Product Manager job description

Product management — Product Manager
Owns a product area end to end with day-to-day autonomy.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Discovery
- Problem Discovery and Framing — You can run a discovery conversation with users or stakeholders, capture what they said, and separate the problem from an assumed solution.
- Applying User-Centred Insights — You can gather user and stakeholder input yourself, decide when you have enough evidence to act, and use it to shape a small decision.
- Opportunity Sizing — You can build a basic sizing model from usage or market data with some support, and flag when the inputs are too weak to trust.
- Competitor and Market Analysis — You can turn a competitor scan into a short written summary that names what changed and why it might matter. You spot when a rival ships something that touches your roadmap and flag it without being asked.
- Customer and Sales Feedback Loops — You can run the feedback loop for your product: you decide what gets captured, go back to the people who reported it, and use the themes in roadmap arguments. You notice when loud sales requests do not match usage data.

Strategy & Roadmap
- Product Strategy and Vision — You can work with others to draft a strategy for a product area, setting out the value and outcomes it is meant to deliver.
- Product Roadmap Prioritisation — You can build and defend a roadmap for a product area, trading off competing requests against strategy and capacity.
- Product Life Cycle Management — You can carry out the work a life-cycle phase calls for, such as a beta plan or a deprecation notice, once someone has set the direction. You flag when a product is being run as if it were in an earlier phase.
- Business Case and ROI Justification — You can write a business case to an existing template, showing expected cost, expected benefit and the assumptions behind both. You name the assumption you are least sure of instead of hiding it in a total.

Product Delivery
- Specification and Acceptance Criteria Writing — You can write specifications for ambiguous or cross-team features, catching missing edge cases before a developer does.
- Agile and Lean Delivery Practices — You can run the basic ceremonies for your team and make the team current work visible to everyone on it.
- Backlog Refinement and Sprint Facilitation — You can own the backlog for your team end to end and run planning and review so the team leaves with a clear commitment. You cut scope mid-sprint when it is obvious the whole thing will not land.
- Release and Launch Management — You can coordinate a small release: confirm readiness with engineering, support and marketing, and write the release notes. You raise a blocker in the week before launch rather than on launch day.
- Technical Feasibility Collaboration — You can take an idea into a technical discussion and come out with the rough options and what each would cost. You involve engineers while the requirement can still change, not after it is fixed.
- Design Collaboration and UX Feedback — You can run design collaboration for your product, choose between several directions, and say what the product will deliberately not do. You defend the chosen direction to stakeholders once it is settled.

Analytics & Growth
- Product Analytics and Metrics Definition — You can define a metric for a small feature, including its edge cases, with a data or analytics colleague checking your definition.
- Experiment Design and Interpretation — You can design a simple A/B test with a clear hypothesis and success metric, with a colleague checking the design before it ships.
- Growth and Retention Metrics — You can define and instrument the events a feature needs, then report how it performed after release. You notice when a metric moved for a reason other than the change you shipped.

Leadership & GTM
- Pricing and Packaging Input — You can propose which tier a new feature belongs in, using stated packaging principles, and get it checked before it ships.
- Go-to-Market Coordination — You can put together a launch plan for a small feature, briefing the teams that need to know before it ships.
- Cross-Functional Stakeholder Alignment — You can communicate with your stakeholders regularly, tailor the message to each one, and explain a decision using evidence rather than opinion.
- Executive and Board Communication — You can prepare the figures and slides a senior update needs and get them checked before they go out. You stick to what you can support rather than filling the gaps with guesses.
- Product Team Leadership and Coaching — You can help a newer product manager find their way around the tools, the rituals and the stakeholders. You are still being coached yourself rather than coaching anyone.
- Cross-Team Portfolio Management — You can keep the shared view of what each team is working on accurate, and flag overlaps you notice. Someone more senior resolves the conflicts you surface.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can break a small piece of work into tasks, sequence them, and run it to a date you agreed, escalating risks before they become slips.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate your own tasks with reasonable accuracy and deliver at a steady enough pace that other people can plan around you.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can pick up a problem that has no obvious owner and make yourself the accountable party for it, including the parts nobody enjoys.
- Quality Focus — You can define what good enough means for a project, put the checks in place to prove it, and hold back a release that misses the bar.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can break a large, ambiguous problem into tractable pieces, weigh the options against evidence, and explain the tradeoff you chose.
- Domain Expertise — You can work confidently across the systems and tools your team uses daily, and you can explain how your work serves the team's goals.
- Continuous Learning — You can pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it, and you turn what you learned into something others can reuse.

Communication
- Communication — You can explain a complex topic to people with very different backgrounds, adjusting the detail to the audience without talking down to them.
- Collaboration — You can build working relationships beyond your own team and get things done through people who do not report to you.
- Technical Writing — You can write for a defined audience, whether a proposal, a runbook, or a decision record, and make the reasoning as clear as the conclusion.
- Stakeholder Management — You can identify who is affected by your work and keep them updated at a level of detail and a cadence that suits them.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can identify a problem and propose a way forward unprompted, and you take a small leading role such as running a working group.
- Mentoring — You can onboard someone onto your team's work, answer their questions patiently, and give feedback specific enough to act on.
- Strategic Thinking — You can connect your team's work to its goals and question a task that does not appear to serve them.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) (required from Product Manager)
- Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I) (required from Product Manager)