Senior Engineer, Technical Product Owner Kubernetes

JOB SUMMARY

The Kubernetes Technical Product Owner will own the product direction customer experience adoption and continuous improvement of Marriotts 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 Marriotts 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 Marriotts 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 outcomesnot 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.