Job DescriptionJOB SUMMARYThe Kubernetes Technical Product Owner will own the product direction, customer experience, adoption, and continuous improvement of Marriott's Enterprise Kubernetes Platform. This role will serve as the primary connection between the Kubernetes team and application engineering teams, platform engineering, infrastructure, security, operations, and engineering leadership.
The Technical Product Owner will build a clear understanding of application-team needs, translate those needs into platform priorities and improvement opportunities, and provide engineering leaders with evidence-based recommendations for roadmap and investment decisions. They will establish the operating rhythms, communications, metrics, and cross-functional alignment needed to move high-value initiatives from discovery through delivery and adoption.
This role will also lead strategic engineering enablement initiatives, including Marriott's Engineering Experience program, Engineering Excellence Network, domain ambassador engagement, and coordination of Forward Deployed Engineer activities. These efforts will provide structured ways to engage application teams, identify engineering friction, improve adoption of supported patterns, and surface opportunities for platform improvements.
Success requires product ownership, program leadership, customer empathy, and sufficient technical depth to engage credibly with engineers, recognize architectural and delivery concerns, challenge ineffective or unsupported approaches, and involve the appropriate specialists when deeper technical evaluation is required. The role must be able to influence outcomes across a matrixed organization, maintain momentum without relying on formal authority, and demonstrate measurable improvement in platform value and the engineering experience.
CANDIDATE PROFILE Required: - Undergraduate degree in engineering, computer science, or a related discipline and/or equivalent experience or certification.
- 6+ years of technology experience, including 3+ years in technical product ownership, technical program leadership, platform engineering, or a related role.
- Experience with Kubernetes, public-cloud platforms, DevOps, CI/CD, GitOps, Agile methodologies, and modern software delivery practices.
- Demonstrated ability to use generative AI, prompt engineering, and AI-assisted development tools to accelerate research, analysis, content creation, and solution delivery.
- Ability to independently create and deliver technical enablement products such as documentation sites, onboarding experiences, user guides, and other self-service resources.
- Experience with Markdown, Docusaurus or similar documentation frameworks, Git-based workflows, and documentation-as-code practices.
- Technical understanding of application architecture, security, reliability, observability, automation, and operational readiness.
Preferred: - Experience evaluating application architectures and cloud-native solution designs.
- Experience using AI to build or improve developer tools, workflows, documentation, or engineering enablement experiences.
- Experience with enterprise platform adoption, developer experience, engineering enablement, or application modernization.
CORE WORK ACTIVITIES Own the Kubernetes Platform as a Product - Develop and maintain a clear product vision, roadmap, backlog, and adoption strategy for the Enterprise Kubernetes Platform.
- Build strong relationships with application teams and understand their architectures, delivery objectives, platform needs, operational challenges, and sources of friction.
- Maintain an effective process for capturing, evaluating, prioritizing, and communicating customer requests and platform improvements
- Develop evidence-based priority recommendations that balance customer value, architectural risk, enterprise strategy, platform sustainability, and engineering capacity.
- Partner with engineering leaders and platform teams to translate approved priorities into clear outcomes, ownership, delivery plans, and customer communications.
- Own platform communications, including progress updates, roadmap context, release information, adoption guidance, significant changes, deprecations, and customer impacts.
Drive Adoption and Customer Success - Improve how application teams discover, adopt, and successfully operate on the Kubernetes platform.
- Identify barriers to adoption, recurring support needs, gaps in self-service, and sources of unnecessary complexity.
- Convert insights from individual customer engagements into scalable platform capabilities, reusable patterns, automation, documentation, standards, and enablement.
- Ensure customer commitments, dependencies, risks, and unresolved decisions remain visible and receive appropriate follow-through.
Lead Strategic Engineering Initiatives - Lead the operating model and execution of Marriott's Engineering Experience program and related engineering enablement efforts.
- Coordinate the Engineering Excellence Network, domain ambassadors, FDE activities, application-team engagements, and participating platform teams.
- Establish clear engagement objectives, responsibilities, schedules, success criteria, and follow-up mechanisms.
- Help application teams identify architectural, platform, delivery, and engineering-practice improvements.
- Capture recurring insights from engagements and translate them into recommendations for platform teams and engineering leaders.
- Adapt the program and engagement model as organizational priorities, customer needs, and available capacity evolve.
Provide Technical Product Leadership - Engage credibly in discussions involving Kubernetes, cloud platforms, application architecture, software delivery, security, reliability, observability, and operational readiness with an eye towards automating everything.
- Recognize potentially risky, inefficient, unsupported, or nonstandard engineering approaches and ensure they receive appropriate review.
- Assess whether cross-functional work is progressing at an appropriate pace and surface gaps in ownership, decision-making, capacity, or execution.
- Facilitate technical and product discussions that clarify tradeoffs and move stakeholders toward decisions.
- Independently evaluate application architectures when possible and engage deeper subject-matter experts when required.
Measure Product and Program Success - Define and own a balanced framework for measuring Kubernetes platform adoption, customer success, product value, and engineering experience.
- Establish baselines and identify the quantitative and qualitative signals needed to evaluate improvement over time.
- Use customer feedback, adoption patterns, delivery performance, onboarding journeys, support demand, self-service usage, operational outcomes, and other relevant evidence to guide decisions.
- Develop reporting that helps engineering leaders understand progress, persistent friction, emerging needs, and areas requiring investment.
- Ensure success is measured through meaningful customer and engineering outcomes-not simply activity, participation, or output volume (aka, no story points!).
Influence Priorities and Execution - Influence outcomes across platform, application, infrastructure, security, operations, and leadership teams without relying on direct authority.
- Provide engineering leaders with clear recommendations, tradeoffs, customer evidence, risks, and expected outcomes for final decisions.
- Maintain transparency into roadmap progress, strategic initiatives, customer engagements, dependencies, and commitments.
- Proactively identify stalled work and facilitate the ownership, decisions, or escalation required to restore momentum.
- Communicate clearly with technical teams, senior leaders, and other stakeholders at the level of detail appropriate to each audience.
