Senior Product Marketing Manager at Upbound

Job description

Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We’re the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane , and we’re building the Intelligent Control Plane —a new platform layer that makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable . Our mission is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale—so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents . We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence. Today, Upbound supports Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across 100+ countries . Crossplane has surpassed 100M+ downloads and is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide . We’re a Series B company backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital , and we’ve raised $69M to date. Learn more at upbound.io Upbound builds control planes for cloud and AI infrastructure. We created Crossplane and donated it to the CNCF, where it is a graduated project used by platform teams around the world. We are applying that same model to AI inference. Upbound is hiring a Senior Product Marketing Manager that will own go-to-market for that work. You will help define how enterprises understand our commercial product and our open source roots. The community narrative and the enterprise narrative have to reinforce each other without collapsing into each other. We are looking for someone who has done enterprise product marketing in growth stages and who is familiar with the Pragmatic Marketing discipline. You will need to be customer obsessed and be able to talk to a platform engineer to a VP of Engineering and VP of AI and who has worked inside an open core company. In this role you will... Positioning and messaging for our AI inference portfolio. The message architecture, the value framework, and the proof behind every claim we make. Competitive and market strategy. You track the AI inference and infrastructure landscape, arm the field, and hold a defensible point of view on where the category is going. Launches, end to end. Narrative and press through analyst briefings through sales enablement, on a release cadence measured in weeks rather than quarters. Enterprise buyer fluency. Persona and journey work for CIOs, VPs of Engineering, VPs of AI, and the platform teams who evaluate us. Sales enablement sellers actually use. Sales plays, discovery questions, objection handling, cost and ROI models, customer stories. Pricing and packaging input , grounded in how enterprises actually buy and budget for AI infrastructure. The open source to commercial path. The relationship between what the project does and what the product does, and the narrative that differentiates each. Customer obsessed. You are a named spokesperson. You brief analysts, prep executives, and show up on stage, on podcasts, and in the community. You are a good fit if you have... 8+ years in B2B enterprise software product marketing , with meaningful time on infrastructure, developer, or data platform products sold to technical buyers. Enterprise go-to-market that closed real revenue. You can describe deals your messaging influenced, the buyer roles in the room, and what changed because of the work you did. Genuine technical depth. Working knowledge of AI and Inference, cloud infrastructure, and how modern software gets deployed and operated, with awareness of the Kubernetes ecosystem. Open source and commercial experience in the same organization. You have marketed a project and a product side by side. You understand community trust, the open core line, contributor and maintainer dynamics. Zero to one in an emerging category. You have taken a new, technically ambitious product to market before the analysts had a name for it. Writing you did yourself. You ship copy. Comfort with speed and ambiguity. Our releases ship in weeks. The AI infrastructure market is moving quickly. Trust with engineers, and senior sales leaders. A plus if you… Direct experience marketing AI or ML infrastructure, including inference serving, GPU capacity, or MLOps. Fluency in the CNCF and/or PyTorch ecosystem Hyperscaler or cloud marketplace route-to-market experience (AWS, Azure, GCP). Training in a value messaging discipline such as Command of the Message, or an equivalent framework you have actually operationalized. You have been the first or only PMM on a product and built the function from nothing. #LI-REMOTE Why Upbound? At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. If you're excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table. About Upbound Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes - based on Kubernetes and Crossplane - that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. For more information, visit www.upbound.io .

Requirements

Must-haves

In this role you will...
Positioning and messaging for our AI inference portfolio. The message architecture, the value framework, and the proof behind every claim we make.
Competitive and market strategy. You track the AI inference and infrastructure landscape, arm the field, and hold a defensible point of view on where the category is going.
Launches, end to end. Narrative and press through analyst briefings through sales enablement, on a release cadence measured in weeks rather than quarters.
Enterprise buyer fluency. Persona and journey work for CIOs, VPs of Engineering, VPs of AI, and the platform teams who evaluate us.
Sales enablement sellers actually use. Sales plays, discovery questions, objection handling, cost and ROI models, customer stories.
Pricing and packaging input , grounded in how enterprises actually buy and budget for AI infrastructure.
The open source to commercial path. The relationship between what the project does and what the product does, and the narrative that differentiates each.
Customer obsessed. You are a named spokesperson. You brief analysts, prep executives, and show up on stage, on podcasts, and in the community.
You are a good fit if you have...
8+ years in B2B enterprise software product marketing , with meaningful time on infrastructure, developer, or data platform products sold to technical buyers.
Enterprise go-to-market that closed real revenue. You can describe deals your messaging influenced, the buyer roles in the room, and what changed because of the work you did.
Genuine technical depth. Working knowledge of AI and Inference, cloud infrastructure, and how modern software gets deployed and operated, with awareness of the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Open source and commercial experience in the same organization. You have marketed a project and a product side by side. You understand community trust, the open core line, contributor and maintainer dynamics.
Zero to one in an emerging category. You have taken a new, technically ambitious product to market before the analysts had a name for it.
Writing you did yourself. You ship copy.
Comfort with speed and ambiguity. Our releases ship in weeks. The AI infrastructure market is moving quickly.
Trust with engineers, and senior sales leaders.
Direct experience marketing AI or ML infrastructure, including inference serving, GPU capacity, or MLOps.
Fluency in the CNCF and/or PyTorch ecosystem
Hyperscaler or cloud marketplace route-to-market experience (AWS, Azure, GCP).
Training in a value messaging discipline such as Command of the Message, or an equivalent framework you have actually operationalized.
You have been the first or only PMM on a product and built the function from nothing.

Nice-to-haves

A plus if you…

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

aigokubernetesmlawsazuregcp

Platform: greenhouse
Effort: quick

Benefits

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