Confluent - Senior Product Manager I - Cloud Gross Margin & Global Expansion

As a Product Manager in Pricing & Monetization, you’ll own the gross margin and global footprint of Confluent Cloud. That covers what it costs to serve every customer, workload, and product, where we expand next, and how cost and demand shape what we build, how we buy cloud infrastructure, and how we price. You’ll partner with Infrastructure Engineering, Finance, Procurement, our cloud provider partnership teams, Sales, and Deal Desk.

● You will own the cost model that turns cloud provider spend into a trusted unit cost for every Confluent Cloud product, SKU, region, and customer.

● You will own the business case for new markets and regions, matching global demand with infrastructure deployments that earn their return.

● Your work will shape how Confluent buys from AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, where Confluent Cloud is available, how new products and architectures are designed for margin, and how cost is reflected in pricing.

● You’ll make gross margin something the business can see, predict, and steer, including as Confluent’s financial reporting integrates with IBM’s

What You Will Do

● Build and own the Confluent Cloud COGS and unit economics model, including the allocation method for shared multi-tenant infrastructure, so every product, SKU, and customer has a defensible cost to serve.

● Build the contribution margin forecast that connects consumption growth, product mix, regional footprint, architecture changes, and cloud commitments to future gross margin, and use it to set and track margin targets.

● Partner with Infrastructure Engineering to find, size, and prioritize cost reduction opportunities across compute, storage, and networking, and drive them onto the engineering roadmap.

● Partner with Procurement and our cloud provider partnership teams to capture savings through contract negotiations, savings plans, committed use discounts, and marketplace terms, and manage Confluent’s commitment burn-down against those agreements.

● Lead new markets and regional expansion: size demand across geographies, cloud providers, and regulated markets, using signals such as lost deals, pipeline, marketplace demand, and data residency requirements, and build ROI-based business cases for new region launches.

● Own the regional footprint across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure: define the minimum viable deployment for each new region, track payback against plan, and recommend when to scale, consolidate, or retire capacity.

● Set regional pricing strategy with the Pricing team so price reflects differences in regional cost to serve, and make explicit, measured decisions where strategic regions run below target margin.

● Make gross margin a first-class input to product development: review the cost footprint of every new product introduction and major architecture change (such as edge deployments, multi-region clusters, and networking redesigns) before launch, and own the margin section of product launch reviews.

● Build cost transparency into pricing, including a consistent, single networking charge across product lines, and work with Commit Estimator and Deal Desk to set margin guardrails on committed deals.

● Analyze margin by customer, cohort, region, and channel to identify unprofitable usage patterns, and recommend pricing, packaging, or architectural fixes.

● Model the cost of free tiers, trials, and promotional credits so self-serve growth is efficient by design.

● Set the unit cost framework for emerging cost categories, including AI inference and GPU-backed capabilities, before pricing is set.

● Define and report success metrics such as gross margin by product and region, unit cost trends, savings captured, regional payback, and forecast accuracy, and communicate them clearly to senior leadership.

● 5+ years in product management, FinOps, cloud economics, or a similar role at a B2B SaaS or cloud infrastructure company, with direct accountability for cloud cost or gross margin outcomes.

● Deep, hands-on knowledge of AWS, Google Cloud, and/or Azure billing and cost data (cost and usage reports, billing exports, cost management tooling), and of commitment instruments such as savings plans, reserved instances, and committed use discounts.

● Experience building driver-based cost or margin models that Finance trusts and Engineering acts on, including allocating shared infrastructure costs across products or customers.

● Experience building investment business cases that combine demand sizing, fixed and variable cost, and payback analysis, such as region launches, capacity investments, or market entry.

● Ability to translate distributed systems architecture into cost drivers, with credibility with infrastructure engineers on compute, storage, and network trade-offs.

● Proven ability to influence without authority across Engineering, Finance, Procurement, Data Science and Sales, and to turn cost and demand analysis into repeatable roadmap, footprint, and pricing decisions.

● Strong analytical skills (advanced Excel or Google Sheets required; SQL required, BigQuery preferred).

● Clear written and verbal communication: you can explain a margin trade-off to an engineer in one conversation and to an executive on one page.

● Hands-on use of AI tools in your daily work for research, analysis, and automation.

● FinOps Certified Practitioner or equivalent FinOps Foundation credential.

● Experience negotiating or supporting enterprise cloud contracts (EDP, PPA, MACC) or managing cloud marketplace economics.

● Experience launching or expanding cloud services into new regions, including data residency, sovereignty, or regulated-market requirements.

● Familiarity with data streaming or data infrastructure cost structures, such as Apache Kafka, cross-zone replication, and tiered storage.

● Experience with usage-based pricing, regional pricing, rating platforms such as Metronome, or deal pricing tools.

● Finance, FP&A, strategy, or consulting experience.

● A computer science or engineering degree, or prior engineering experience

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.