Senior Product Marketing Manager - Confluent

Introduction

We’re looking for a motivated and experienced Product Marketing Manager who has experience with software development and/or data architecture. This person will help drive top-of-funnel awareness and evangelize IBM Confluent’s core product message across our T1 and field events through keynotes, tech talks, breakout sessions, and more. Our target audience includes technical personas such as developers, architects, and technical executives.

As a Product Marketing Manager, you will be responsible for owning and/or influencing the messaging, positioning, and overall go-to-market strategy of IBM Confluent. You’ll also work closely with colleagues from Events, Field Marketing, Developer Relations, Product, Campaigns, Analyst and Press Relations, Sales, and other teams across the company to execute on key product marketing initiatives.

Your role and responsibilities

As a Product Marketing Manager, you will leverage deep client knowledge, market and product orientation, and competitive insights to inform product build decisions and define market requirements. You will apply strong messaging and positioning skills to craft and deliver compelling stories that drive product consideration and adoption.

Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Develop Market Requirements: Define market requirements that enable differentiated positioning and messaging, clearly explaining how IBM Confluent's offerings work in-market and the value they deliver to buyers and users.

• Craft Compelling Stories: Apply strong messaging and positioning skills to craft and deliver compelling stories that drive product, services, and solution consideration and adoption by leveraging client success stories, thought-leadership, market proof points, and analyst insights.

• Create Content for Different Audiences: Author content of varying technical depths (e.g., blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, reference architectures, web copy) for various personas (e.g., developers, architects, data engineers, tech execs) on IBM Confluent's category, products and features

• Lead Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate across marketing, communications, analyst relations, product management, development, design, client experience, ecosystem, and sales to align strategies, activate the market, and deliver measurable business outcomes.

• Drive Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategies: Lead data-driven strategies and outcome-focused marketing business plans to accelerate growth; analyze the marketing and product funnel to identify conversion gaps, diagnose performance drivers, and turn insights into recommendations that improve awareness, engagement, evaluation, and pipeline generation.

• Engage with Clients and Partners: Engage directly with clients, partners, and analysts to align strategies, activate the market, and deliver measurable business outcomes.

• Influence Product Roadmap: Identify any product gaps inhibiting GTM success for IBM Confluent and work with Product Management to prioritize users' needs into the roadmap

Required technical and professional expertise

• 3+ years of product marketing experience supporting B2B SaaS products for technical users, or 5+ years of relevant experience in consulting, B2B SaaS or product.

• Have strong product marketing skills that translate to clear copywriting, product evangelism, competitive positioning, and messaging.

• Bring strong technical acumen - you can independently understand and explain complex products, architectures, and use cases while partnering closely with Product Management to validate technical accuracy.

• Have a data-informed mindset and are driven to set measurable goals for every project you take on.

• Are proactive and self-directed - you identify opportunities, create momentum, and drive initiatives from idea through execution without needing day-to-day direction.

• Thrive in cross-functional environments and can effectively collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders and teams.

• Lead with empathy and humility - you listen actively, value diverse perspectives, and build trust across teams and stakeholders.

• Are incredibly organized and efficient—you take on complex projects and own them from start to finish.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience with Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Iceberg, data infrastructure, data architecture, cloud services, and/or distributed systems

• Experience marketing technical infrastructure, developer tools, data platforms, or distributed systems

• Hands-on experience with Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, stream processing, or real-time analytics

• Experience using funnel analytics, experimentation, or customer and product data to diagnose and improve GTM performance

• Experience shaping messaging for an emerging category or independently driving ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.