From Rookie to Rockstar: Understanding PM Career Levels
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to excel at your craft, understanding the different levels in product management can help you chart a fruitful, satisfying career path. Based on my experience working at many tech companies, I will share a quick summary for each individual contributor level, from associate product manager to principal product manager. As you navigate the depths of the PM jungle, it’s good to have clarity on roles and responsibilities, so that you know where to focus your energy to becoming a rockstar.
Associate Product Manager: The Learning Phase
Associate Product Managers, are typically early in their careers with one to three years of work experience overall. They may have just graduated from college or transitioned from another functional area. The primary goal at this stage is to learn and grow. Many tech companies hire high potential, junior candidates at this level.
Competencies
Vision & Strategy: Contributes to the backlog. Develops customer empathy. Suggests metrics and goals with some guidance.
Leadership & Influence: Establishes trust and credibility with stakeholders. Cross-functional (XFN) partners like working with you.
Scope & Impact: Drives execution for at least one feature. Hits measurable success with features launched against goals. Understands technologies within product area.
Execution & Prioritization: Delivers independently, but will seek direction. Writes requirements that clearly articulates the problem and hypothesis with some guidance. Translates solutions into easy to understand pieces of engineering work given some direction.
Product Craft: Writes good briefs. Assesses the whys and next steps after a feature launches.
Product Manager: The Building Phase
Product Managers have a few years of experience. They have a solid understanding of the product management fundamentals and are starting to take on more significant responsibilities.
Competencies
Vision & Strategy: Manages their roadmap within their scope. Understands customers pain points. Can set quarterly OKRs for the team.
Leadership & Influence: Influences customers, partners, and engineering team priorities. Drives feature discussions with customers, engineers, and others. Facilitates conflict resolution. Demonstrates expertise of the product and domain and knowledge of the technical architecture.
Scope & Impact: Manages product features from conception to launch. Able to run cross-functional projects beyond engineering and design (marketing, support, finance). Improves and may own an output metric and delivers measurable impact.
Execution & Prioritization: Delivers independently, with limited guidance. Shows autonomy in resolving blockers and issues, escalating as needed. Shares and seeks out supporting information for effective decision making. Optimizes roadmap intake. Connects engineering to end-user experience.
Product Craft: Produces clear, concise product documents. Knows and successfully communicates all root problems to the lowest level of detail. Brings clarity to metrics on more complex features. Can communicate with high relevancy with senior leadership. Starts to mentor. Interviews PM candidates.
Senior Product Manager: The Strategic Phase
Senior Product Managers have significant experience. They play a more crucial role in shaping the product's future and ensuring it aligns with the broader business strategy.
Competencies
Vision & Strategy: Comes up with a vision and strategy for product / features. Manages a roadmap that can deliver consistent impact for +6 months. Discovers and addresses customers pain points across the user journey with XFN partners. Builds products with (platform) capabilities that also accelerates other teams’ objectives.
Leadership & Influence: Others see as a domain expert. Aligns stakeholders. Drives product discussions with executives. Influences or creates product materials, sales / other training. Resolves conflict.
Scope & Impact: Drive multiple product / features end-to-end and/or contribute to complex features across domains / initiatives. Accountable for delivering measurable impact against organization goals for a domain or initiative. Work is tactical and strategic.
Execution & Prioritization: Leverages domain expertise to find new ways to improve the product. Handles complex product development and trade-off scenarios. Recognizes whether a technical design of a feature has limitations.
Product Craft: Clear written and verbal communication strategy. Establishes / simplifies processes to ensure product meets customer needs. Writes great product documents (requirements, readouts, learnings) that instill confidence for success. Shares user and data insights. Contributes to training / coaching PMs. Supports referring and closing candidates.
Principal: The Leadership Phase
A Principal Product Manager is a senior-level position within the product management career ladder. This role involves a high level of responsibility, strategic thinking, and leadership. At some companies this level is equivalent to a director-level or group product manager-level role if they manage a team.
Competencies
Vision & Strategy: Sets and drive 1-2 year vision and strategy for a product portfolio end-to-end and across domains / initiatives. Manages a roadmap that realizes the vision and delivers consistent, meaningful impact in a major area for +12 months. May not even know what the problem is before starting.
Leadership & Influence: Builds confidence and alignment on the product strategy with all stakeholders and leadership. Masters at storytelling. Provides thought leadership to related domains. Other product teams know your roadmap, how it might impact theirs, and can identify opportunities for collaboration. Drives teams to clarity in solving complex problems, escalating as needed. Anticipates and mitigates conflict.
Scope & Impact: Owns multiple goals or focused on making step function change on one goal. Demonstrates impact that is obvious to most people, not questionable. Owns the resourcing trade-off discussions while balancing innovation and execution.
Execution & Prioritization: Delivers with complete independence across multiple work streams. Pushes the envelope on speed and execution. Deconstructs complex product problems into straightforward technical propositions. Manages potential delivery risk.
Product Craft: Proactively identifies gaps / opportunities. Drives strategic product communications internally / externally. Designs mechanisms and doc templates to ensure long-term product success. Documents are examples for others to emulate. Actively develops others and performs promo assessments. Actively recruits, refers, and closes candidates.
Wrap-Up
Climbing the product management career ladder involves continuous learning and an increasing level of responsibility. By understanding these different levels and expectations, you can better prepare for the journey and thrive in your product management career. Lastly, have fun while you’re at it! - Sophia