Principal Product Manager job description

Product management — Principal Product Manager
Sets product strategy and practice across the organization.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Set how discovery is done across a portfolio of products, and step in when a team is stuck on a framing that is the actual blocker to progress.
- Set the sizing method a portfolio uses to compare investments, and correct a sizing model that has been quietly gamed.
- Read a crowded or shifting market, say where the product should sit in it and which segments to leave alone, and show leadership which competitor threat is real.
- Set product strategy at the organization level, and decide when the organization's own broader strategy needs to change.
- Set the prioritization approach a whole portfolio uses, and override it in the specific cases where the approach does not fit.
- Decide what a whole portfolio measures itself by, and change the framework when it no longer reflects the strategy or nobody acts on its numbers.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Group Product Manager level (level 4 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) and Pragmatic Certified Product Manager

REQUIRED SKILLS
Discovery
- Problem Discovery and Framing — You can set how discovery is done across a portfolio of products, and step in when a team is stuck on a framing that is the actual blocker to progress.
- Applying User-Centered Insights — You can advocate for research across every user group a product touches, and help other teams choose the right method for the insight they need.
- Opportunity Sizing — You can set the sizing method a portfolio uses to compare investments, and correct a sizing model that has been quietly gamed.
- Competitor and Market Analysis — You can read a crowded or shifting market, say where the product should sit in it and which segments to leave alone, and show leadership which competitor threat is real.
- 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 set product strategy at the organization level, and decide when the organization's own broader strategy needs to change.
- Product Roadmap Prioritization — You can set the prioritization approach a whole portfolio uses, and override it in the specific cases where the approach does not fit.
- Product Life Cycle Management — You can steer a product through a hard transition, such as retiring one customers still pay for, and set phase-exit criteria that include privacy, security and regulatory checks.
- Business Case and ROI Justification — You can make the case for an investment whose return is uncertain or slow to arrive, and set out what would prove it wrong. You survive finance pulling the model apart because the assumptions are all on the page.

Product Delivery
- Specification and Acceptance Criteria Writing — You can set the specification standard your team writes to, and rescue a spec that shipped the wrong thing because it was unclear.
- Agile and Lean Delivery Practices — You can coach several teams in Agile and Lean practice, and tailor the approach as each team context changes.
- Backlog Refinement and Sprint Facilitation — You can keep a backlog healthy when several teams and dependencies feed it, keep planning useful when priorities move mid-quarter, and spot when a well-groomed backlog targets the wrong outcome.
- Technical Feasibility Collaboration — You can work through feasibility on ambiguous, high-risk work and reshape the product idea until it fits what can actually be built. You take on technical debt deliberately, with the repayment agreed rather than implied.
- Design Collaboration and UX Feedback — You can hold the product line on a hard trade-off between what users want and what the business can carry, and explain the decision so designers can act on it.

Analytics & Growth
- Product Outcomes and Metrics — You can decide what a whole portfolio measures itself by, and change the framework when it no longer reflects the strategy or nobody acts on its numbers.
- Experiment Design and Interpretation — You can decide when experimentation is the wrong tool for a decision, and set experimentation policy across a portfolio.

Leadership & GTM
- Pricing and Packaging Input — You can lead a repackaging or pricing change across a product line, coordinating with sales, finance and legal on the transition.
- Launch and Go-to-Market Coordination — You can set the launch standard a portfolio follows, and decide which launches need full coordination and which a lighter process.
- Cross-Functional Stakeholder Alignment — You can set how stakeholder relationships are managed across a portfolio, and step in on the relationships nobody else can repair.
- Executive and Board Communication — You can shape what leadership believes about the product portfolio over months, not just inside one meeting. Executives ask for your read before they set direction rather than after.
- Product Team Leadership and Coaching — You can set how product managers are hired, leveled and developed across the organization. You grow leaders who go on to run teams of their own.
- Cross-Team Portfolio Management — You can decide how investment is split across the portfolio and reshape team boundaries when the strategy changes. You move people away from work you sponsored yourself when the portfolio needs them elsewhere.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can set the everyday habits for how work is organized and followed up across the organization, and teams you do not lead adopt the routines you introduce.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast work and staffing quarters ahead, and set the estimating method other teams use.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can report the organization's most exposed outcomes to its leaders as they stand, including bad news, and answer for them.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organization by building the tools and habits that make the careful way the easy way.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organization has repeatedly failed to solve, and your approach becomes how others tackle that whole kind of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practiced beyond this organization, and your expertise settles questions that have stood open for years.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organization invests its learning time in, and the material and practice you create outlive your involvement.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organization communicates by creating the forums and norms that teams use to share information.
- Collaboration — You can remove the barriers that stop teams working together by putting in place routines and forums they use across the organization.
- Writing & Documentation — You can set the writing standard the organization works to, and documents you wrote are still in use long after you have moved on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organization in its most important relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organization, make hard calls under real uncertainty, and carry the decisions nobody else wants to own.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organization grows its people, and those you developed are themselves named by others as strong in their field.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organization's strategy, and the bets you argued for are visible in where it ended up.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) (required from Product Manager)
- Pragmatic Certified Product Manager (required from Senior Product Manager)