Staff Product Manager, Core Primitives

Madrona Venture Labs; United States; On-site; USD 185,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

12 Holidays + 2 Floating Holidays

100% Premiums Coverage for Medical, DT

Vision

AD&D, LT & ST Disability, Life Ins. (R

Empower 401K Plan

Learning & Development perks

Work From Home Meals

Internet Stipend

Calm App access

Job summary

Temporal Technologies, an open source focused company, is hiring a Staff Product Manager for Core Primitives to own strategy and roadmaps that simplify long-running work and cross-system coordination. You will work with engineering, SDK leads, and field teams to align with platform priorities and produce coherent behavior across server, APIs, and Cloud experiences.

In the first year, success means a clear strategy, prioritized roadmap, and shipped improvements that reduce custom patterns,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience in platform, infrastructure, developer tools, or technical products.
• Ability to translate ambiguous technical domains into clear strategy and roadmaps.
• Strong fluency in distributed systems, APIs/SDKs, or comparable platform abstractions.
• Ability to reason about API semantics, failure modes, state management, reliability, scalability, and cost tradeoffs.
• High standards for developer experience across APIs, SDKs, docs, and onboarding.

Responsibilities

• Own the product strategy and roadmap for a focused Core Primitives charter.
• Translate signals into platform bets, deciding on improving primitives, introducing abstractions, or changing behavior.
• Partner with engineering to ship core improvements across server, SDKs, and APIs.
• Define developer experience goals and success metrics; validate and iterate with technical users.
• Set clear boundaries and success criteria for Core Primitives usage and extension.
• Shape external story through positioning, launch narratives, docs, examples, and partnerships with DR, Marketing, and field teams.
• Ship improvements with documentation, migration guidance, and launch support for adoption.

Job description

About Us

Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. We are on a mission to be the reliable foundation of every developer’s toolbox, and are building the team that will make that happen.

Our values guide us —they are present in how we show up, make decisions, and work together to make an impact. We’re curious, driven, collaborative, genuine and humble.

Temporal is growing and we are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for improving the developer experience, building world‑class open‑source software and communities, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!

About the role

Customers use Temporal’s core primitives to build critical systems, but too much of the experience still depends on custom patterns, deep Temporal expertise, and careful operational work.

We’re hiring a Staff Product Manager, Core Primitives, to own strategy and roadmap for a focused Core Primitives charter. This role is not about shipping isolated features. It is about delivering the capabilities and developer experience that make it easier to model long-running work, coordinate across systems, handle failure, and operate production workloads with Temporal.

You’ll partner with the product portfolio lead to align your charter with broader platform priorities, and with engineering and SDK leads to turn strategy into coherent behavior across Temporal’s server, APIs, SDKs, and Cloud experience.

In the first year, success means Core Primitives has a clear strategy, prioritized roadmap, and shipped improvements that reduce the custom patterns, operational burden, and production risk developers face when building with Temporal.

What you’ll do

• Own the product strategy and roadmap for a focused Core Primitives charter
• Translate customer, field, and open-source community signals into platform bets, deciding when to improve an existing primitive, introduce a new abstraction, change SDK/API behavior, build an integration, improve guidance, or create a more complete product experience
• Partner deeply with engineering to ship core behavior improvements across server, SDKs, and APIs, making Temporal easier to model with, operate, and trust in production
• Define developer experience goals and success metrics before major investments, then validate, measure, and iterate with technical users
• Set clear product boundaries and success criteria so developers, internal teams, and adjacent product areas know how Core Primitives should be used and extended
• Shape the external story for your area through positioning, launch narratives, documentation, examples, and close partnership with Developer Relations, Marketing, and field teams
• Ship improvements with the documentation, examples, migration guidance, and launch support needed for adoption

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years of product management experience, with significant time on platform, infrastructure, developer tools, or other technical products
• Experience turning ambiguous technical domains into clear strategy, roadmap success measures, and shipped outcomes
• Strong technical fluency in distributed systems, workflow or orchestration systems, event-driven architectures, APIs/SDKs, or comparable platform abstractions
• Ability to reason about API semantics, failure modes, state management, reliability, scalability, and cost tradeoffs
• High standards for developer experience across APIs, SDKs, documentation, examples, onboarding paths, and production workflows
• Track record shipping technical products with engineering, then measuring adoption, learning from users, and iterating
• Ability to translate emerging workload patterns, including AI agents and tool calling, into platform requirements for primitives, APIs, SDKs, and integrations
• Ability to balance open-source developer experience, Cloud adoption, and enterprise production needs
• Strong product storytelling for technical audiences, including strategy, launch narratives, tradeoffs, and developer‑facing guidance

Nice to have

• Experience with workflow engines, durable execution, job queues, data pipelines, scheduling systems, or event-driven platforms
• Experience building products across multiple programming languages, SDKs, or platform surfaces
• Experience with AI agent platforms, tool calling, or durable execution for AI workloads
• Hands‑on engineering experience or meaningful experience building with infrastructure products

Compensation

• The estimated salary range for this role is $185,000 - $260,000, based on experience and location.
• Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal's equity plan.

U.S. Benefits

• Unlimited PTO, 12 Holidays + 2 Floating Holidays
• 100% Premiums Coverage for Medical, Dental, and Vision
• AD&D, LT & ST Disability, and Life Insurance (Standard & Supplemental Available)
• Empower 401K Plan
• Additional Perks for Learning & Development, Lifestyle Spending, In‑Home Office Setup, Professional Memberships, WFH Meals, Internet Stipend and more!

International Benefits

Paid Time Off (PTO) and Benefits outside the United States vary by country, and are issued in partnership with Remote.com. Additionally, Temporal offers perks to all international employees for learning & career development, a lifestyle spending account, in‑home office setup (in addition to company‑issued hardware), professional memberships, work‑from‑home meals, and access to the Calm app for mental wellness.

Travel

Temporal is a globally distributed, collaborative team that values opportunities for in‑person connection. Occasional travel may be required for company events, team offsites, and other meaningful moments that bring us together.

Additional Perks

• $3,600 / Year Work from Home Meals
• $1,800 / Year Professional Enrichment (Career Development & Professional Memberships)
• $1,200 / Year Lifestyle Spending Account
• $1,000 / Year In-Home Office Setup (In addition to Temporal issued equipment - laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and extension power cable at no cost to you)
• $74 / Month Reimbursement for Internet
• Calm App Subscription for Mental Health & Wellness

Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non‑disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.

Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.

We are not working with external recruitment agencies, thanks.