AI Operations Product Lead at sonatype

Sonatype is the software supply chain security company. We provide the world’s best end-to-end software supply chain security solution, combining the only proactive protection against malicious open source, the only enterprise grade SBOM management and the leading open source dependency management platform. This empowers enterprises to create and maintain secure, quality, and innovative software at scale. As founders of Nexus Repository and stewards of Maven Central, the world’s largest repository of Java open-source software, we are software pioneers and our open source expertise is unmatched. We empower innovation with an unparalleled commitment to build faster, safer software and harness AI and data intelligence to mitigate risk, maximize efficiencies, and drive powerful software development. More than 2,000 organizations, including 70% of the Fortune 100 and 15 million software developers, rely on Sonatype to optimize their software supply chains. The AI Operations team sits at the heart of Sonatype’s strategy, enabling AI-powered insights that support Go-To-Market and internal decision-making. We operate fast, experiment often, and focus on making sure what we build continues to deliver value long after it reaches production.   As our main Product Lead – AI Operations, you will lead the Run Team and own the AI Ops backlog to ensure our internal AI-enabled products deliver measurable business impact. This is a highly visible role operating at the center of execution, influence, and innovation, and it offers the opportunity to start leading a small team to success — an ideal next step in your career growth.   What you'll do: • Drive Strategy & Execution: Partner with Sonatype leaders to shape the vision for the AI Operations team. You will serve as the connector between business goals and technical execution, ensuring the team builds high-value solutions. • Lead Agile Delivery: Facilitate sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives. You will champion an iterative delivery model, breaking complex business needs into incremental, shippable pieces rather than massive requirement documents. • Curate a High-Value Backlog: Own, refine, and "ruthlessly" prioritize the Jira backlog based on ROI. You will protect the engineering team’s flow by managing intake, filtering noise, and removing blockers to improve team throughput. • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Sales, Product, Marketing, and Data Science to drive automation in Go-To-Market operations. Your goal is to scale our output without scaling headcount through smart, automated workflows. • Outcome-Driven Decisions: Use data to make informed decisions that drive user satisfaction and measurable ROI. You will maintain a transparent, prioritized roadmap that keeps stakeholders aligned while enabling the team to focus on delivery. What you bring: • 5+ years of experience in product management with a focus on software products. • Solid Agile Fluency: You thrive in a product-oriented, agile delivery team. You understand that "working software over comprehensive documentation" is the goal, but you also know that a clear, well-sliced user story is essential for team velocity. • Strong Jira backlog ownership experience • High Technical Aptitude: You can "speak developer." You have experience working directly with engineers to assess technical feasibility and have worked in technical domains (AppSec, DevSecOps) or on internal business automation logic. • DevSecOps domain expertise • Ability to assess architecture feasibility • Strategic Prioritization: The ability to balance urgent requests against long-term strategy. You are comfortable saying "no" or "not yet" to stakeholders to maintain a stable flow of work for the engineering team. • Confidence in making prioritization decisions under pressure • Collaborative Documentation: Instead of writing isolated functional specs, you partner with Engineering and Design to create unambiguous user stories and acceptance criteria that allow the team to move fast with confidence. • Communication Skills: You can rally cross-functional teams around a shared vision, facilitate collaborative planning sessions, and are equally happy digging into the details of a workflow diagram. • Experience managing high-interrupt stakeholder environments It'd be great if you also had: • Experience delivering AI-enabled or automation-driven internal products • Experience with MLOps • Enterprise SaaS experience • Experience driving change adoption across business functions • Experience in DevOps, Cloud, or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) • AWS cloud based product deployments • Some previous experience leading a small agile tech/product team to success. What we're proud of: • 2025 Best DevSecOps Solution by DevOps Dozen • Visionary in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Application Security Testing • 2025 DEVIES Award to our SBOM Manager new product for its innovation and impact in developer technology • 2024 Industry Leader in Forrester-Wave for Software Composition Analysis (2024 Q4 report) • 2023 Fast Company Best Places for Innovators • 2023 Gartner's Magic Quadrant • 2023 Software Report's Top 100 Software Companies • 2023 BuiltIn Best Places to Work • 2022 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Leader Award • 2022 PeerSpot Silver Peer Award in Software Composition Analysis • 2022 Tech Ascension Best DevOps Security Solution Award • 2022 NVCT Cyber Company of the Year • Company Wellness days - We shut down company operations during some days of the year (5 in total) to enable all employees to pursue personal growth and enjoy much-needed and deserved additional rest. • Paid Volunteer Time Off (VTO) At Sonatype, we value diversity and inclusivity. We offer perks such as parental leave, diversity and inclusion working groups, and flexible working practices to allow our employees to show up as their whole selves. We are an equal-opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please do not hesitate to let us know.