The Staff Product Manager will lead the developer lifecycle at Temporal, defining strategies for testing, deployment, and CLI tools, while collaborating with engineering and cross-SDK teams to enhance developer experience.
About Us
Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. We are on a mission to be the reliable foundation of every developer’s toolbox, and are building the team that will make that happen.
Our values guide us —they are present in how we show up, make decisions, and work together to make an impact. We’re curious, driven, collaborative, genuine and humble.
Temporal is growing and we are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for improving the developer experience, building world-class open-source software and communities, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!
About the role
Temporal is the durable execution platform that lets developers write code that survives any failure. Thousands of companies run mission-critical applications on Temporal — from payment processing to AI agent orchestration.
We're hiring a Staff Product Manager to own the developer lifecycle: the tools and experiences developers use to adopt Temporal, verify their code, and ship with confidence. You'll own the CLI, testing framework, deploy safety tooling, local development environment, and getting-started experience.
This is a high-ambiguity role. You'll define Temporal's testing strategy (do we own test servers or move to testcontainers?), deploy safety approach (replay-based, static analysis, or linting - and where does it run?), and the developer tooling vision that ties it all together. Several of these are open product questions with no obvious answer.
What you'll do
- Define and drive the strategy for developer tooling across Temporal's platform - not just ship features, but make opinionated bets on how developers should test, debug, and deploy durable applications
- Own the testing story end-to-end: make the strategic call on test infrastructure direction, define canonical patterns, and drive toward tests that developers actually trust
- Own the deploy safety story: determine the right approach for pre-deploy compatibility checking and drive it from concept to shipped product
- Unify the CLI into one coherent tool - for humans and AI agents - and define what the CLI becomes as AI-assisted development accelerates
- Collapse the getting-started experience so new developers reach a working project in minutes with production-realistic patterns
- Influence cross-SDK decisions - the tools you own work across Go, Java, TypeScript, Python, and .NET. You'll drive consistency without blocking SDK teams
- Define the developer-to-operator handoff - where "I'm shipping" ends and "it's being operated" begins
- Partner directly with engineering leadership to shape team priorities and technical direction
- Represent the developer tooling perspective in product-staff reviews and company-level planning
What you'll own
- Testing & verification - strategic direction for how Temporal code gets tested, canonical patterns, CI integration
- Deploy safety - the approach for pre-deploy compatibility checking and determinism detection
- Code evolution - how developers version, migrate, and evolve long-running applications over time
- CLI - the primary developer interface to Temporal, for humans and AI agents
- Getting started - first-run experience, scaffolding, templates that reflect real-world patterns
- Local development - dev server, project setup, and the path from zero to working project
What we're looking for
- 8+ years of product management experience, with significant time on developer tools, SDKs, CLIs, or developer infrastructure
- You've defined and driven a tooling strategy, not just executed one - you made opinionated bets about how developers should work and shipped them
- You've made build-vs-buy or keep-vs-deprecate decisions on developer-facing infrastructure and can articulate the tradeoffs years later
- You can hold a coherent vision across multiple tools that ship on different timelines to different language ecosystems
- You're comfortable operating in ambiguity - several of the biggest questions in this role don't have obvious answers yet
- You write clearly, decide quickly, and change your mind when the evidence says to
- You've partnered with engineering leadership, not just engineering teams - you influence technical direction, not just product requirements
- You understand the difference between developer tooling and production operations, and you set that boundary clearly
Nice to have
- You've personally built or contributed to a CLI, testing framework, CI pipeline, or developer tool
- Experience with distributed systems, workflow engines, or durable execution concepts
- You've worked on cross-language or cross-platform developer tools
- Familiarity with the competitive landscape: Restate, Inngest, Durable Objects, Step Functions
- The estimated salary range for this role is $185,000 - $260,000, based on experience and location.
- Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal's equity plan.
Compensation ranges reflect salary and commission compensation (when applicable) across several geographic markets. Employment offers carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, knowledge, expertise, skillset, market location, and job level assessed during the interview process.
Employee benefits and perks below are for full-time employees, part-time or temporary positions are excluded.
U.S. Benefits
- Unlimited PTO, 12 Holidays + 2 Floating Holidays
- 100% Premiums Coverage for Medical, Dental, and Vision
- AD&D, LT & ST Disability, and Life Insurance (Standard & Supplemental Available)
- Empower 401K Plan
- Additional Perks for Learning & Development, Lifestyle Spending, In-Home Office Setup, Professional Memberships, WFH Meals, Internet Stipend and more!
International Benefits
Paid Time Off (PTO) and Benefits outside the United States vary by country, and are issued in partnership with Remote.com. Additionally, Temporal offers perks to all international employees for learning & career development, a lifestyle spending account, in-home office setup (in addition to company-issued hardware), professional memberships, work-from-home meals, and access to the Calm app for mental wellness.
Travel
Temporal is a globally distributed, collaborative team that values opportunities for in-person connection. Occasional travel may be required for company events, team offsites, and other meaningful moments that bring us together.
Additional Perks
- $3,600 / Year Work from Home Meals
- $1,800 / Year Professional Enrichment (Career Development & Professional Memberships)
- $1,200 / Year Lifestyle Spending Account
- $1,000 / Year In-Home Office Setup (In addition to Temporal issued equipment - laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and extension power cable at no cost to you)
- $74 / Month Reimbursement for Internet
- Calm App Subscription for Mental Health & Wellness
Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.
Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.
We are not working with external recruitment agencies, thanks.
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