Principal Product Manager

Couchbase, the operational data platform for AI, empowers businesses to succeed by bringing data to life in new ways. Major market-leading companies rely on Couchbase for mission critical operational, analytical, mobile and AI workloads. Built to replace legacy infrastructure and fragmented data services, Couchbase empowers enterprises with a unified platform architected for performance, flexibility and global scale.

With Couchbase, organizations bring their data to life, launching game‑changing customer experiences, exploring the limitless potential of AI, and seamlessly extending applications from the cloud to the edge and beyond. Couchbase’s AI‑ready technology and enterprise partnership model eliminate complexity and reduce total cost of ownership, enabling teams to stay agile, innovative and secure.

Couchbase believes data should never slow you down, but act as the foundation for your next breakthrough. Discover why Couchbase is trusted to help the world’s biggest players scale, move fast and stay resilient, no matter what’s next on their roadmap. Visit couchbase.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X.

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About the Role

Couchbase is building the operational data platform for AI. We are hiring a Principal Product Manager, AI to own a meaningful area of the AI portfolio across Capella and Couchbase Enterprise. Reporting to the VP of AI Product Management, this Principal PM partners closely with engineering, sales and GTM, marketing, and the broader AI organization to ship capabilities that solve real problems for our enterprise ICP — at the seniority where roadmap decisions, customer commitments, and analyst positioning are decided.

This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role for someone who wants to do the work at the Principal level — write the PRFAQ, sit with the customer, push the tradeoff, ship the capability, defend the roadmap to leadership and analysts — at the center of one of the most consequential shifts in enterprise data infrastructure.

What You Will Own

• Product strategy and execution across an AI portfolio area: End-to-end ownership of a meaningful area within the AI portfolio. Strategy in your area, the roadmap, the PRFAQs and PRDs, the launch, the adoption — and the iteration after launch. The scope is substantive enough that one or more Senior PMs may eventually contribute through the area you own.

• Working backwards from the customer: Start with the customer and work backwards. Write the PRFAQ before any code is written. Validate with real, named enterprise customers. Make crisp tradeoff calls about what to build and what to defer based on what the enterprise ICP universally needs — not features chasing competitors or one-off requests outside the ICP.

• Engineering partnership: Work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineering. Earn their trust by being technically credible, decisive on scope, and clear on the why. Own the PRD as a living document, not a one-time artifact. Hold the bar on quality, scope, and timing through to launch.

• Customer and design partner engagement: Run design partner programs for capabilities in your area. Bring real customer voice into roadmap decisions and back to the broader team. Build a pipeline of named reference customers willing to talk publicly about what they have shipped.

• Cross-portfolio collaboration and build-vs-partner judgment: Coordinate across the broader product organization — Core Database, Capella, Analytics, Mobile and Edge, and the AI Specialist team — so AI capabilities compose as one platform. Apply a deliberate build-vs-partner lens: build where Couchbase is uniquely strong, and identify partnerships and integrations where we can deliver a better customer experience faster and more resource-efficiently than building ourselves.

• Sales and GTM partnership: Equip sales, sales engineering, PMM, and partner GTM with what they need to win in the capabilities you own — positioning, demos, competitive context, customer proof points. Be the product owner in deals where the technical depth matters.

• External voice and analyst credibility: Contribute meaningfully as the product owner in analyst engagements (Gartner, Forrester, IDC), customer briefings, keynote content, partner co-marketing, blog posts, and documentation for the capabilities you own.

• AI-driven PM practice: Use AI deeply and visibly in your own product management work — research, PRFAQ drafting, customer synthesis, competitive analysis, roadmap modeling, engineering collaboration. Set an example for the team in what AI-driven PM and AI-DLC (AI-driven development lifecycle) practices look like in day-to-day execution.

• PM team development: Raise the PM bar across the AI team. Mentor and coach Senior and other PMs. Contribute to interview loops, calibration, and onboarding. Help shape the operating cadence, the PRFAQ and PRD standards, and the culture.

What You Will Deliver

• PRFAQs and PRDs for the capabilities you own, validated with named enterprise customers before engineering starts.

• Ship capabilities within your AI portfolio area with measurable adoption and at least one named reference customer per major launch.

• Clear, defensible tradeoff decisions visible to engineering, sales, and GTM. The team knows what is in, what is out, and why.

• Sales and GTM enablement that the field actually uses — measured by pipeline influence and win-rate signals, not enablement-decks-produced.

• Contributions to the broader AI portfolio narrative — analyst materials, keynote content, partner co-marketing, and blog and documentation work in partnership with the AI Specialist team, PMM, and AR.

• Visible AI-driven PM practice that the rest of the team can learn from — concrete examples of AI-DLC in your daily work.

• A stronger PM bar across the AI organization — through mentoring, calibration, hiring contributions, and operating cadence.

Must Have

• Twelve or more years in product management, with at least five on a technical platform — database, data infrastructure, developer tools, or AI infrastructure.

• Deep technical fluency in modern AI infrastructure: vector search, embeddings, RAG, agent frameworks, model serving, context engineering, and emerging interoperability standards. You can hold your own with engineering on architecture.

• Customer obsession and working-backwards rigor: You start with the customer and work backwards. You write PRFAQs before code. You can tell which feature requests reflect universal ICP needs and which are noise, and you make the call clearly.

• Engineering credibility: Engineers want to work with you. You hold your own on architecture, are decisive on scope, and own the why behind every tradeoff.

• Cross-functional trust: Sales trusts your roadmap. GTM trusts your enablement. Marketing trusts your narrative. You build durable working relationships outside your own team.

• Exemplary AI-driven PM practice: You already use AI heavily in your own PM work — research, PRFAQ drafting, customer synthesis, competitive analysis, roadmap modeling — and you can point to concrete examples. You set an example for the team in what AI-DLC looks like in day-to-day product execution.

• Deep frontier-model experience: Advanced, hands-on experience building with frontier AI models — APIs, code-generation tools, MCP, agent frameworks, and modern developer ecosystems. Deep familiarity with Anthropic's Claude stack is strongly preferred.

• Strong written communication. Your PRFAQs and PRDs are the artifact the team aligns on, not a chore that follows the work.

• A shipping record — products and features you have personally taken from PRFAQ to launch to adoption, ideally including one that opened a new revenue line.

Nice to Have

• Experience at a database, data platform, or AI infrastructure company (MongoDB, Snowflake, Databricks, Elastic, Confluent, Redis, Pinecone, AWS, GCP, Azure, or comparable).

• Direct experience building or shipping vector search, agent memory, RAG pipelines, model serving, or related AI infrastructure capabilities.

• Public presence — blog posts, conference talks, OSS contributions, or analyst-facing work.

• Prior experience mentoring or developing other PMs.

Location and Reporting

Based in one of the following locations: Remote-US. Regular travel to Couchbase HQ, customer sites, partner events, and industry conferences. Reports to the VP of AI Product Management.

The anticipated starting base pay range for this role is listed below. Base salary is not the only component of our competitive total rewards package - you may also be eligible for bonus, commissions, and other benefits as described below. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location.

Base Pay Range

$169,000—$199,000 USD

At Couchbase, we believe innovation thrives when diverse perspectives are at the table. We actively encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds—including women, people of color, LGTBQIA+ professionals, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. If you see a role that excites you, but don’t meet every qualification, we still encourage you to apply.

Studies show underrepresented talent is less likely to apply unless they meet all the criteria. We encourage you to apply if you’re excited about the role and can bring strong contributions to our team.

If you require reasonable accommodations during the recruitment process, please let your recruiter know—we’re happy to support you.

We value diverse educational and career backgrounds. If your experience aligns with the role’s goals—even if it doesn’t follow a traditional path—we’d love to hear from you.

Why Couchbase?

Modern customer experiences need a flexible cloud database platform that can power applications spanning from cloud to edge and everything in between. Couchbase’s mission is to simplify how developers and architects develop, deploy and consume modern applications wherever they are. We have reimagined the database with our fast, flexible and affordable cloud database platform Capella, allowing organizations to quickly build applications that deliver premium experiences to their customers– all with best-in-class price performance. More than 30% of the Fortune 100 trust Couchbase to power their modern applications and build innovative new ones. See our recent awards to learn why Couchbase is a great place to work.We are honored to be a part of the Best Places to Work Award for the Bay Area and the UK. Couchbase offers a total rewards approach to benefits that recognizes the value you create here, so that you in turn may best serve yourself and your family. Some benefits include:

• Generous Time Off Program - Flexibility to care for you and your family
• Wellness Benefits - A variety of world class medical plans to choose from, along with dental, vision, life insurance, and employee assistance programs*
• Financial Planning - Retirement program* and Business Travel Insurance
• Career Growth - Be valued, Create value approach
• Fun Perks - An ergonomic and comfortable in-office / WFH setup. Food & Snacks for in-office employees.
• And much more!

*Note: some programs are not applicable to all countries. Please discuss with a Couchbase recruiter to learn more.

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