Principal Product Manager - Internal Developer Platform Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Research and Development

IFS; Düsseldorf; Hybrid; EUR 100.000 - 150.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

IFS is seeking a Principal Product Manager for the Internal Developer Platform to shape the first version of our platform. You will define what to build, select tooling, and partner with engineering to deliver value to internal developers and platform teams.

You will drive discovery with developers and architects, own the roadmap, and advocate for developer experience, AI-enabled workflows, and scalable design. This role requires hands-on leadership and cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifikationen

• Substantial product management experience in B2B enterprise, platform, developer or infrastructure products.
• Proven customer discovery and co-creation skills, turning evidence into roadmaps and requirements.
• Excellent communication translating technical complexity into business language.
• Ability to mentor other PMs and drive AI-first product decisions.

Aufgaben

• Live in your customers' world — lead discovery with developers, architects and platform engineers, build named partnerships, and turn evidence into a prioritised, outcome-driven roadmap.
• Advocate relentlessly for developer experience — API/SDK usability, documentation quality, onboarding and adoption.
• Translate customer needs and business strategy into clear, testable requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Make prioritisation and trade-off calls balancing immediate value with long-term product health; consider build vs buy, scalability and extensibility.
• Use AI as a force multiplier across discovery, analysis and documentation while keeping product judgement with the team.
• Partner with architects and engineers as an equal, challenge assumptions, and be the product partner for hard calls.
• Coach and mentor other product managers and lift the practice around you.
• An AI-first way of working, with judgement on where AI helps and where it doesn't.

Jobbeschreibung

Principal Product Manager - Internal Developer Platform

Full-time

This is an internal developer platform role. It is not identity and access management, and it is not a customer-facing product.

You are starting from nothing. There is no platform today, no tooling chosen and no templates written. The first decisions about what gets built, what gets bought and what a golden path looks like are yours to make with the engineering team.

Agentic AI is part of the build, not a separate thing. The platform needs to be something AI agents can act on as well as people — what gets exposed to them, what doesn’t, and how that stays governed.

Please read this before applying. We’ve had a lot of applications from people doing adjacent work, and we’d rather save you the time.

This is not an identity role. If your background is SSO, authentication, access management, identity governance or identity providers, that’s a different discipline and a different team. We are hiring IAM engineers separately.

This is not a customer-facing product role. If you’ve owned a product sold to external customers, that isn’t this. Our "customers" are internal stakeholders and technical.

You should have shipped the thing developers actually use — a portal, a service catalogue, templates or scaffolders, SDKs, developer documentation — not only an operating model, a roadmap or an investment case for a platform somebody else built.

If you’ve run a developer portal, tell us which one and what you did with it. Backstage, Port, Cortex, Choreo or OpenChoreo, or something built in-house. Tell us what was in the catalogue and what a developer could do from it without asking anyone.

Tell us your adoption numbers. How many engineers used what you built, how that changed, and how long it took a team to get something running before and after. If you measure your work in features shipped rather than friction removed, we’re probably not a fit.

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. We deliver award-winning enterprise software solutions through the use of embedded digital innovation and a single cloud-based platform to help businesses be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service.

At IFS, we're flexible, we're innovative, and we're focused not only on how we can engage with our customers, but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society's greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and accept that there are so many different perspectives in this world. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We're looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs.

If you want to change the status quo, we'll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Our customers are internal and technical: developers, architects, platform engineers, system administrators
and implementation teams.

You’ll understand their workflows, friction points and adoption barriers
deeply, build named relationships with the ones who matter most, and treat their day-to-day
experience — from APIs and SDKs to documentation and onboarding — as the truest measure of
whether the product is working.

Own the problem, the customer and the outcomes for a programme or product line — you setthe what and the why, and partner with engineering and architects on the how.

• Live in your customers' world — lead discovery with developers, architects and platform engineers, build deep named partnerships, and turn real evidence into a prioritised, outcomedriven roadmap.
• Advocate relentlessly for developer experience — API and SDK usability, documentation quality, onboarding and adoption — as the measure of product success, and get ahead of needs customers haven't yet named.
• Translate customer needs and business strategy into clear, testable requirements and acceptance criteria the team can build against with confidence — and set the standard for how that's done across the team.
• Make the prioritisation and trade-off calls that balance immediate customer value with longterm product health, drawing on technical trade-offs such as build vs buy, scalability and extensibility without getting lost in them.
• Use AI as a force multiplier across discovery, analysis and documentation, and raise the bar for how the team applies it — while the product judgement stays yours.
• Partner with architects and engineers as an equal, challenge assumptions constructively, and be the product partner they seek out to make hard calls faster and with less friction.
• Coach and mentor other product managers, share what you learn, and lift the practice around you rather than holding knowledge to yourself.
• A genuine product mindset — you think in customer outcomes, adoption and business value, not in features or technology for its own sake.
• Deep obsession with your customers — here, developers, architects and platform engineers — and a track record of advocating for their experience and shifting product direction because of it.
• Substantial product management experience in B2B enterprise, platform, developer or infrastructure products, with a record of independently owning outcomes at programme or product-line level.
• Proven customer discovery and co-creation skills, and the ability to turn real evidence into a clear roadmap and requirements others build against.
• Enough technical fluency to engage credibly with engineering and architecture — you can read APIs, schemas, logs and code to understand impact (writing production code is not required).
• Confidence making prioritisation and trade-off decisions, and the influence to align engineers, architects and senior stakeholders without authority.
• Excellent communication — you translate technical complexity into business language and business strategy into clear product direction, and present confidently to leadership.
• Experience coaching or mentoring other PMs, and setting standards the team adopts.
• An AI-first way of working, and the judgement to know where AI helps and where it doesn't.

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.

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