Technical Product Manager

We are looking for a Technical Product Manager to facilitate the continued evolution and scaling of our private cloud infrastructure and platform services. Our current platform is built around OpenStack and Ceph-based infrastructure services and is evolving toward a more automated, composable platform model. We continue to leverage open-source technologies and principles to develop flexible, sustainable infrastructure capabilities, with new services such as Kubernetes-as-a-Service and Bare Metal Provisioning.

In this role, you will operate at the intersection of platform engineering, service management, and product strategy. You will facilitate decision-making, drive operational excellence for existing services, and help platform teams and stakeholders translate strategic direction into practical improvements, new capabilities, and sustainable service evolution.

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research.

Working at SURF means working for a unique and open organization. You can see this in everything: the organizational structure, the composition of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent employment conditions and takes a flexible approach to work-life balance. Employees enjoy working independently. In addition, everyone is given the space and freedom to apply and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

The team you will join

You will be joining the Compute Services department, part of the Advanced Solutions for Research unit. This unit provides computing and data services and ensures they remain future-proof through continuous innovation. Within the Compute Services department, you will be part of the Private Cloud team (currently 7 people), a team with extensive expertise in on-premises infrastructure, cloud technologies, operations and development.

Together with our team, you will facilitate decision-making, prioritization, planning, and execution, helping the team align on priorities based on operational and stakeholder needs. You will help the team strike the right balance between evolving the platform and maintaining operational excellence, expanding our platform capabilities through improved service management, enhanced tooling, and new services such as Kubernetes-as-a-Service and Bare Metal Provisioning.

What you will do

Together with the Product Owner, Lead Engineers, and Operations team, the Technical Product Manager facilitates the planning, coordination, service delivery and initiatives that sustainably evolve our private cloud platform and its services.

In addition, you will act as a technical partner for platform teams, identifying opportunities for collaboration, driving stakeholder engagement, and facilitating proofs of concept for emerging platform capabilities. As our private cloud platform evolves into a more layered architecture—both technically and organisationally—we expect this role to evolve alongside it, with the opportunity to become the Technical Product Manager of one or more of these platform layers.

As part of these responsibilities, you will:

• Facilitate planning, prioritization, and cross-team coordination for the continued service operations and evolution of our private cloud platform.
• Steer towards a platform designed to provide greater autonomy, flexibility, and control over the infrastructure capabilities.
• Drive continuous improvement of service management, operational processes, and platform usability.
• Help define service standards, operational KPIs, and platform governance practices.
• Help translate platform capabilities into clear service propositions, roadmap priorities, and adoption plans.
• Act as the technical partner for engineering teams, architects, and internal consumers, aligning stakeholder needs and platform direction.
• Initiate and coordinate proofs of concept to validate and introduce new platform capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to improve automation, operational efficiency, and the overall developer experience.
• Support the expansion of our platform with new service domains such as Kubernetes-as-a-Service and Bare Metal Provisioning.

Your skills and experience

You combine a strong technical foundation with excellent facilitation and stakeholder management skills. You are comfortable navigating complex infrastructure environments, enabling teams to make informed decisions, and driving continuous improvement of platform services. You work in a structured manner, communicate clearly, and bridge technical and non-technical perspectives effectively.

You bring experience and knowledge in several of the following areas:

• Technical Product Management, infrastructure service management, platform engineering, or similar technical product roles
• Facilitating collaboration, alignment, and decision-making across architecture, engineering, operations, and stakeholder groups
• Translating technical concepts into clear priorities, actionable initiatives, and service improvements
• Driving continuous improvement of service management, operational processes, and platform adoption
• Initiating, coordinating, or evaluating technical proofs of concept and platform improvement initiatives
• Working with cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, and infrastructure automation concepts
• Familiarity with technologies such as OpenStack, Ceph, Kubernetes, and related ecosystem tooling
• A pragmatic and outcome-oriented mindset, with a strong focus on operational reliability, developer experience, and service adoption

We value diverse backgrounds and are especially interested in people who combine technical depth with the ability to bring teams together and turn complex challenges into practical improvements.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.