Director, Product Management — Infrastructure Automation

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Director, Product Management — Infrastructure Automation based in the United States.

As Director of Product Management, you will define the vision and lead the growth strategy for an enterprise infrastructure automation platform serving organizations worldwide. You will oversee the full product lifecycle, from customer discovery and strategic planning to development, launch, and performance optimization. Leading a team of 5–6 senior product managers, you will drive innovation at the intersection of DevOps, cloud infrastructure, security, compliance, and artificial intelligence. You will help organizations automate infrastructure management, reduce operational complexity, enforce policies, and maintain reliable, compliant systems across on-premises and cloud environments. Working closely with engineering, sales, marketing, and customer success teams, you will translate customer needs into measurable business outcomes. This senior leadership opportunity offers the autonomy to shape product strategy, build high-performing teams, and redefine infrastructure automation for the AI era.

• Product vision and strategy: Define and own the product vision, strategic direction, and multi-year roadmap for the infrastructure automation platform, ensuring alignment with business objectives, customer needs, and the broader product portfolio.
• Growth and business performance: Identify opportunities to expand adoption, improve customer retention, increase revenue, and strengthen market positioning. Prioritize investments across the existing product portfolio and emerging opportunities.
• AI-driven innovation: Evaluate how generative AI, agentic automation, and AI-assisted operations can transform infrastructure management. Identify opportunities to introduce intelligent automation, remediation, policy enforcement, and compliance capabilities that deliver measurable customer value.
• Product team leadership: Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 5–6 senior product managers, establishing clear ownership, high-quality standards, and accountability for customer and business outcomes.
• AI-enabled product management: Implement and continuously improve an AI-enabled operating model across discovery, specification, and delivery. Establish appropriate AI agent responsibilities, evidence standards, review checkpoints, and human accountability for the quality of product decisions and deliverables.
• Product discovery and validation: Ensure customer problems and market opportunities are thoroughly validated before significant development investments are made. Promote evidence-based decision-making, structured experimentation, and continuous learning.
• Product lifecycle management: Oversee the end-to-end product development process, from discovery and requirements definition through engineering delivery, launch, and post-release performance reviews.
• Engineering collaboration: Partner closely with engineering teams to establish realistic delivery commitments, resolve technical challenges, and ensure that product capabilities meet customer expectations and technical requirements.
• Performance measurement: Define clear success metrics for major initiatives and ensure that product features include the necessary instrumentation to measure adoption, effectiveness, and business impact, including in on-premises deployments.
• Cross-functional execution: Align engineering, sales, marketing, customer success, and support teams around release planning, product packaging, pricing, positioning, and go-to-market readiness.
• Customer and market engagement: Engage directly with customers, partners, and the open-source and DevOps communities to understand operational challenges, validate product direction, and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Customer value realization: Work with customer-facing teams to translate feedback and usage insights into roadmap priorities while helping customers realize the value of their infrastructure automation investments.
• Competitive intelligence: Monitor market trends, competitive offerings, analyst perspectives, and emerging technologies to identify differentiation opportunities and strengthen the platform's long-term position.
• Security and compliance innovation: Advance capabilities that help customers maintain desired infrastructure states, enforce configuration policies, reduce configuration drift, automate audit reporting, and address security and regulatory requirements.
• Technology investment decisions: Evaluate emerging technologies, ecosystem partnerships, and build-versus-buy opportunities to maximize innovation, operational effectiveness, and competitive advantage.
• External thought leadership: Represent the product at industry events and in customer, partner, and analyst discussions, communicating the strategic value of infrastructure automation and AI-enabled operations.
• Talent development and organizational excellence: Recruit, retain, and develop exceptional product management talent, introducing specialist capabilities when needed and fostering a culture of collaboration, transparency, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Responsible AI governance: Ensure that AI-enabled product capabilities and internal workflows are evaluated, governed, and monitored appropriately, with attention to accuracy, security, privacy, human oversight, and customer trust.

Requirements:

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field.
• Product management experience: At least 8 years of product management experience, including a minimum of 3 years in a leadership role within the DevOps, cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, or software development industry.
• Enterprise product delivery: Demonstrated success taking complex enterprise software products from concept through development, launch, and ongoing optimization.
• People leadership: Extensive experience managing and developing product teams, establishing clear priorities, coaching senior product managers, and driving accountability across multidisciplinary organizations.
• AI product expertise: Demonstrated experience defining and delivering AI-powered product capabilities, such as generative AI or agentic automation, including how these capabilities are evaluated, governed, and measured in production.
• AI-enabled operating models: Experience leading product managers in an AI-enabled environment where AI supports discovery, requirements development, specification, and delivery while designated individuals remain accountable for the quality of each deliverable.
• DevOps and infrastructure knowledge: Strong understanding of DevOps principles, configuration management, infrastructure as code (IaC), continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), and containerization technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker.
• Technical proficiency: Strong technical acumen and the ability to engage engineering teams in architectural discussions, evaluate technical trade-offs, and translate complex concepts into practical product strategies.
• Agile methodologies: Experience working with Agile development frameworks, including Scrum and Kanban, and collaborating closely with engineering teams throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Strategic and analytical thinking: Excellent problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making skills, with the ability to evaluate market opportunities, assess product investments, and connect product initiatives to measurable business results.
• Customer-centric approach: Proven ability to understand enterprise customer needs, translate feedback into actionable roadmaps, and balance customer requirements with commercial objectives and technical feasibility.
• Cross-functional influence: Exceptional communication, stakeholder management, and collaboration skills, including the ability to influence executives, technical teams, commercial stakeholders, and external partners.
• Product management tools: Familiarity with product lifecycle and planning tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Aha!.
• Preferred infrastructure automation experience: Familiarity with Puppet, Ansible, Chef, Terraform, or comparable infrastructure automation platforms.
• Preferred enterprise deployment experience: Experience with open-source business models, on-premises software, hybrid infrastructure, and complex enterprise deployment environments.
• Preferred security and compliance expertise: Experience building or selling products to security-conscious and compliance-driven customers, including organizations with demanding governance requirements.
• Preferred AI infrastructure experience: Experience applying AI to infrastructure operations, such as automated configuration, intelligent remediation, policy enforcement, or compliance monitoring.
• Preferred AI risk management: Familiarity with AI product risks and controls, including model accuracy, evaluation frameworks, guardrails, human approval, data privacy, and customer trust in regulated or on-premises environments.
• Preferred AI product management frameworks: Experience establishing or adopting AI-enabled product management practices, including defined agent roles, evidence requirements, review gates, and metrics for measuring team productivity and learning quality.
• Leadership qualities: A strong executive presence, high ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to lead through ambiguity while building alignment across teams.
• Passion for innovation: A genuine interest in DevOps, infrastructure automation, cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, and developing products that solve complex customer problems.
• AI fluency: Ability to use AI tools responsibly, exercise sound judgment, and follow relevant governance and security standards.

Benefits:

• Annual base salary: $200,000–$220,000, depending on qualifications, experience, skills, and other relevant business considerations.
• Medical insurance: Access to healthcare coverage designed to support employee well-being.
• Dental and vision insurance: Benefits to help support routine and specialized dental and vision care.
• Retirement benefits: Access to retirement savings and financial planning benefits.
• Life insurance: Financial protection benefits, subject to applicable plan terms.
• Wellness programs: Resources and initiatives designed to support employee health and overall well-being.
• Paid time off: Access to a total time-off program to support rest, personal commitments, and work-life balance.
• Additional employee perks: Other benefits and programs may be available under the applicable employee benefits policies.
• Remote work flexibility: A remote position based in the United States, offering flexibility in where you work.
• Career growth: Opportunities to expand your leadership impact within an established, globally operating software organization.
• Meaningful strategic ownership: The opportunity to shape product direction, lead a team of senior product managers, and influence the future of infrastructure automation.
• Innovation-focused environment: Work at the intersection of AI, DevOps, cloud infrastructure, security, and compliance, with the opportunity to develop next-generation enterprise software capabilities.
• Collaborative culture: Join a team that values problem-solving, creativity, belonging, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Global customer impact: Help organizations worldwide improve infrastructure reliability, automate operations, and strengthen security and compliance.
• AI-driven ways of working: Participate in an AI-enabled product management environment that encourages responsible technology adoption, evidence-based decisions, and continuous improvement.