Product Owner Expert - Kubernetes, CaaS Platform

Position Overview

At PNC, our people are our greatest differentiator and competitive advantage in the markets we serve. We are all united in delivering the best experience for our customers. We work together each day to foster an inclusive workplace culture where all of our employees feel respected, valued and have an opportunity to contribute to the company’s success.

As a Product Owner Expert within PNC's Technology organization, you can be based Dallas TX, Phoenix AZ, Pittsburgh PA, Strongsville OH or Birmingham AL.

PNC will not provide sponsorship for employment visas or participate in STEM OPT for this position.

We are looking for an accomplished and experienced Product Owner Expert to support our Kubernetes CaaS Platform. The successful candidate will be instrumental in shaping the strategic direction, defining the roadmap, and facilitating adoption of container hosting platforms across both on-premises and cloud environments.

A Product Owner Expert is a senior-level role focused on designing, managing, and evolving container-based platforms (Kubernetes ecosystems) as products for internal or external users. This role serves as a link between technical engineering teams and business stakeholders, ensuring scalable infrastructure solutions are developed, launched, and widely adopted while prioritizing user experience.

Key Responsibilities:

Product Strategy & Roadmap: Establishes the long-term vision, strategic direction, and roadmap for containerized infrastructure and Kubernetes services. Ensures alignment of container strategy with organizational objectives such as scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency. Identifies avenues for platform enhancement and innovation.

Technical Leadership: Responsible for overseeing the product development process, collaborating with engineering to convert market requirements into technical specifications for container runtime, security, and orchestration. Guarantees developer usability through self-service options, APIs, and clear documentation. Promotes widespread adoption among engineering teams and provides mentorship as well as guidance to engineers.

Customer & Market Insight: Represents customers, studies industry trends, and informs product development and adoption.

Performance Optimization: Oversees product metrics to enhance the performance, usability, and reliability of containerized workloads across various environments.

Architecture & Design: Develop and set standards for container orchestration systems such as Kubernetes. Establish best practices for CI/CD pipelines, Microservices deployment, and Observability—including logging, monitoring, and tracing. Guarantee robust high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability.

Security & Compliance: Apply container security, scan images, secure runtime, enforce policies, and meet enterprise standards.

Performance & Cost Optimization: Enhance cluster efficiency and resource management, minimize on-prem / cloud expenses through effective container orchestration, and strengthen system performance and reliability in accordance with SLOs/SLAs.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (or equivalent experience) preferred

• 7-10 years Relevant Product Management, Product Owner, or Architecture/Software Engineer experience in an agile software product development environment preferred. Advanced level understanding of customer experience

• 10+ years relevant Product Management or Product Owner experience in cloud, infrastructure, or platform engineering domains preferred.

• Experience in Agile software development environments, preferably with developer platform products.

• Strong background in Kubernetes, container orchestration, and DevOps tooling (e.g., Helm, ArgoCD, Jenkins, GitOps).

• Familiarity with cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and on-prem solutions (OpenShift, bare-metal Kubernetes, etc.)

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to present complex technical information to non-technical stakeholders.

• Ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage multiple stakeholders effectively.

Preferred Skills:

• Kubernetes Expertise: Strong understanding of Kubernetes cluster architecture, workload orchestration, networking, RBAC, and security best practices.

Hybrid-Cloud & On-Prem Platforms: Hands-on knowledge of hybrid and multi-cloud environments and experience integrating Kubernetes with enterprise systems.

Agile Practices: Deep experience with Agile methodologies and backlog/project management tools (e.g., Jira, Rally, ADO).

Licenses and Certifications:

• Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD, or CKS) strongly preferred

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or SAFe POPM (Preferred)

• Cloud certifications (AWS/Azure/GCP) a plus

PNC will not provide sponsorship for employment visas or participate in STEM OPT for this position.

PNC is an in-office company that fosters a supportive culture where employees can thrive and achieve balance. We encourage candidates to connect with their recruiter and hiring manager to understand workplace expectations and ensure the role aligns with their goals.

PNC will not provide sponsorship for employment visas or participate in STEM OPT for this position.

Job Description

• Owns the vision and definition of the product. Serves as the voice of the Customer. Responsible for ensuring the Scrum Team(s) effort is concentrated on the right priorities based on business value. Maintains a strategic focus in the group while dealing with the most complex matters including but not limited to integration, workflow, and/or risk.

• Oversees end to end development and 'go to market' approach. Acts as the primary engagement owner to address client/customer needs and ensures value delivery.

• Takes a proactive approach to mitigate risk issues and solve problems dealing with the integrity of the product backlog.

• Negotiates with vendors and outside consultants that are needed for the product. Drives efficiency and provides PNL value during all stages of the product. Acts as the lead decision maker for the team and is responsible for crew management.

• Communicates the delivery of business value and outcomes of the iteration to the stakeholders, clients, and provides updates to senior and executive leadership.

PNC Employees take pride in our reputation and to continue building upon that we expect our employees to be:

• Customer Focused - Knowledgeable of the values and practices that align customer needs and satisfaction as primary considerations in all business decisions and able to leverage that information in creating customized customer solutions.

• Managing Risk - Assessing and effectively managing all of the risks associated with their business objectives and activities to ensure they adhere to and support PNC's Enterprise Risk Management Framework.

Qualifications

Successful candidates must demonstrate appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities for a role. Listed below are skills, competencies, work experience, education, and required certifications/licensures needed to be successful in this position.

Preferred Skills

Accountability, AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Customer Solutions, Data Visualization, Prioritization, RedHat, Scrum, User Experience (UX) Design

Competencies

Agile Development, Business Acumen, Design Thinking, Effective Communications, Innovation, Interpersonal Relationships, IT Standards, Procedures & Policies, Managing Multiple Priorities, Organizational Leadership, Planning and Organizing, Solutions Development

Work Experience

Roles at this level typically require a university / college degree. Higher level education such as a Masters degree, or PhD is desirable. Industry experience is typically 8 + years. Specific certifications are often required. In lieu of a degree, a comparable combination of education, job specific certification(s), and experience (including military service) may be considered.

Education

Bachelors

Certifications

No Required Certification(s)

Licenses

No Required License(s)

Pay Transparency

Base Salary: $100,000.00 – $198,375.00

Salaries may vary based on geographic location, market data and on individual skills, experience, and education. This role is incentive eligible with the payment based upon company, business and/or individual performance.

Application Window

Generally, this opening is expected to be posted for two business days from 03/27/2026, although it may be longer with business discretion.

Benefits

PNC offers a comprehensive range of benefits to help meet your needs now and in the future. Depending on your eligibility, options for full-time employees include: medical/prescription drug coverage (with a Health Savings Account feature), dental and vision options; employee and spouse/child life insurance; short and long-term disability protection; 401(k) with PNC match, pension and stock purchase plans; dependent care reimbursement account; back-up child/elder care; adoption, surrogacy, and doula reimbursement; educational assistance, including select programs fully paid; a robust wellness program with financial incentives.

In addition, PNC generally provides the following paid time off, depending on your eligibility: maternity and/or parental leave; up to 11 paid holidays each year; 9 occasional absence days each year, unless otherwise required by law; between 15 to 25 vacation days each year, depending on career level; and years of service.

To learn more about these and other programs, including benefits for full time and part-time employees, visit pncthrive.com .

Disability Accommodations Statement

If an accommodation is required to participate in the application process, please contact us via email at View email address on click.appcast.io . Please include “accommodation request” in the subject line title and be sure to include your name, the job ID, and your preferred method of contact in the body of the email. Emails not related to accommodation requests will not receive responses. Applicants may also call View phone number on click.appcast.io and say "Workday" for accommodation assistance. All information provided will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.

At PNC we foster an inclusive and accessible workplace. We provide reasonable accommodations to employment applicants and qualified individuals with a disability who need an accommodation to perform the essential functions of their positions.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)

PNC provides equal employment opportunity to qualified persons regardless of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, veteran status, or other categories protected by law.

This position is subject to the requirements of Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDIA) and, for any registered role, the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008 (SAFE Act) and/or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which prohibit the hiring of individuals with certain criminal history.

California Residents

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