Principal Product Manager (Technical)

Location: United States; Remote

Do you love building the foundational capabilities that power cloud computing?

Are you looking to bridge the gap between deep technical architecture and product strategy?

Come join our Cloud Technology Group!

Within the Cloud Technology Group (CTG), we launch products and services that fulfill our mission. We empower customers to build powerful, distributed applications on a simple, scalable cloud platform. Our next-generation team builds highly available components and infrastructure services. This team in CTG shapes the base systems & control planes.

Partner with the best

As a Principal Technical Product Manager, 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.

As a Principal Product Manager, you will be responsible for:

• 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.

Do what you love

To be successful in this role you will:

• Have 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.

About us

At Akamai, we make life better for billions of people, trillions of times a day.
Whether you're streaming live events, scrolling social media, watching your favorite series, or managing your savings, we're the engine behind the scenes. We provide the world's most distributed platform from Cloud to Edge to help the giants of the digital world work faster and stay more secure, making the internet a better experience for everyone.

Our focus is simple:
Cloud and Edge: Running apps closer to users for instant performance.
Security: Neutralizing threats before they ever reach your data.
Content Delivery: Scaling the world's biggest moments without a glitch.
AI: Enabling our customers to build, secure, and scale AI apps on the world's most distributed cloud platform.

At Akamai, we don't just support the internet; we power and protect it, because behind every great digital experience is a massive hidden challenge. And we're the ones who solve it. When millions of people hit play or pay, Akamai ensures it just works.

Benefits at Akamai: We support your health, well-being, finances, and life beyond work. See our benefits.

FlexBase adapts to your job's needs

Akamai's FlexBase program is yet another way we show our commitment to providing employees with an exceptional workplace experience. It's not about telling employees where to work; it's about supporting employees to do their best work.

We trust our incredible employees to work in ways that suit them best: at home, in an office, or a combination of both.

Connect with us on social and see what life at Akamai is like!

Compensation

Akamai is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. For US based candidates only - the base salary for this position ranges from $159,600 - $287,400/year; a candidate’s salary is determined by various factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and location. Compensation for candidates outside the US will vary. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of annual bonus or incentives, equity awards and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Akamai provides industry-leading benefits including healthcare, 401K savings plan, company holidays, vacation (in the form of PTO), sick time, family friendly benefits including parental leave and an employee assistance program including a focus on mental and financial wellness; Eligibility requirements apply.

As a Principal Technical Product Manager, 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.