Technical Product Manager, Kubernetes & Containers

Salt Digital Recruitment; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

We are seeking a highly technical Technical Product Manager to work closely with engineering on an enterprise Kubernetes and container platform. This role requires getting into technical details, writing specifications, deploying and testing Kubernetes environments, troubleshooting issues and ensuring features ship with the right capabilities.

The ideal candidate combines product management skills with hands-on Kubernetes expertise and thrives in a highly technical engineering environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline.
• 5+ years of experience in Product Management, Engineering, DevOps, SRE or hands-on technical roles.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes and containerized environments.
• Comfort deploying clusters, reading logs and troubleshooting issues.

Responsibilities

• Write detailed product requirements and technical specifications for Kubernetes and container capabilities.
• Deploy Kubernetes clusters, test features, reproduce customer issues and validate fixes.
• Collaborate with engineering through sprint planning and design reviews.
• Prioritize bugs, escalations and feature requests based on technical impact.

Skills

Kubernetes

Product management

Engineering collaboration

Testing and QA

Troubleshooting

Documentation

Python/Bash/Go scripting

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

About the Role

We're looking for a highly technical, hands‑on Technical Product Manager to work closely with engineering on an enterprise Kubernetes and container platform. This is not a purely strategic product role. You'll be expected to get into the technical details, writing specifications, deploying and testing Kubernetes environments, troubleshooting issues, validating features, and working alongside engineers to ensure the right capabilities are built and shipped successfully. The ideal candidate combines product management skills with genuine hands‑on Kubernetes expertise and is comfortable operating within highly technical engineering environments.

What You'll Do

Write detailed product requirements and technical specifications for Kubernetes and container capabilities, including cluster lifecycle, storage, networking, autoscaling and upgrades. Deploy Kubernetes clusters, test new features, reproduce customer issues and validate fixes prior to release. Work directly with engineering through sprint planning, backlog grooming, technical design reviews and day‑to‑day problem solving. Triage and prioritize bugs, customer escalations and feature requests based on technical severity and business impact. Partner with engineering and QA teams to develop test plans and acceptance criteria for new platform capabilities. Support customer‑facing technical teams with product knowledge, demonstrations and Kubernetes troubleshooting. Evaluate Kubernetes distributions, platforms and CNCF ecosystem technologies through hands‑on installation, testing and comparison. Contribute to release notes, technical documentation and internal enablement materials.

What We're Looking For

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline. 5+ years of experience in Product Management, Engineering, DevOps, SRE or a similarly hands‑on technical role. Strong, practical experience working with Kubernetes and containerized environments. Comfortable working in a terminal, deploying clusters, reading logs and independently troubleshooting technical issues. Ability to work closely with engineers and translate technical requirements into clear, actionable product specifications.

Technical Experience

• Kubernetes: Control plane components, kubelet, RBAC, namespaces, cluster autoscaling, upgrades and cluster lifecycle management.


• Storage / CSI: Dynamic volume provisioning, snapshots, StorageClasses and storage policies.


• Networking / CNI: Pod networking, overlay networks and connectivity troubleshooting.


• Multi-cluster & multi-tenant environments: Namespace isolation and multi‑tenancy configurations.


• Infrastructure-as-Code: Terraform and/or Ansible for provisioning, automation and testing.


• CNCF ecosystem: Prometheus, Grafana, Calico or similar cloud-native technologies.


• Scripting: Python, Bash and/or Go for testing, automation and lightweight tooling.


• Virtualization: Exposure to Kubernetes running on VMware, KVM-based hypervisors or bare metal would be advantageous.

What Will Make You Successful

You're someone who enjoys getting into the technical details rather than operating solely at the roadmap or strategy level. You can hold your own in conversations with engineers, understand how Kubernetes environments behave in practice, and aren't afraid to deploy, test and troubleshoot the product yourself. You'll combine strong technical credibility with the communication skills needed to turn complex engineering requirements into clear product specifications, documentation and priorities.