies & control planes at enterprise scale, with exposure to platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP etc.
Demonstrate a proven ability to manage complex infrastructure balancing technical debt.
Drive success metrics centered on platform performance, including establishing and writing requirements for Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
Demonstrate technical fluency in CNCF technologies, requiring Kubernetes expertise, alongside experience in cloud infrastructure, monitoring, database management, and data visualization tools.
Resolve ambiguity into actionable strategies, bridging the gap between engineering teams and less-technical stakeholders.
Communicate effectively by writing clear PRDs, product outcome documents, and inspiring partner teams and executives. Cultivate great engineering partnerships and empathy.
Demonstrate initiative, exceptional responsibility, and excellent communication skills while leading cross-functional teams and adapting to dynamic, outcome-focused environments.

Responsibilities

Making strategic trade-off decisions to ensure business objectives are balanced against factors including staffing, reliability risks, cost, and schedule.
Partnering with Architecture, Engineering, and SRE leaders to define the strategy, vision, and development roadmap for the product line.
Documenting platform service usage while conveying the value of technical solutions as the voice of product development teams.
Negotiating agreements and contracts while interacting with external vendors and partners supplying software/services.
Serving as a thoughtful leader, influencing strategic decisions across multiple functions and external industry groups.