Senior Product Manager job description

Product management — Senior Product Manager
Leads a complex product and raises the bar for other PMs.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Run go-to-market for a major launch with pricing changes, data migration or partners, and decide what is cut or held behind a flag when the timeline is at risk.
- Frame an ambiguous or contested problem into a clear statement the team can act on, pulling in evidence from more than one source.
- Use research findings to represent users in team discussions and help the team agree what to build next from the evidence.
- Size an opportunity from first principles using more than one method, and stress-test it against a sceptical stakeholder.
- Run market analysis for your own product unprompted and use it to argue for or against a roadmap item.
- Own a product strategy end to end, use evidence to challenge whether it is still delivering its intended outcomes, and adapt it.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Product Manager level (level 2 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) and Pragmatic Certified Product Manager

REQUIRED SKILLS
Discovery
- Problem Discovery and Framing — You can frame an ambiguous or contested problem into a clear statement the team can act on, pulling in evidence from more than one source.
- Applying User-Centered Insights — You can use research findings to represent users in team discussions and help the team agree what to build next from the evidence.
- Opportunity Sizing — You can size an opportunity from first principles using more than one method, and stress-test it against a sceptical stakeholder.
- Competitor and Market Analysis — You can run market analysis for your own product unprompted and use it to argue for or against a roadmap item. You separate a competitor feature that genuinely threatens you from one that only looks impressive.
- 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 own a product strategy end to end, use evidence to challenge whether it is still delivering its intended outcomes, and adapt it.
- Product Roadmap Prioritization — You can sequence a roadmap across several interdependent teams, and resolve a prioritization conflict between two credible cases.
- Product Life Cycle Management — You can judge what your product needs at its current phase and change the plan when the phase changes. You are willing to stop adding features to a mature product and spend the time on retention instead.
- Business Case and ROI Justification — You can build and present the case for a normal initiative using the opportunity size from the sizing work, and compare the outcome with what you promised afterward.

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 choose the delivery approach that fits a team context, and change it when it stops working.
- 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 tell when a request is expensive because of the architecture rather than the feature, and choose an option with its later cost written down.
- 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 Outcomes and Metrics — You can choose the metrics for a product area, separating vanity metrics from ones that predict outcomes, and find why activation or retention is stalling.
- Experiment Design and Interpretation — You can design experiments for interacting changes, spot a flawed test design before it runs, and interpret an inconclusive result honestly.

Leadership & GTM
- Pricing and Packaging Input — You can propose a packaging change for a product area, back it with usage and willingness-to-pay evidence, and take it to commercial stakeholders.
- Launch and Go-to-Market Coordination — You can run go-to-market for a major launch with pricing changes, data migration or partners, and decide what is cut or held behind a flag when the timeline is at risk.
- Cross-Functional Stakeholder Alignment — You can build a stakeholder communication approach for a product area, resolve a disagreement between two stakeholders, and keep both informed.
- Executive and Board Communication — You can present your own product update to leadership, covering progress, risk and what you need from them. You deliver bad news plainly instead of burying it at the end.
- Product Team Leadership and Coaching — You can mentor one product manager through day-to-day work and give feedback they can act on this week. You walk them through how you reached a decision instead of handing them the answer.
- Cross-Team Portfolio Management — You can track the dependencies between your team and its neighbors and raise them before they bite. You go to the other team directly instead of routing everything through your manager.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can coordinate a small team's work on a shared goal: who does what by when, what has to wait for what, and a revised plan when things change.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate a whole project including its risks and unknowns, split it into stages, and defend the estimate when it is challenged.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can hold accountability for outcomes delivered mostly by other people, taking the blame when it fails and passing on the credit when it works.
- Quality Focus — You can set how quality is checked on complex work shared by several teams, and you spot the problems that only appear where their pieces meet.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can make the call on a problem outside your expertise and explain its cost, time and risk.
- Domain Expertise — You can advise the team on your area and apply new developments in the field where they pay off.
- Continuous Learning — You can judge which new ideas are worth the team's time and which are not, and you make room for the people around you to learn too.

Communication
- Communication — You can bring disagreeing groups to agreement on the facts and the next steps, and help colleagues frame a difficult or sensitive message.
- Collaboration — You can align teams with competing priorities on a common goal, surfacing the conflict early instead of letting it harden into resentment.
- Writing & Documentation — You can own the documents behind a large piece of work, coordinating contributions so that people who were not involved can carry it on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can win support for a proposal, reset expectations when the plan changes, and turn down a request with a reason the other side accepts.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can lead one piece of work shared by several people, on your own team and beyond, and make calls that they act on.
- Mentoring — You can mentor someone over months, tell them the uncomfortable thing they need to hear, and adapt how you teach to how they learn.
- Strategic Thinking — You can look a year ahead in your area, name what will matter by then, and turn that into work people can pick up now.

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