Job description

ROLE SUMMARY 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 YOU'LL BRING - 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 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.

Requirements

Must-haves

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.
Own the product strategy and roadmap for a focused Core Primitives charter
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
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-haves

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

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

apiai

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick