Role Summary
This is a senior individual-contributor product leadership role owning three of Horizon's four co-components: Support, Manage, and Store. You will define product strategy and requirements for the administrator and self-service experience across DDN's two storage engines (Infinia and EXAScaler), and partner closely with engineering leadership to sequence delivery against Horizon's charter-level priorities.
This role does not own Horizon Control (the Rafay-OEM orchestration product) though it might play a role in that. Close coordination with that side of the business is expected, particularly where Support/Manage/Store roadmap decisions have pricing or packaging implications.
Key Responsibilities
- Own Horizon Support and Horizon Manage requirements - maintain the cross-engine provider matrix and the Manage & Support PRD as Infinia and EXAScaler capabilities evolve, translating engine-level maturity gaps into clear, sequenced product requirements.
- Drive Horizon Support - currently Horizon's near-term #1 platform priority - including the proactive support capability: heuristics that flag failure precursors (e.g., a failing drive) before the customer notices, and the internal/customer-facing dual-surface model this depends on.
- Own Horizon Store's self-service experience - sequence delivery against each engine's API maturity, in particular the EXAScaler northbound API dependency.
- Sequence work with engine PMs (Infinia, EXAScaler) and engineering leadership per Horizon's ordinal build priorities - Infinia before EXAScaler within each component, minimal-then-full for EXAScaler.
- Define the proactive-support model - SLAs, escalation tiers, and the boundary between automated detection and human escalation - in partnership with DDN's Support organization.
- Own the observability requirements that feed both Manage and Support as the shared foundation, keeping pace with each engine's telemetry maturity.
- Represent Support/Manage/Store in business reviews (MBR/QBR), translating provider-matrix gaps and delivery risk into clear, decision-ready call-outs for leadership.
What's Explicitly Out of Scope
- Horizon Control - the Rafay-OEM orchestration product, its roadmap, and pricing/commercial negotiation with Rafay.
- EXAScaler/Infinia engine-level roadmaps - owned by the EXAScaler/Infinia PM organizations. Close partnership expected, since Support and Manage span both engines.
Qualifications
- 10+ years of product management experience, including enterprise infrastructure, storage, or cloud-platform products.
- A track record owning multi-product or multi-engine platform strategy, translating a durable technical strategy into sequenced, engineering-ready requirements.
- Comfort operating at both strategic and detailed altitude - informing charter-level tradeoffs one day, writing provider-matrix and PRD-level requirements the next.
- Experience with observability- or telemetry-driven products is a strong plus, given how central this is to Horizon Support.
- Experience partnering with globally distributed engineering organizations.
- Demonstrated experience defining support models and SLAs for enterprise infrastructure products.
What Success Looks Like in the First 90 Days
- Fully onboarded on the Horizon charter, the Manage & Support PRD, and the current Infinia/EXAScaler provider matrix.
- Established working relationships with the Infinia and EXAScaler PM teams and Horizon engineering leadership.
- Identified and begun closing the highest-priority gaps in the Support/Manage/Store provider matrix.
