Technical Product Owner | Junior-Mid | Threat Protection

NordVPN Threat Protection makes NordVPN more than a VPN. At its core sits a DNS-based filtering engine that protects millions of users from malicious domains, ads, and trackers — silently, at scale, in real time.

We're looking for a Technical Product Owner who is technically curious, learns fast, and can quickly get to grips with network and DNS concepts — bringing structure, clarity, and momentum to a domain that scales to millions of users.

NordVPN Threat Protection makes NordVPN more than a VPN. At its core sits a DNS-based filtering engine that protects millions of users from malicious domains, ads, and trackers — silently, at scale, in real time.

We're looking for a Technical Product Owner who is technically curious, learns fast, and can quickly get to grips with network and DNS concepts — bringing structure, clarity, and momentum to a domain that scales to millions of users.

Main Responsibilities

DNS Filtering Product Ownership

• Own the roadmap for DNS-based blocking — from resolver policy enforcement to user-facing filtering behavior.

• Define and track core KPIs: hit count per category, hit density (blocklist length vs. actual hit count), DNS resolution latency, server uptime and query throughput.

• Ensure clear ownership across the team — who decides what, and how trade-offs get resolved.

Infrastructure Quality & Performance

• Set performance benchmarks for DNS resolvers and hold the team to them.

• Monitor response times, availability SLAs, and degradation signals across regions.

• Translate infrastructure health into product outcomes: what does a latency spike mean for the user?

Detection Pipeline & Release Quality

• Own the process by which threat intelligence flows from the TI team into DNS filtering infrastructure.

• Define release gates: what gets validated before a blocklist update reaches production, who signs off, and how rollbacks are triggered.

• Track pipeline metrics: propagation latency, deployment success rate, rollback rate.

Threat Intelligence Collaboration

• Translate TI outputs into DNS filtering actions: what gets blocked, at what threshold, and how exceptions are handled.

• Ensure clean handoffs between intelligence and enforcement — no ownership gaps between signal and production.

Content Accessibility & Quality of Service

• Collaborate with the Content Accessibility and Quality of Service teams to ensure filtering decisions do not degrade legitimate user access.

• Act as the coordination point between DNS enforcement and accessibility concerns — balancing protection with usability.

Competitive Intelligence & Product Direction

• Monitor how industry leaders (Cloudflare, NextDNS, AdGuard, Quad9) approach DNS filtering and product capabilities.

• Track social signals — Reddit and other community platforms — to surface emerging user complaints, overblocking patterns, and competitor perception; translate findings into proactive product actions.

• Identify capability gaps and advocate for strategic product evolution.

Core Requirements

• Product ownership: Proven TPO or PO experience in a technical product environment
• Technical aptitude: Fast learner with the ability to quickly grasp network concepts, DNS mechanics, and infrastructure trade-offs
• Infrastructure metrics: Comfortable working with latency, uptime, and throughput data; able to spot patterns and ask the right questions
• Detection pipeline: Able to define and improve structured processes — release gates, QA steps, rollback criteria
• TI collaboration: Comfortable working alongside security/intelligence teams and translating their outputs into product actions
• Overblocking awareness: Understands the user impact of false blocks; proactively builds measurement and prevention into the product process
• Competitive mindset: Curious about the DNS/security space; proactively tracks what competitors are building
• Communication: Bridges technical and non-technical stakeholders; writes clear specs and decision logs
• Agile delivery: Experienced running sprints, managing backlogs, and iterating on roadmaps
• English: Fluent — written and spoken

Bonus Points For

• Background in DNS security or network-level filtering

• Familiarity with open-source blocklist ecosystems (OISD, AdGuard DNS filter, uBlock Origin)

• Experience with DoH/DoT/DoQ and privacy-preserving DNS architectures

Salary Range

• Gross Salary 3500 - 5700 EUR/Month