How to write a Product Manager’s Job description + Bonus Template (2022)

If you’re looking to hire a product manager, you’re in the right place. In this article, we discuss what a product manager does and how you can put together a stellar job description

8 min readOct 16, 2022

Optimizing product management can increase revenue in a business by 34%. This could be the game-changer your business needs to gain a competitive edge and accelerate growth. But to achieve this, you need a highly skilled and strategic product manager.

So if you’re looking to hire a product manager, let’s help you through the hiring process — but first, what are the job responsibilities of a product manager?

What does a product manager do?

A product manager conducts early-stage research and ideation to create and bring to market products that delight end users or customers to achieve business goals.

They need to have a keen understanding of the business side to create and optimize marketing and sales strategies to drive demand for the end product.

Good product managers possess the technical know-how to ensure that the right features are developed to maximize the customer experience and reiterate based on customer feedback.

Product Manager duties and responsibilities

A product manager’s duties and responsibilities may vary across different industries but below are the core responsibilities of a product manager.

Customer research: the purpose of this research is to discover customer needs, goals, jobs to be done, and pain points using surveys and discovery interviews to decide which problems need to be solved and build business cases around them.
Defining product strategy: to explain why the product should be created and how customers and the business will benefit from it
Collaborating with technical teams: to create an alignment of the product vision and strategy; and ensure the right resources are available to prioritize executing a highly polished end product.
Planning and maintaining product road map: to organize features into release dates based on priorities and backlogs
Pricing and packaging: design the optimal pricing structure and aesthetic packaging that take into account the customer experience and needs.
Reviewing and analyzing metrics: once a product is released into the market, performance measurement is essential to determine if the product is meeting customer expectations.

These responsibilities show why a product manager is vital to the success of a product launch. Let’s see what they get paid in return.

Salary benchmarks for a product manager

The median salary for a product manager on Glassdoor is $127,496, which included additional cash payments like bonuses etc. This total salary range is between $97k -$169k which is an accurate range when you consider experience level and rank.

For example, entry-level salaries would make up the lower band of the range, while senior and lead product managers make up the upper band. This should give a clear benchmark of what a product manager’s salary in the US is.

Listing the salary in job postings is becoming more common as companies strive for transparency, and to attract top talent. But there are still concerns by companies when it comes to listing the salary in their job descriptions.

The main reason for not posting the salary is that they don’t want competitors to know what they pay employees in case they use that to poach their top talent. The problem with this is that the right candidates want to know this information and will do their research until they find it.

So it’s best to just post the salary, the right candidates will appreciate this information and value your transparency.

What qualifications does a product manager need?

Some recruiters will require a product manager to have a 4-year degree in statistics, business, computer science, engineering, or related fields. But an increasing number of employers are choosing to forgo the degree, provided the candidate can prove that they have experience

Google, Apple, and 12 other companies no longer require degrees when looking for talent. Instead, they focus on hands-on experience or industry-related vocational classes.

Best practice when creating and posting a product manager’s job description

Getting your job description right is important because it helps potential product manager candidates to self-evaluate and determine if they qualify to apply for the job.

It also helps candidates to assess whether the company is a good fit for them. Below are a few ways to optimize your job description to attract the best candidates.

Write a clear description of the Job title.

Avoid vague titles that nobody else understands like sales ninja or customer rockstar. While these can work internally and reflect your organization’s culture, they aren’t what people are searching for. Rather opt for clear universal job titles that candidates can understand. A clear job title will also make it simple for your post to be discoverable online.

Plus, using searchable terms allows your listing to be found by job seekers that are looking for openings in their field.

A good example is Tulip’s product manager job description.

They included not just the title but the job rank as well. The name of the company is clear and it shows the job location. For remote positions like this one, if you’re only accepting remote positions from a specific country, or multiple locations, specify this requirement.

This avoids finding the right candidate but having to deal with time zone challenges where the rest of the team is in a different time zone.

Tell them who you are

An about us section tells potential candidates what your company does and can include your mission, vision, values, or the cool problems you’re solving.

Describe the team they’ll be working with daily, including who they might be reporting to where relevant.This is the first thing that candidates read, so make it captivating enough for them to want to know more about possibly working at your company.

Tell them who you’re looking for

This section is an opportunity to define what you look for in an ideal candidate. List the soft and hard skills of the job, the level of experience they need to have, any qualifications that you require, or industry certifications.

Most candidates use this as a checklist to see if they’re eligible or not. So be thorough but don’t add unnecessary information.

Describe what their day-to-day will look like

List the duties and responsibilities, preferably in bullet point format, which shows what their day-to-day activities will look like. Include the tools and technology that they’ll be working with and the proficiency level required to use the tools.

Buffer’s remote senior product designer position is an example of how to use clear roles and responsibilities to paint a vivid picture of the job.

Potential candidates should be able to imagine themselves in the role and doing the job. Being too vague or adding too many unnecessary responsibilities can lead to some candidates self-eliminating before they even apply.

This is why it’s important to work on the job description with the actual team hiring for the role because they know best what gaps need to be filled.

Give them the incentive to apply

What benefits and perks are you offering? What is the organizational culture like? What salary will they be earning? Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. These are some of the things they wonder about while reading your job description. Show your commitment to fostering an inclusive work environment by adding an inclusivity statement.

This creates added incentive for applications from a diverse pool of talented candidates who may not usually apply. For example, you’ve probably read the statistic that men apply for jobs if they meet only 60% of the requirements while women only apply if they meet 100% of the requirements. Tulip executed their inclusivity statement masterfully below:

We know how difficult writing a job description can be. This is why we created this product manager job description template which you can adapt to your specific product manager role to get started.

Product manager job description template

About the role
We’re looking for a forward-thinking experienced product manager to create products that our customers will love. You’ll be using findings from customer research, data and analytics and leading a cross-functional team to develop solutions that will help achieve business goals. This is a fully remote position.
About you
To be successful in the role you need to:

Have a curious mind and be constantly asking ‘why’ to gain a deeper understanding of > customer behavior and needs
Be a strong oral, written, and visual communicator.
Be highly analytical and a resourceful problem solver
Have experience executing strategies into clear action plans in multiple markets
Have a successful track record managing P&L and sales objectives for multiple markets
Have experience leading each stage of the product life cycle cross-functionally

Duties and responsibilities

Managing and facilitating of the product development process from ideation through to product launch,
Take responsibility for scoping the product’s vision, target markets, customers and customer segmentation, global market trends, competitive landscape, and offering to clients.
identifying and meeting market requirements and achieving business and product objectives.
design the profit model, including the pricing structure, and quantify the detailed financial impact to support budget modeling and tracking.
Translate the product strategies and road maps into detailed release plans and review roll-out materials
Liaise with business stakeholders in marketing, sales, and legal to ensure alignment in terms of the budget
Evaluates business cases, new business models, agreements, and partnership to improve the brands’ footprint and competitiveness
Create presentations to report on the development status of the products
Select and monitors KPIs that assess product performance and use key insights to ideate innovative approaches for product optimization
Assist with facilitating user acceptance testing and management

Qualification and experience

Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, engineering, or related field
4 years of product management experience

Benefits and perks We offer a market-related salary of $90–100k annually depending on your experience in addition to:

3 weeks of paid time off
A work-from-home stipend to cover your wifi and other related costs
Remote work setup allowance for your workspace, gear, office space, and furniture
Personal development allowance to use on any course of your choosing
Paid parental leave

A product manager influences the success of a product by being involved in every part of the product life cycle. This requires them to wear many hats and have a diverse skill set to be able to communicate the vision and get buy-in from key stakeholders right through to executing the product strategy effectively.

Considering the fact that 1 in 5 products fail to meet customer needs, hiring the right candidates will determine if your product management efforts yield a return on investment or not. For more useful articles on crafting compelling job descriptions to find suitable candidates head to the 4 day week blog and go and post that job.

This article was originally posted on 4 day week — jobs with a four day workweek 🎉