Staff Product Manager

Kodiak is seeking a Staff Product Manager to serve as a strategic product leader for our Level 4 autonomous trucking platform across customer applications. This is a senior individual contributor role with organization-wide influence — you will not only own a critical product area end-to-end, but shape how Kodiak thinks about product strategy, customer deployment, and the path to scaled commercialization. You will be the most senior product voice in the room for your domain, setting direction that other PMs and cross-functional leaders align to, and operating as a trusted thought partner to the VP level and above.

What you'll do:

• Product strategy and vision: Define the multi-year product roadmap for your area, grounded in customer needs, competitive dynamics, and Kodiak's commercialization trajectory. Make the case for what to build — and what not to — at the leadership level.
• Cross-functional leadership: Unify Engineering, Program Management, Operations, and Commercial around a shared product vision.  You are the person who resolves ambiguity and ensures the right tradeoffs are made with clarity and speed.
• Execution at scale: Own the product lifecycle from opportunity identification through deployment and iteration — holding the bar on quality and metrics across multiple workstreams simultaneously.
• Prioritization and resource influence: Set prioritization frameworks that others adopt. Actively shape engineering roadmap and resourcing conversations, advocating effectively for customer-critical investments at the VP and executive level.
• Product definition: Author product requirements that set a high standard for rigor and customer fidelity. Partner deeply with Design and Engineering leadership to ensure architectural decisions reflect long-term product needs, not just near-term scope.
• Performance and readiness: Define the metrics and readiness criteria that determine when a product is ready to deploy. Own the system of record for product health and communicate it credibly to customers, leadership, and the board.
• Customer partnership: Serve as Kodiak's most senior product relationship owner with key customers — building deep trust, surfacing strategic feedback, and translating real-world operational complexity into product direction that engineering can act on.
• Organizational impact: Mentor senior PMs, contribute to the product management craft at Kodiak, and help define how the PM function operates — from how requirements are written to how tradeoffs are communicated.
• Travel: 10-20% travel to Kodiak commercial deployments and customer sites to maintain operational intuition and customer proximity.

What you’ll bring:

• 10+ years of Product Management experience, with at least several years operating as a senior IC driving strategy independently across complex, technical product domains — ideally in autonomous vehicles, robotics, logistics, or safety-critical systems.
• Demonstrated organizational influence: Track record of shaping product strategy and roadmap decisions at the VP level and above; you have changed the direction of a program or product area through the strength of your judgment and communication, not just your title.
• Technical authority: Deep enough technical fluency to engage credibly with engineering leadership on architecture, system design, and feasibility tradeoffs — not just translate requirements. Background in engineering, computer science, or a related field required.
• Ambiguity at scale: Proven ability to set structure and direction in genuinely novel problem spaces — where there is no playbook, the market is evolving, and the cost of getting it wrong is high.
• Customer and commercial acumen: Experience owning high-stakes external customer relationships and connecting product decisions to fleet economics, operational outcomes, and contract commitments.
• Cross-functional leadership without authority: You are the person other functions bring in to drive alignment, not just participate in it. You set the agenda and hold teams accountable to shared outcomes.
• Communication at the executive level: Able to distill complex product and technical tradeoffs into clear, confident narratives for C-suite, board, and customer audiences — and to do so under pressure.

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
• Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and  MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
• MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
• Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
• Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
• Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
• Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
• Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation) 
• Fidelity 401(k)
• Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
• Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)