Director, Product Management

Job Description What you’ll be doing Zendesk’s Support Core organization is evolving into a modern platform and shared-experience team that enables product teams to move faster, integrate more easily, and deliver consistent, AI-forward capabilities at scale. As Director of Product for Support Core, you will define and lead the strategy for Zendesk’s foundational support systems, including Ticketing Platform, Search Platform, Email, and Lists, owning both the underlying platform capabilities and the shared product experiences built on top of them. You will ensure that our core systems provide: A single, scalable integration surface for all Zendesk products, including newly acquired products Consistent, high-quality experiences across the Zendesk ecosystem Modern, AI-ready components that accelerate product innovation Reduced developer overhead through composable, well-abstracted platform services You will lead a team of five product managers and partner deeply with Engineering leadership to modernize our architecture, elevate developer experience, and embed AI capabilities throughout the core. Why this role matters Support Core is foundational to Zendesk’s future. As Zendesk continues to expand its product portfolio and embed AI throughout the customer experience, the strength, consistency, and intelligence of our core systems will determine how quickly we can innovate, and how seamlessly our products work together. Responsibilities Define and communicate the multi-year vision and roadmap for Support Core as both a platform and shared product experience layer Transform core systems into AI-forward, composable components that power consistent experiences across Zendesk Own both: Platform capabilities (APIs, services, infrastructure, integration interfaces) Shared product experiences built on top of those platforms (e.g., search experiences powered by retrieval architecture) Design a modern, AI-native engineering experience by designing platform abstractions and integration surfaces that enable fast and scalable integration with all Zendesk products, including acquisitions Drive AI-native platform capabilities across Support Core, ensuring our systems are architected so AI operates seamlessly on top of them, within them, and alongside them Lead and develop a team of five product managers across Ticketing, Search, Email, and Lists Partner closely with Engineering to modernize system architecture, improve reliability and performance, and reduce complexity Influence the broader Core Services platform strategy and align investments with company-level goals Establish outcome-driven planning, strong execution discipline, and clear executive communication What you bring to the role Experience leading platform or infrastructure product teams in high-scale SaaS environments Experience owning both platform capabilities and shared product experiences Strong technical fluency - comfortable engaging deeply in distributed systems, APIs, search/retrieval architecture, cloud-native systems, and integration patterns Demonstrated experience building or enabling AI-powered systems (LLM integration, search and retrieval, ML-backed features, AI infrastructure, or developer tooling) Strong understanding of modern AI-native development patterns and AI-assisted engineering workflows Experience designing systems that serve as a shared foundation across multiple products or business units Proven ability to lead and scale senior product managers Strong strategic thinking combined with operational rigor Exceptional communication and executive influence skills High ownership mindset and ability to drive clarity in complex, ambiguous environments Preferred Experience Engineering background or early-career technical experience Experience integrating acquired products into a shared platform architecture Experience leading distributed teams across geographies The US annualized base salary range for this position is $250,000 ... (truncated, view full listing at source)