Description

Introduction

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You'll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM's product and technology landscape. Here, you'll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

Your role and responsibilities

As a Technical Product Manager for Cloudability Containers and Kubecost, you will define and drive the strategy for Kubernetes cost management, optimization, and observability capabilities across both SaaS and self-hosted offerings. This role requires strong hands-on Kubernetes technical expertise, close partnership with engineering, and the ability to translate complex platform and infrastructure challenges into customer-facing product capabilities.
Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Drive Kubernetes Product Strategy: Own the vision, roadmap, and prioritization for Cloudability Containers and Kubecost, aligning customer needs, market trends, and technical platform investments.
• Partner Deeply with Engineering: Work closely with engineering teams on Kubernetes-native architectures, scalability, telemetry pipelines, cost allocation models, and optimization workflows. Balance feature delivery with platform reliability, scalability, and technical debt reduction.
• Act as Technical Product Owner: Serve as the day-to-day product owner for engineering teams, defining detailed requirements, acceptance criteria, and release scope for highly technical Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure features.
• Develop Deep Customer and Market Understanding: Engage directly with enterprise customers, platform engineers, FinOps practitioners, and cloud-native operators to understand challenges related to Kubernetes cost visibility, GPU utilization, resource optimization, multi-cluster operations, and cloud infrastructure governance.
• Guide Technical Product Differentiation: Conduct competitive analysis and technical benchmarking across Kubernetes cost management, observability, and optimization tooling to ensure strong market differentiation.
• Translate Complex Technical Concepts into Product Outcomes: Work across engineering, design, customer success, and go-to-market teams to translate Kubernetes platform capabilities into clear customer value and scalable product experiences.
• Support Customer and Field Engagements: Partner with sales engineering and customer teams to support strategic customer discussions, technical roadmap conversations, and complex Kubernetes deployment scenarios.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Technical Diploma

Required technical and professional expertise

Required Professional and Technical Expertise

• Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes, cloud-native infrastructure, and containerized environments.
• Experience working closely with engineering teams on highly technical infrastructure or platform products.
• Demonstrated experience managing technical SaaS and/or self-hosted enterprise products.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes concepts including clusters, namespaces, workloads, resource management, scaling, and observability.
• Experience building and managing product roadmaps for technical platform products.
• Ability to translate complex customer and infrastructure challenges into actionable product requirements.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, cost management, FinOps, or observability ecosystems.
• Experience balancing customer needs, technical constraints, scalability, and platform investments.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to engage technical stakeholders, enterprise customers, and executive leadership.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Preferred Professional and Technical Expertise

• Experience with Kubernetes cost management, observability, optimization, or platform engineering products.
• Familiarity with Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, cloud billing systems, or Kubernetes telemetry pipelines.
• Experience working with enterprise Kubernetes deployments across AWS, Azure, and/or Google Cloud.
• Background in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, or distributed systems.
• Prior software engineering or highly technical infrastructure experience.
• Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost governance strategies.
• Experience supporting both SaaS and self-hosted enterprise software offerings.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence—from machine learning to generative AI—to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments—a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

Job Title

Principal Product Manager - Containers

Date posted

25-May-2026

Job ID

115139

City / Township / Village

Bellevue, San Jose, Austin, Seattle, New York

State / Province

Texas, New York, Washington, California

Country

United States

Work arrangement

Hybrid

Area of work

Product Management

Employment type

Regular

Contract type

Regular

Projected Minimum Salary per year

159,000.00

Projected Maximum Salary per year

297,000.00

Position type

Professional

Travel required

Some travel may be required based on business demand

Company

(0147) International Business Machines Corporation

Shift

General (daytime)

Is this role a commissionable/sales incentive based position?

No



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