Principal Product Manager

Couchbase, the operational data platform for AI, empowers businesses to succeed by bringing data to life in new ways. Major market-leading companies rely on Couchbase for mission critical operational, analytical, mobile and AI workloads. Built to replace legacy infrastructure and fragmented data services, Couchbase empowers enterprises with a unified platform architected for performance, flexibility and global scale. With Couchbase, organizations bring their data to life, launching game‑changing customer experiences, exploring the limitless potential of AI, and seamlessly extending applications from the cloud to the edge and beyond. Couchbase’s AI‑ready technology and enterprise partnership model eliminate complexity and reduce total cost of ownership, enabling teams to stay agile, innovative and secure. Couchbase believes data should never slow you down, but act as the foundation for your next breakthrough. Discover why Couchbase is trusted to help the world’s biggest players scale, move fast and stay resilient, no matter what’s next on their roadmap. Visit couchbase.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X. Want to be part of our story? Apply today! About the Role Couchbase is building the operational data platform for AI. We are hiring a Principal Product Manager, AI to own a meaningful area of the AI portfolio across Capella and Couchbase Enterprise. Reporting to the VP of AI Product Management, this Principal PM partners closely with engineering, sales and GTM, marketing, and the broader AI organization to ship capabilities that solve real problems for our enterprise ICP — at the seniority where roadmap decisions, customer commitments, and analyst positioning are decided. This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role for someone who wants to do the work at the Principal level — write the PRFAQ, sit with the customer, push the tradeoff, ship the capability, defend the roadmap to leadership and analysts — at the center of one of the most consequential shifts in enterprise data infrastructure. What You Will Own Product strategy and execution across an AI portfolio area: End-to-end ownership of a meaningful area within the AI portfolio. Strategy in your area, the roadmap, the PRFAQs and PRDs, the launch, the adoption — and the iteration after launch. The scope is substantive enough that one or more Senior PMs may eventually contribute through the area you own. Working backwards from the customer: Start with the customer and work backwards. Write the PRFAQ before any code is written. Validate with real, named enterprise customers. Make crisp tradeoff calls about what to build and what to defer based on what the enterprise ICP universally needs — not features chasing competitors or one-off requests outside the ICP. Engineering partnership: Work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineering. Earn their trust by being technically credible, decisive on scope, and clear on the why. Own the PRD as a living document, not a one-time artifact. Hold the bar on quality, scope, and timing through to launch. Customer and design partner engagement: Run design partner programs for capabilities in your area. Bring real customer voice into roadmap decisions and back to the broader team. Build a pipeline of named reference customers willing to talk publicly about what they have shipped. Cross-portfolio collaboration and build-vs-partner judgment: Coordinate across the broader product organization — Core Database, Capella, Analytics, Mobile and Edge, and the AI Specialist team — so AI capabilities compose as one platform. Apply a deliberate build-vs-partner lens: build where Couchbase is uniquely strong, and identify partnerships and integrations where we can deliver a better customer experience faster and more resource-efficiently than building ourselves. Sales and GTM partnership: Equip sales, sales engineering, PMM, and partner GTM with what they need to win in the capabilities you own — positioning, demos, competitive context, customer proof poi…