Staff Product Manager, Core Primitives

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
Customers use Temporal’s core primitives to build critical systems, but too much of the experience still depends on custom patterns, deep Temporal expertise, and careful operational work.
We’re hiring a Staff Product Manager, Core Primitives, to own strategy and roadmap for a focused Core Primitives charter. This role is not about shipping isolated features. It is about delivering the capabilities and developer experience that make it easier to model long-running work, coordinate across systems, handle failure, and operate production workloads with Temporal.
You’ll partner with the product portfolio lead to align your charter with broader platform priorities, and with engineering and SDK leads to turn strategy into coherent behavior across Temporal’s server, APIs, SDKs, and Cloud experience.
In the first year, success means Core Primitives has a clear strategy, prioritized roadmap, and shipped improvements that reduce the custom patterns, operational burden, and production risk developers face when building with Temporal.
What you’ll do
Own the product strategy and roadmap for a focused Core Primitives charter
Translate customer, field, and open-source community signals into platform bets, deciding when to improve an existing primitive, introduce a new abstraction, change SDK/API behavior, build an integration, improve guidance, or create a more complete product experience
Partner deeply with engineering to ship core behavior improvements across server, SDKs, and APIs, making Temporal easier to model with, operate, and trust in production
Define developer experience goals and success metrics before major investments, then validate, measure, and iterate with technical users
Set clear product boundaries and success criteria so developers, internal teams, and adjacent product areas know how Core Primitives should be used and extended
Shape the external story for your area through positioning, launch narratives, documentation, examples, and close partnership with Developer Relations, Marketing, and field teams
Ship improvements with the documentation, examples, migration guidance, and launch support needed for adoption
What we’re looking for
8+ years of product management experience, with significant time on platform, infrastructure, developer tools, or other technical products
Experience turning ambiguous technical domains into clear strategy, roadmap, success measures, and shipped outcomes
Strong technical fluency in distributed systems, workflow or orchestration systems, event-driven architectures, APIs/SDKs, or comparable platform abstractions
Ability to reason about API semantics, failure modes, state management, reliability, scalability, and cost tradeoffs
High standards for developer experience across APIs, SDKs, documentation, examples, onboarding paths, and production workflows
Track record shipping technical products with engineering, then measuring adoption, learning from users, and iterating
Ability to translate emerging workload patterns, including AI agents and tool calling, into platform requirements for primitives, APIs, SDKs, and integrations
Ability to balance open-source developer experience, Cloud adoption, and enterprise production needs
Strong product storytelling for technical audiences, including strategy, launch narratives, tradeoffs, and developer-facing guidance
Nice to have
Experience with workflow engines, durable execution, job queues, data pipelines, scheduling systems, or event-driven platforms
Experience building products across multiple programming languages, SDKs, or platform surfaces
Experience with AI agent platforms, tool calling, or durable execution for AI workloads
Hands-on engineering experience or meaningful experience building with infrastructure products
Compensation
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.