Technical Product Manager II, Site Reliability Engineering

The New York Times•New York, NY

8d•$120,000 - $142,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The New York Times is seeking a Technical Product Manager to lead the strategy for reliability programs and platforms within its Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team. This role is crucial for designing, testing, and operating systems that support critical customer experiences. The Technical Product Manager will focus on building scalable reliability programs and experiences, including operational readiness, load and chaos testing, observability, and incident readiness, by partnering with SRE, platform infrastructure, and product engineering teams. The goal is to define standards, tooling, and practices that improve operational readiness across hundreds of services, rather than running cloud infrastructure or managing operational tickets. The role involves translating technical and business signals into clear roadmaps and measurable outcomes to enhance company-wide reliability.

Requirements

5+ years of product management experience in platform, infrastructure, SRE, or other technical domains, with experience building roadmaps for multi‑team, multi‑system products or programs.
Working knowledge of SRE practices and operational readiness (SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, incident response and review, production readiness, on‑call quality) and how they show up in services.
Experience with testing and observability in cloud‑native environments - for example, shaping or supporting load / performance / chaos testing and working with metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts.
Translate systems data (reliability, performance) to prioritize and evaluate work, and to explain complex technical concepts and tradeoffs to both engineers and non‑technical partners.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with SRE, Platform, or Infrastructure teams, especially in enablement or engagement models (embeds, consulting‑style projects, or Always Ready‑like programs).
Experience defining or scaling operational readiness frameworks and production readiness reviews, and driving adoption of standards across multiple teams.
Experience operating observability platforms at scale - we use Datadog, but experience with any enterprise observability tool will do.
Experience with cloud providers and Kubernetes (AWS, GCP, or Azure) to understand how reliability and observability tradeoffs show up in practice, and to hold informed conversations with engineers operating those systems.

Responsibilities

Build and communicate the product roadmap for SRE‑led reliability programs (operational maturity, Always On signals, load/chaos testing, observability), aligning them with newsroom and product priorities.
Turn ambiguous reliability problems into concrete products and engagements by doing discovery with engineers and leaders, defining scope and success metrics, and treating SRE collaborations as internal consulting engagements with clear contracts and exit criteria.
Shape the direction of testing and observability platforms by prioritizing high-value scenarios, such as BNAs, elections, and major launches. Ensure that load and chaos tests map to customer journeys, and tie the results directly to SLOs, dashboards, and runbooks.
Use data to guide iteration and storytelling. Use incident metrics, test outcomes, and reliability scores to refine roadmaps and report on impact.
Experience communicating complex technical concepts to a variety of audiences, including SRE, partner teams, and senior leadership, about tradeoffs and progress.
Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.