Principal Product Manager - Core Database Engine

As industries race to embrace AI, traditional database solutions fall short of rising demands for versatility, performance, and affordability. Couchbase is leading the way with Capella, the developer data platform for critical applications in our AI world. By uniting transactional, analytical, mobile, and AI workloads into a seamless, fully managed solution, Couchbase empowers developers and enterprises to build and scale applications with unmatched flexibility, performance, and cost-efficiency—from cloud to edge. Trusted by over 30% of the Fortune 100, Couchbase is unlocking innovation, accelerating AI transformation, and redefining customer experiences. Come join our mission.

As industries race to embrace AI, traditional database solutions fall short of rising demands for versatility, performance, and affordability. Couchbase is leading the way with Capella, the developer data platform for critical applications in our AI world. By uniting transactional, analytical, mobile, and AI workloads into a seamless, fully managed solution, Couchbase empowers developers and enterprises to build and scale applications with unmatched flexibility, performance, and cost-efficiency—from cloud to edge. Trusted by over 30% of the Fortune 100, Couchbase is unlocking innovation, accelerating AI transformation, and redefining customer experiences. Come join our mission.

Join Couchbase, a leader in NoSQL databases, and shape the future of AI-powered applications. Couchbase empowers developers to build modern AI powered applications that excel in flexibility, performance, and scalability

As a Principal Product Manager for the Core Database Engine at Couchbase, you will drive the strategy, roadmap, and execution of features for our next-generation distributed database engine. This role is focused on innovation in query optimization, execution systems, and storage architecture to meet the evolving demands of enterprise workloads and cloud-native applications.

You will work closely with engineering teams to build and enhance the brains of a distributed document database by leading initiatives in  SQL++, query execution, indexing, storage efficiency, transaction coordination, and resource management. You will leverage your deep understanding of database systems and distributed architectures to guide the design and implementation of world-class database features and performance optimizations.

This is a high-impact, highly technical leadership role, where you will influence long-term product strategy and lead cross-functional teams to deliver mission-critical features that define the future of Couchbase’s database capabilities.

Your Responsibilities:

• Define the Cloud and GenAI product vision and strategy for Couchbase’s core database engine focused on Query and Indexing, setting multi-year initiatives and delivering on incremental milestones.
• Drive innovation in query optimization, execution systems, cost-based optimization, planner efficiency, and transaction management by researching state-of-the-art techniques and building flexible schema databases.
• Work with engineering to design and implement features that enhance query performance, resource management, security, and scalability in distributed systems.
• Collaborate with engineering, data science, and cloud infrastructure teams to guide product development from concept to launch, ensuring performance, scalability, and differentiation in the market.
• Coordinate with marketing and sales teams to develop go-to-market strategies and produce key deliverables—including PRDs, white papers, blogs, and GTM plans—to empower data scientists, developers, and ML engineers to leverage Couchbase for advanced analytics, real-time search, and Gen AI applications.
• Engage with customers to understand their challenges, demonstrating customer obsession and a bias for action by incorporating feedback to ensure Couchbase’s features meet real-world business needs.

Your Qualifications:

• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics or a related field ( PhD in databases or distributed systems is a plus.)
• 10+ years of proven experience in product management with a focus on database internals, query optimization,  and distributed storage engines . Familiarity with distributed systems, data replication, and consistency models.
• Expertise in query engine performance and database technologies, with a focus on optimizing complex queries for databases, and a solid understanding of SQL,  and Python or any other programming languages.
• Leadership and communication skills to drive cross-functional teams, collaborate with external partners, and influence internal stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to think from first principles, with strong written and oral communication skills. Proven ability to le