Community Manager - Open Source at Akuity in Remote - United States

Job description

• Akuity was founded by Hong Wang, Jesse Suen, and Alexander Matyushentsev — the original co-creators of Argo CD and the Argo Project. After open-sourcing Argo in 2017 and growing it into one of the most widely adopted CNCF graduated projects in the world, they started Akuity to build the enterprise platform the GitOps ecosystem deserves. Open source isn’t a strategy for us — it’s who we are.
• We’re looking for an Open Source Community Manager to own the health, growth, and engagement of our two flagship open source communities: Argo CD and Kargo. Argo CD is one of the most deployed CD tools in cloud-native infrastructure. Kargo, our newer project, is a GitOps-native continuous environment promotion tool that automates moving changes through dev, staging, and production without brittle scripts — already adopted by organizations like Deutsche Telekom, JumpCloud, and Cisco ThousandEyes.
• You’ll work directly with the maintainers (including our founders), to drive our presence at key Kubernetes, CNCF and GitOps ecosystem events, and build the programs that turn users into contributors and contributors into champions. This is a senior individual contributor role with real autonomy and high visibility — both inside Akuity and across the CNCF community.

Responsibilities

• Argo CD & Kargo Community Growth
• Own and execute the community strategy for both Argo CD and Kargo — defining goals, tracking health metrics, and driving measurable growth in contributors and engagement
• Build contributor pathways that lower the barrier to entry: contributor guides, onboarding documentation, and regular office hours with maintainers
• Nurture relationships with the CNCF, power users, active contributors, community maintainers across GitHub and related social channels
• Work closely with engineering to surface community feedback, flag recurring pain points, and close the loop publicly when issues get resolved or features ship
• Help shape how we communicate across both communities — release notes, changelogs, contributor newsletters, and GitHub Discussions
• Events & Conferences
• Shape Akuity's event presence across the Kubernetes/GitOps ecosystem — KubeCon, ArgoCon, DevOps Days, PlatformCon, and beyond — from CFP submissions and speaker prep to post-event follow-up
• Own and operate community programming: contributor summits, virtual deep dives, GitOps Monthly webinars, live Q&As, and conference co-located meetups
• Serve as a credible external voice for Akuity at industry events; you genuinely enjoy talking to developers about GitOps and software delivery
• Work cross-functionally with marketing and product to ensure events convert interest into lasting community engagement

Requirements

• Required
• 5–8 years of community management or developer relations experience in an open source or developer tools context
• Familiarity with the Kubernetes and cloud-native ecosystem — you know what GitOps means, you’ve heard of Argo CD, and you’re not intimidated by a YAML file
• Proven track record of growing a technical open source community in a meaningful, measurable way
• Hands-on events experience: CFP management, booth coordination, recap content, and follow-up programs
• Strong async writer — GitHub comments, community newsletters, Slack threads, and release-adjacent content are all in your wheelhouse
• Comfortable with data: you track what matters, build a case from metrics, and course-correct without being told
• Collaborative by nature — you’ll work closely across engineering, product, and marketing
• You’ve used Argo CD or Kargo in a real environment, or contributed to either project
• Active presence in CNCF, OpenSSF, or related cloud-native communities
• You’ve spoken at KubeCon, ArgoCon, or a comparable developer conference
• Experience building ambassador or champion programs from scratch
• You’ve run community programs around a CNCF-graduated or incubating project

Skills

Required

• Community management
• Developer relations
• Open source community growth
• Technical writing (async communication)
• Data analysis and metrics tracking
• Collaboration across teams
• Understanding of GitOps and Argo CD

Preferred

• Experience with Argo CD or Kargo
• Public speaking at tech conferences
• Building ambassador or champion programs

Benefits

• You’ll work alongside the people who built Argo CD and Kargo — the communities you’ll manage are ones our founders created and still actively maintain
• Real impact: Argo CD is one of the most widely deployed CNCF projects in the world; your work will be felt by tens of thousands of engineers
• Generous events and travel budget to be present where the Argo CD and Kargo communities are
• Competitive salary, equity, and benefits