Principal Product Manager

Tigera•San Jose, CA

1d•$220,000 - $240,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Tigera is seeking a Principal Product Manager to drive the strategy and evolution of the Calico platform. This senior role involves defining product vision, shaping go-to-market strategies, and collaborating with engineering, sales, marketing, and ecosystem partners. The initial focus will be on extending Calico's converged networking for VM workloads in Kubernetes, from MVP through GA and beyond. The role requires a deep understanding of Kubernetes and cloud-native networking/security, strong competitive analysis skills, and experience with enterprise go-to-market strategies. The position is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a hybrid work model in either the San Francisco or San Jose office.

Requirements

8+ years in product management, including senior/principal-level ownership of technical infrastructure products, with a track record of taking products from vision to GA and revenue.
Deep Kubernetes and cloud-native networking/security expertise — CNI, network policy, microsegmentation, L2/L3 networking concepts, eBPF, and the broader cloud-native ecosystem.
Sharp competitive and positioning instincts — able to build canonical positioning artifacts (single-line description, problem/audience, category framing, differentiators, explicit "what it is not" boundaries) and enforce messaging consistency across the org.
Enterprise GTM range — comfortable enabling sales, engaging senior technical buyers at large enterprises, and driving partner co-selling.
Discovery-driven and evidence-based — you pressure-test assumptions with customer interviews and prioritize by revenue impact rather than work type.
Crisp communicator and operator — structured, low-friction, and factually disciplined; you move quickly from insight to a decision-ready artifact.

Responsibilities

Product vision & roadmap for major Calico platform initiatives — from MVP to GA and the phased roadmap that follows, sequenced by customer value and revenue impact.
Competitive positioning in the Kubernetes networking and security market. Craft differentiated narratives that lead with platform value — unified networking, best-in-class microsegmentation and DNS policy, cluster-mesh, observability — rather than competing feature-for-feature at the dataplane layer.
Go-to-market strategy across both sales-led motions (sales enablement, crisp platform pitches, close partnership with sales on qualified opportunities) and partner-led motions with the ecosystem of platform and infrastructure partners.
Customer discovery & validation with enterprise accounts — running structured interviews to pressure-test and validate assumptions before committing engineering resources.
Cross-functional execution with engineering on scope and delivery, and with marketing on messaging discipline and campaigns that shape market perception.
Messaging & positioning discipline — building canonical positioning artifacts and driving consistency in how the product is described across the organization, to customers, and in to the market.
Ownership of the first five deals - Roll up your sleeves and own the process of closing the first five deals. Abstract learnings, share learnings broadly with the extended team, tune the strategy, build a repeatable playbook and enable the sales and solutions engineering teams to scale the business.