Principal Product Manager, Java Intelligence

Azul == Java. As the only company focused 100% on Java, Azul is building the Java platform for the modern cloud enterprise. We are reimagining how customers use Java, bringing them the tools and insight they need to deliver faster, more performant, more dependable, and less expensive Java services. It requires experts in many areas — hardcore experts in Java VM internals, application developers with deep knowledge of Java, backend and frontend developers, performance engineers, etc. Come join one of the most influential members of the Java and OpenJDK community and help influence the future of Java.  The Products Azul Intelligence Cloud turns production Java runtime data into actionable intelligence. It works with any JVM from any vendor — Azul, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, Red Hat, Eclipse — which makes it the one Azul product that can land in an enterprise’s entire Java estate regardless of what runtime they run today. The suite spans Code Inventory (class- and method-level reports of what code actually executes in production, so dead code can be found and removed) and JVM Inventory. Azul’s customers include 36% of the Fortune 100 and 50% of Forbes’ top 10 World’s Most Valuable Brands. Intelligence Cloud is a new product and Azul's primary growth bet — early enough that whoever takes this role will shape what it becomes. Azul Optimizer Hub makes Java applications start fast and stay fast. A component of Azul Prime, it runs as a set of services in the customer’s own Kubernetes environment, in the cloud or on premises, and takes optimization work off the JVMs themselves: Cloud Native Compiler offloads JIT compilation to dedicated, scalable compute, and ReadyNow Orchestrator records and serves warm-up profiles, so new JVMs can do much of their warm-up before they take traffic. Because JVMs share optimizations through it, Optimizer Hub pays off most at fleet scale — one enterprise runs more than 10,000 JVMs against a single instance and has cut its cloud costs by more than 20%. Payara InSight gives teams running Azul Payara Server real-time visibility and alerting on their servers and the applications running on them. Azul Payara Server is the Jakarta EE application server that joined Azul when it acquired Payara in December 2025. It is growing from a console that watches one Payara domain into a product that sees every Payara Server and Payara Micro instance, wherever it runs. All three put what happens inside production Java to work — Intelligence Cloud to show customers what their Java estate is actually running, Optimizer Hub to make it run faster and cheaper, and Payara InSight to show how the applications on top of it are behaving. Beyond that, they differ in almost every way that matters to a product manager: Intelligence Cloud is SaaS, works with any JVM, and can land in any Java estate; Optimizer Hub is self-hosted, works only with Azul Prime, and turns Prime from a faster JVM into a faster fleet; Payara InSight is built for Azul Payara and speaks to the teams who run applications rather than JVMs. We expect the three to work more and more as one platform, and shaping that is part of this job. The Role You will own specific areas of Azul Intelligence Cloud, Azul Optimizer Hub, and Payara InSight, alongside other product managers on the team. For each of your areas, you own its strategy, its roadmap, its pricing, the story the market hears about it, and the numbers it puts up. You set the direction, you defend it in front of the executive team, and you are accountable for where your areas end up. Expect the balance of your time across the three to shift as the business does. Your products are also closely tied to Azul’s Java runtimes: Optimizer Hub ships as part of Azul Prime, and Intelligence Cloud’s JVM Inventory speeds up Azul Core’s Oracle migrations. Your decisions will shape the runtime roadmaps, and at times you’ll work on Azul Core and Azul Prime directly. This is an individual contributor role — there are no direct reports, and you will lead through clarity, evidence, and influence rather than headcount. What you’ll own Outcomes. Above all, you own whether your areas succeed or fail in the market, and you share accountability for how all three do. Sales, pipeline generation, pilot-to-production conversion rates, adoption, retention — these are your numbers, not just the field’s. You will define what success looks like, instrument it, report it honestly when it is bad, and change the product when the data says the strategy is wrong. Strategy. Set the multi-year direction for your areas — where they win, which segments to pursue, what to build versus partner for, and how they compose with the rest of each product and with Azul’s existing enterprise and open-source offerings. You own the thesis for your areas, and you are accountable for whether it holds up. Executive partnership. Report to the VP of Product Management and work directly with the CPO, CEO, CRO, and CTO. You will bring strategy, roadmap, and pricing decisions to the leadership team, argue for them with data, and change your mind in public when the evidence says you should. This is a visible role with real exposure. Roadmap. Translate strategy into a sequenced, credible roadmap for your areas, and make the trade-offs between the products explicit rather than accidental. Build alignment across engineering, sales, and marketing around it, and inspire the teams to deliver it. Communicate it internally and to customers, hold the line on scope, and keep a heavy bias for action. Pricing and packaging. Shape how Intelligence Cloud is priced, packaged, and metered — for a product that lands in Java estates of wildly different shapes and sizes — how Optimizer Hub is packaged and priced as part of Azul Prime, and how Payara InSight is packaged for Azul Payara customers. For your areas, you will build the models, pressure-test them with the field, and work cross-functionally with finance and sales to land them. Inbound product management. Work with engineering beyond writing requirements: stay in the sprints, in the design reviews, and in the implementation trade-offs. Run customer requirement sessions. Direct the UX and UI work on user experience and visual design — and, where your areas touch Optimizer Hub, the operator experience of installing, sizing, and running it on Kubernetes. Own customer-facing technical documentation and knowledge base content for your areas. Be their best demo-giver and their toughest usability critic. Outbound product management. Partner with marketing on positioning, launches, sales enablement, and public-facing content. Join customer and prospect calls, support deals, handle escalations, and run competitive and market research. Make sure the story for your areas lands with developers, platform teams, and the executives who sign. Technical credibility. Hold your own with the engineering teams. You do not need to know JVM internals, but you need to understand JVM architecture and principles of operation — JIT compilation and warm-up in particular, which is where Optimizer Hub does its work — well enough that engineers treat you as a peer rather than a requirements conduit. What you bring Required • 8+ years in product management, including several years owning a product or product line end to end — strategy through launch through revenue. • Track record shipping enterprise SaaS in an adjacent market: application performance monitoring, application security, observability, optimization, systems management, or log analytics. • Fluency with AI tools and experience operating in an AI-first product management organization — you use them in your daily product work and have a view on where they help and where they don't. • Deep technical fluency generally — you can read an architecture diagram, follow an engineering debate, and ask the question that changes the answer. • Demonstrated ownership of pricing and packaging for a technical product, including the messy cross-functional work of getting a model approved and into market. • Understanding of DevOps engineers, platform engineers, and developers as the key influencers in an enterprise sales cycle. • Strong domain knowledge of public cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and Kubernetes. • Excellent written and verbal communication in English — equally effective with an engineer and with a Fortune 100 CIO. • Comfortable in a fully remote, async, multi-time-zone setup: self-directed, and a strong writer because writing is how decisions get made here. • Comfortable in a startup-shaped environment where bringing order to chaos is part of the job. Nice to have • Hands-on software or quality engineering background — you have written code and debugged production systems. • Experience with open source communities. • Familiarity with cloud cost optimization: how compute is provisioned, monitored, and optimized. • Experience taking a new product from early traction to a durable revenue line. • Working knowledge of Java and Java development tooling. • Familiarity with Jakarta EE application servers (Payara, WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss) and OpenTelemetry. • Experience working across more than one product at once, especially products at different stages or sold through different motions. • Experience with infrastructure software that customers deploy and operate themselves, not just SaaS. Azul is fully remote. We hire for judgment, curiosity, and low ego — and we expect the same from ourselves. What we Offer ·         Comprehensive compensation and healthcare packages ·         Referral Program ·         Work-life balance, remote-first, paid time off, company shutdown, holidays ·         Work with top experts worldwide whom contribute to the Java ecosystem   Our Culture & Values   ·         Maniacal Customer Focus ·         Innovation & Excellence ·         Initiative & Courage ·         Impact & Influence ·         Integrity & Transparency ·         Diversity, Inclusion & Teamwork