Principal Product Manager, Activation

About RudderStack

At RudderStack, we are redefining enterprise-scale data collection and routing. We are building a customer data platform (CDP) on the customer's own data warehouse. Our open-source, developer-first approach is the first of its kind. We understand the outsized impact customer data has on businesses, and we understand the challenges and pain points. We are looking to solve the customer data management problem in enterprises, once and for all, in a secure, compliant and cost-effective way.

RudderStack collects data from 30+ sources, can transform events on the fly, and routes to 150 different marketing, sales, product, analytics applications all with one snippet of code.

We’re backed by Insight Partners, Kleiner Perkins and S28 and have raised a total of $82 million in funding. Our customers include Crate + Barrel, Acorns, PrizePicks, and Cars.com. We process critical customer data for some top companies around the world, and are looking for ambitious individuals to join our team and help shape the future of our product.

About the Role

We're seeking a Principal Product Manager to own and transform how non-technical users activate customer data at RudderStack. While our platform handles complex data infrastructure, your mission is deceptively simple: ensure that marketers, product managers, growth teams, and sales ops professionals can actually use that data without writing code or filing tickets with their data team.

This is a senior individual contributor role reporting to the Director of Product. You'll bring deep fluency in data infrastructure paired with genuine empathy for the business users who've been promised "data-driven everything" but are still waiting on engineering tickets to build audiences or sync data to their tools. If you've ever been frustrated watching powerful data capabilities remain locked behind technical barriers, this role is your chance to fix that.

We're building an AI-first Product Org. We ship fast, validate faster, and have zero patience for product theatre. You'll spend your time with customers, in the product, and collaborating directly with engineers—not grooming backlogs or manually crafting 40-page PRDs that no one reads.

What you'll do

Activation Strategy & Ownership

Own the complete activation experience—how business users build audiences, create customer profiles, activate data to downstream tools, and ultimately drive outcomes
Develop deep expertise in reverse ETL, audience building, identity resolution, Customer 360/profiling, and data graph capabilities
Identify where AI can fundamentally reimagine data activation (natural language audience building, predictive segmentation, automated insight generation)
Define what "activated" means across customer segments and relentlessly drive toward reducing time-to-value
Instrument activation funnels and build feedback loops that drive rapid iteration
Product Execution
Ship. Validate. Iterate. We're not interested in six-month roadmaps that become fiction—you'll operate in tight cycles with direct customer feedback
Partner with engineering to build intuitive self-serve experiences that abstract away infrastructure complexity
Own the interfaces where non-technical users interact with RudderStack: audience builders, profile explorers, sync configuration, and activation workflows
Leverage AI throughout your own workflow—we expect you to specify, prototype, analyze, and move faster because of it
Customer & User Obsession
Develop genuine empathy for marketing, product, and revenue ops personas who need data but aren't data engineers
Spend significant time with customers understanding their activation journeys, not just their feature requests
Understand the gap between what data teams build and what business users can actually access—then close it
Translate technical capabilities into business outcomes that non-technical users care about
Cross-functional Impact
Collaborate with Growth and Marketing on product-led strategies that demonstrate value before requiring setup
Partner with Customer Success to identify activation patterns that predict long-term success
Work directly with engineers on implementation—we don't have walls between PM and engineering
Influence how we talk about activation externally through positioning, content, and customer storytelling

Requirements

Must-Haves

Data infrastructure fluency: You understand the modern data stack deeply—warehouses, ETL/ELT, reverse ETL, CDPs, and how data actually flows. You can hold your own in technical architecture discussions.
Business user empathy: You've seen firsthand how powerful data capabilities fail to reach the people who need them. You're motivated by making complex things accessible.
Activation domain expertise: Direct experience with reverse ETL, audience building, customer profiles/C360, or similar activation use cases. You know what good looks like.
AI-native mindset: You're already using AI to move faster in your work and have a point of view on how AI will transform data activation. You're eager to explore and ship AI-native experiences.
Bias toward shipping: You've operated in environments where you shipped quickly, learned from real usage, and iterated. You're allergic to process theater and lengthy planning cycles.
Technical collaboration: You work directly with engineers as thought partners, not order-takers. You can sketch technical approaches and engage meaningfully on tradeoffs.
Communication clarity: You write crisply, present compellingly, and can translate between technical and business audiences effortlessly.
Strong Signals
You've built products specifically for non-technical users in data or analytics contexts
You have experience with product-led growth and self-serve activation
You've shipped AI-powered features (not just talked about them)
You can write SQL and aren't afraid to dig into data yourself
You've worked in the modern data stack ecosystem (Snowflake, BigQuery, dbt, Census, Hightouch, etc.)
You've felt the pain of data activation from the business user side
What We're Not Looking For
Product managers who need detailed specs and process to function
Candidates who view AI as someone else's problem or a future consideration
People who are more comfortable in meetings than with customers or in the product
Those who measure success by outputs (features shipped) rather than outcomes (users activated)
What We Offer
High-impact role defining how business users experience the power of customer data
An AI-first product org that values speed, experimentation, and customer outcomes over process
Significant autonomy to shape both the product and how we work
Competitive compensation package with meaningful equity
Comprehensive benefits and flexible PTO
Remote-first culture