Senior Engineer, Technical Product Owner Kubernetes

The Kubernetes Technical Product Owner will lead Marriott’s Enterprise Kubernetes Platform product direction, adoption, and continuous improvement. This hybrid role in Bethesda, MD connects the Kubernetes team with application engineering, platform and infrastructure engineering, security, operations, and engineering leadership while driving engineering enablement through measurable platform value.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a clear product vision, roadmap, backlog, and adoption strategy for the Enterprise Kubernetes Platform.
• Build relationships with application teams and understand their architectures, delivery objectives, platform needs, operational challenges, and sources of friction.
• Maintain a process to capture, evaluate, prioritize, and communicate customer requests and platform improvement opportunities.
• Recommend priorities using evidence that balances customer value, architectural risk, enterprise strategy, platform sustainability, and engineering capacity.
• Partner with engineering leaders and platform teams to translate approved priorities into outcomes, ownership, delivery plans, and customer communications.
• Own platform communications, including progress updates, roadmap context, release information, adoption guidance, significant changes, deprecations, and customer impacts.
• Improve how application teams discover, adopt, and successfully operate on the Kubernetes platform.
• Identify adoption barriers, recurring support needs, gaps in self-service, and unnecessary complexity.
• Convert customer engagement insights into scalable capabilities, reusable patterns, automation, documentation, standards, and enablement.
• Keep customer commitments, dependencies, risks, and unresolved decisions visible and ensure follow-through.
• Lead the operating model and execution of Marriott’s Engineering Experience program and related engineering enablement efforts.
• Coordinate the Engineering Excellence Network, domain ambassadors, FDE activities, application-team engagements, and participating platform teams.
• Set engagement objectives, responsibilities, schedules, success criteria, and follow-up mechanisms.
• Help application teams identify architecture, platform, delivery, and engineering-practice improvements.
• Capture recurring engagement insights and turn them into recommendations for platform teams and engineering leadership.
• Adapt the engagement model as organizational priorities, customer needs, and capacity evolve.
• Engage credibly in discussions spanning Kubernetes, cloud platforms, application architecture, software delivery, security, reliability, observability, and operational readiness, with attention to automating where possible.
• Identify potentially risky, inefficient, unsupported, or nonstandard engineering approaches and ensure appropriate review.
• Assess cross-functional progress pace and surface gaps in ownership, decision-making, capacity, or execution.
• Facilitate technical and product discussions to clarify tradeoffs and move stakeholders toward decisions.
• Independently evaluate application architectures when possible and involve deeper subject-matter experts as needed.
• Define and own a balanced framework measuring Kubernetes adoption, customer success, product value, and engineering experience.
• Establish baselines and identify quantitative and qualitative signals to evaluate improvement over time.
• Use customer feedback, adoption patterns, delivery performance, onboarding journeys, support demand, self-service usage, operational outcomes, and other evidence to guide decisions.
• Develop reporting so engineering leaders can understand progress, persistent friction, emerging needs, and areas requiring investment.
• Ensure success is measured through meaningful customer and engineering outcomes rather than activity volume (no story points).
• Influence outcomes across platform, application, infrastructure, security, operations, and leadership teams without relying on direct authority.
• Provide leaders with recommendations, tradeoffs, customer evidence, risks, and expected outcomes for final decisions.
• Maintain transparency into roadmap progress, strategic initiatives, customer engagements, dependencies, and commitments.
• Proactively identify stalled work and facilitate the ownership, decisions, or escalation needed to restore momentum.
• Communicate clearly with technical teams, senior leaders, and stakeholders at the appropriate level of detail.

Requirements

• Undergraduate degree in engineering, computer science, or related discipline and/or equivalent experience or certification.
• 6+ years of technology experience, including 3+ years in technical product ownership, technical program leadership, platform engineering, or a related role.
• Experience with Kubernetes, public-cloud platforms, DevOps, CI/CD, GitOps, Agile methodologies, and modern software delivery practices.
• Demonstrated ability to use generative AI, prompt engineering, and AI-assisted development tools to accelerate research, analysis, content creation, and solution delivery.
• Ability to independently create and deliver technical enablement products such as documentation sites, onboarding experiences, user guides, and other self-service resources.
• Experience with Markdown, Docusaurus or similar documentation frameworks, Git-based workflows, and documentation-as-code practices.
• Technical understanding of application architecture, security, reliability, observability, automation, and operational readiness.

Technologies

• Kubernetes
• Public-cloud platforms
• DevOps
• CI/CD
• GitOps
• Agile methodologies
• Generative AI
• Prompt engineering
• AI-assisted development tools
• Markdown
• Docusaurus
• Git-based workflows

Preferred

• Experience evaluating application architectures and cloud-native solution designs.
• Experience using AI to build or improve developer tools, workflows, documentation, or engineering enablement experiences.
• Experience with enterprise platform adoption, developer experience, engineering enablement, or application modernization.

Benefits

• 401(k) plan
• Stock purchase plan
• Discounts at Marriott properties
• Commuter benefits
• Employee assistance plan
• Childcare discounts
• Medical, dental, vision
• Health care flexible spending account
• Dependent care flexible spending account
• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• Accident insurance
• Adoption expense reimbursements
• Paid parental leave
• Educational assistance
• Paid sick leave (Washington Applicants Only)
• 0.077 PTO balance for every hour worked (Washington Applicants Only)
• Eligible to receive a minimum of 9 holidays annually (Washington Applicants Only)

Compensation and Location

Location: Bethesda, MD (hybrid)

Salary: USD 110,400 - 189,000 per yearly

Education

Undergraduate degree in engineering, computer science, or a related discipline (or equivalent experience/certification).