In this article, we will look at the career progression of product managers. This is again a gray area, since different organizations have different career path. We will list out the different key product positions in this article so that you get the complete understanding of the product manager career path.

Associate product manager (APM)

Qualifications:

Usually APMs are graduates with very little experience. They should have a zest for product management. They should be comfortable with doing data analysis and uncovering insights from data.

Responsibilities:

APMs are responsible for assisting Product managers. Typical role includes below activities

1. Customer research
2. Data analysis
3. Help Product managers in writing the PRD(Product requirement document)
4. Creating dashboards & reports for the product team

Product manager

Qualifications:

Product managers usually have prior experience in these fields/roles like Project management/Program management/ Business Analyst.

Responsibilities:

They would be responsible for owning a particular part of the customer funnel (like acquisition, adoption, engagement, revenue or referral). To achieve this broad goal, they would undertake following activities

1. Customer, Competitor & Market analysis
2. Own the product roadmap
3. Be the voice of the customer
4. Communicate the product vision and priorities to broader stakeholders
5. Track the product performance
6. Comes out with feature implementation strategy(including MVP)
7. Be the owner of PRD(Product requirement document)
8. Coordinate with tech team to ship products on time.

Senior Product manager

Senior PM Role is pretty much the same as a PM. In some organizations SPM will own more than one part of the product funnel. And SPMs would have better visibility in a product organization than a PM. Due to the similarity with PM, we are detailing out the role of an SPM in this article.

Principal Product manager

Qualification: This is a senior position in a product company. It is still an individual contributor role. People rise through the ranks of APM, PM, SPM and move into this role.

Responsibilities:

1. Handles critical & complex product problems of the product team
2. Defines & communicates Product roadmap, Vision & strategy to all the stakeholders
3. Determines metric to track product performances
4. Mentors the product team
5. Sets up best practices & processes within a product team.

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Group Product manager

Qualification: Group PM is a senior product role. They rise through the ranks of APM, PM, SPM and sometimes PPM and then move into this role. Group PMs Main role is to manage other product managers. This is where they differentiate from a principal product manager who is predominantly an individual contributor.

Responsibilities

1. Handles the budget of a product team
2. Hires, evaluates & nurtures the product team
3. Reviews Product management processes
4. Sets up priorities within a product team
5. Be the advocate of product team

Director/VP of Product/Chief Product Officer

This is the top most role in a product organization. Some will call them as VP of Product, some as Director & some as the chief product officer.  They are the ultimate authority of the product team. They manage multiple group PMs. And they act as a bridge between CXOs and product team.

Since the hierarchy of a product team greatly differs between organizations, we have tried our best summarize it in the simplest manner possible. You can also check out the below link to compare the structure of few tech companies.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Goo

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