Digital Product Manager (Kafka)

At Allstate, great things happen when our people work together to protect families and their belongings from life’s uncertainties. And for more than 90 years, our innovative drive has kept us a step ahead of our customers’ evolving needs. From advocating for seat belts, air bags and graduated driving laws, to being an industry leader in pricing sophistication, telematics, and, more recently, device and identity protection. 

Job Description

The Product Management (Technical) Expert is responsible for defining, delivering, and managing the lifecycle of one or more products in Allstate's growing product portfolio. This individual manages strategic product vision, product discovery, roadmaps, and backlog to maximize the customer and enterprise value provided by their product. Successful Product Managers help to identify assumptions and validate those assumptions using product discovery techniques. This individual is also responsible for working closely with key stakeholders and partners, ensuring the successful definition and execution of go-to market and communications strategies for their products.

Primary Skills: Confluent Kafka, Event Streaming, Product Management, Cloud Platforms, Data Integration

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Digital Product Manager to lead the strategy, roadmap, governance, and adoption of our enterprise Confluent Kafka Event Streaming Platform. The ideal candidate will possess a strong blend of product management expertise, event-driven architecture knowledge, platform governance experience, and stakeholder management capabilities.

This role will be responsible for defining the vision and roadmap for the enterprise streaming platform, enabling business teams to build real-time data products, driving platform modernization initiatives, and ensuring the platform delivers secure, scalable, and reliable streaming capabilities across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and define the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for the enterprise Confluent Kafka platform.
• Partner with business stakeholders, architects, engineering teams, data platform teams, and security organizations to prioritize platform capabilities and enhancements.
• Drive adoption of event-driven architecture and streaming technologies across the enterprise.
• Manage product backlogs, prioritization, feature planning, and release management activities.
• Establish governance standards for topic management, schema evolution, data retention, security, and platform onboarding.
• Lead platform modernization initiatives involving cloud-native streaming, real-time analytics, AI/ML integration, and data sharing capabilities.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to improve platform scalability, resiliency, observability, performance, and self-service capabilities.
• Define and track key product metrics including platform adoption, producer/consumer growth, throughput, platform health, and customer satisfaction.
• Work with business and technology leadership to identify opportunities for real-time event streaming solutions.
• Manage vendor relationships and evaluate emerging event streaming technologies and capabilities.
• Drive platform operational excellence through continuous improvement initiatives and customer feedback programs.

Required Skills & Experience

• 12+ years of experience in Product Management, Data Platforms, Middleware, Integration Technologies, or Event Streaming solutions.
• Strong experience with Confluent Kafka and enterprise event streaming platforms.
• Proven experience managing platform products and driving enterprise-wide technology adoption.
• Deep understanding of event-driven architecture, publish-subscribe patterns, stream processing, and real-time data integration.
• Experience working with Agile product management frameworks and roadmap planning.
• Strong understanding of Kafka ecosystem components including:
  • Kafka Brokers
  • Kafka Connect
  • Schema Registry
  • Control Center
  • ksqlDB
  • Stream Processing
• Experience defining platform governance, security, compliance, and operational standards.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Experience with observability platforms including Datadog, Splunk, Grafana, Prometheus, or similar tools.
• Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns, APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Experience presenting product strategy and roadmap to executive leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Confluent Cloud and hybrid cloud streaming architectures.
• Knowledge of data engineering, lakehouse platforms, real-time analytics, and data mesh concepts.
• Exposure to AI/ML, Generative AI, and event-driven AI architectures.
• Experience integrating Kafka with API gateways such as Apigee, Kong, or other integration platforms.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, OpenShift, container platforms, and cloud-native technologies.
• Understanding of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible) and DevSecOps practices.
• Confluent certifications or Product Management certifications are highly desirable.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
• Ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive strategic initiatives.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
• Customer-focused mindset with the ability to balance business priorities and technical requirements.
• Experience leading large-scale platform transformation programs.
• Strong facilitation, negotiation, and presentation skills.

Success Measures

• Increased adoption of enterprise event streaming capabilities.
• Growth in Kafka producers, consumers, and business use cases onboarded.
• Improved platform reliability, security, scalability, and customer experience.
• Reduction in onboarding time through self-service and automation capabilities.
• Successful delivery of strategic roadmap initiatives aligned with business outcomes.
• Enhanced real-time data enablement across the enterprise.

Ideal Candidate Profile

A senior product leader with deep expertise in Confluent Kafka and Event Streaming Platforms, capable of defining product strategy, influencing enterprise architecture decisions, and driving adoption of real-time data capabilities that accelerate digital transformation across the organization.

Primary Skills

Business Case Analyses, Product Management, Product Roadmapping, Product Strategies, Systems Thinking

Shift Time

Recruiter Info

Yateesh B G

ybgaa@allstate.com

About Allstate

Joining our team isn’t just a job — it’s an opportunity. One that takes your skills and pushes them to the next level. One that encourages you to challenge the status quo. One where you can shape the future of protection while supporting causes that mean the most to you. Joining our team means being part of something bigger – a winning team making a meaningful impact.

The Allstate Corporation is one of the largest publicly held insurance providers in the United States. Ranked No. 84 in the 2023 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue, The Allstate Corporation owns and operates 18 companies in the United States, Canada, Northern Ireland, and India. Allstate India Private Limited, also known as Allstate India, is a subsidiary of The Allstate Corporation. The India talent center was set up in 2012 and operates under the corporation's Good Hands promise. As it innovates operations and technology, Allstate India has evolved beyond its technology functions to be the critical strategic business services arm of the corporation. With offices in Bengaluru and Pune, the company offers expertise to the parent organization’s business areas including technology and innovation, accounting and imaging services, policy administration, transformation solution design and support services, transformation of property liability service design, global operations and integration, and training and transition.

Learn more about Allstate India here.