Technical Product Manager

Department: Product

Employment Type: Full-Time

Location: San Jose, California, United States, Hybrid

Join the networking revolution! Alkira, a Lumen company, is reinventing networking for the AI era. We're hiring for a Technical Product Manager who will serve as the bridge between business strategy, customer needs, and engineering execution. The role is responsible for defining product vision, prioritizing investments, and ensuring solutions are technically feasible, scalable, and aligned with business objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish product strategy, roadmap, and feature prioritization aligned to customer and business outcomes.
• Partner closely with engineering teams to translate business requirements into actionable technical solutions while managing technical trade-offs and scalability considerations.
• Leverage customer insights, market research, analytics, and competitive intelligence to identify opportunities and drive product decisions.
• Develop clear product requirements and success criteria that enable efficient execution and delivery.
• Manage risks, dependencies, releases, and technical constraints to ensure predictable product outcomes.
• Drive adoption of emerging technologies, including AI/ML, cloud platforms, and modern architectures, to enhance product capabilities and competitive advantage.

Skills & Experience to Look For

Technical Acumen

• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle, APIs, cloud infrastructure, system architecture, and enterprise platforms.
• Ability to engage credibly with engineering teams on design, scalability, integration, and technical trade-offs.
• Experience working with AI, automation, data products, SaaS platforms, or digital technology solutions is preferred.
• Networking Expertise: Strong understanding of core networking concepts and protocols, including BGP, VLANs, VPN technologies, overlay protocols, routing and route-policy design, segmentation, and cloud transit architectures.
• Cloud Networking Expertise: Strong hands-on knowledge of native public cloud networking constructs, including AWS services such as Transit Gateway and Cloud WAN, and Azure services such as Virtual WAN, Virtual Network, and hub-and-spoke architectures.

Product Leadership

• Proven experience owning product strategy, roadmaps, and feature prioritization from concept through delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to balance customer needs, technical feasibility, and business outcomes.
• Track record of delivering products that drive measurable business impact.

Customer & Business Focus

• Experience gathering and translating customer insights into product requirements and enhancements.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to align product decisions to revenue growth, operational efficiency, customer experience, or strategic objectives.

Analytical & Data-Driven Decision Making

• Comfortable using data, metrics, and experimentation to prioritize opportunities and evaluate outcomes.
• Ability to identify risks, dependencies, and opportunities early and make informed decisions.

Influence & Communication

• Exceptional stakeholder management skills with experience working across executives, business leaders, engineering, design, and operations teams.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business implications.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives without direct authority.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The strongest candidates typically possess a blend of product management experience, technical depth, and strategic business thinking. They can influence at the executive level, build credibility with engineering teams, and consistently deliver customer-focused solutions that create measurable business value.

Why the Role Matters

A TPM ensures that product investments are focused on the highest-value opportunities while minimizing technical debt and execution risk. The role accelerates innovation, improves cross-functional alignment, and enables the delivery of scalable solutions that support both customer satisfaction and business growth.

SLT Assessment Questions

To identify top candidates, consider:

• Has the candidate successfully led complex technical product initiatives from strategy through execution?
• Can they translate business priorities into technical requirements and vice versa?
• Do they demonstrate strong influence across engineering, product, and executive stakeholders?
• Have they delivered measurable outcomes (revenue, adoption, efficiency, customer satisfaction)?
• Can they balance innovation, speed, scalability, and technical debt when making decisions?

ABOUT ALKIRA

Alkira, a Lumen company, is building the future of enterprise networking: one programmable platform to connect, secure, and operate every cloud, site, partner, data center, and AI workload.

Founded by Amir and Atif Khan, the creators of Viptela and pioneers of the SD-WAN market, Alkira was built to radically simplify how enterprises deploy and manage network infrastructure. Today, as part of Lumen, we are bringing that cloud-native operating model to a global network foundation trusted by the world’s largest enterprises.

Our platform helps customers move faster without managing hardware, stitching together providers, or operating fragmented cloud networks. Teams can build and scale connectivity on demand, apply consistent security and segmentation, and gain visibility across distributed environments from one place.

At Alkira, you’ll help shape the next chapter of networking: cloud-like consumption, private-network performance, and total control across the enterprise. We move fast, solve hard problems, and build technology that changes how global businesses connect.

Join us and help build the future of networking.

COMPENSATION

The salary range for this position is $150,000 - $190,000 USD plus benefits. Your actual base salary and level will be determined on a case by case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge, skills, experience, education and location. 

Life at Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution

Life at Alkira is human and connected, even in a fast moving, AI‑focused organization. We set clear expectations and trust people to meet them. With real support and shared accountability, teams collaborate better, move faster, and deliver meaningful outcomes. 

Our Lumen 8 behaviors guide how we interact, make decisions, and work together, shaping a culture built to perform and win. To learn more about Life at Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution
and how we live into the Lumen 8, please visit:
https://jobs.lumen.com/global/en/life-at-lumen

 

Background Screening

If you are selected for a position, there will be a background screen, which may include checks for criminal records and/or motor vehicle reports and/or drug screening, depending on the position requirements. For more information on these checks, please refer to the Post Offer section of our FAQ page. Job-related concerns identified during the background screening may disqualify you from the new position or your current role. Background results will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

 

Equal Employment Opportunities

We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all persons regardless of race, color, ancestry, citizenship, national origin, religion, veteran status, disability, genetic characteristic or information, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, pregnancy, or other legally protected status (collectively, “protected statuses”). We do not tolerate unlawful discrimination in any employment decisions, including recruiting, hiring, compensation, promotion, benefits, discipline, termination, job assignments or training.

 

Privacy Notice

Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution is committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information collected during the recruitment and hiring process. Our Applicant Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect applicant information, as well as how individuals may request access to or deletion of their personal data.

To review Alkira's Global Employment Applicant and Talent Community Privacy Notice, please visit:
https://jobs.lumen.com/global/en/privacy-notice

 

Disclaimer

The job responsibilities described above indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not intended to include a comprehensive inventory of all duties and responsibilities for this job. Job duties and responsibilities are subject to change based on evolving business needs and conditions.

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Please be advised that Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution does not require any form of payment from job applicants during the recruitment process. All legitimate job openings will be posted on our official website or communicated through official company email addresses. If you encounter any job offers that request payment in exchange for employment at Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution, they are not for employment with us but may relate to another company with a similar name.