01Owns
Problem definition
Writes down who has the problem, how they cope today and what evidence suggests solving it matters, before any solution is drawn.
Hire · Product management
Hire Product Managers
Senior product managers who join your team to decide what gets built next, why, and what can wait. Shortlisted candidates have turned a messy founder brief into a scoped requirements document, ranked a crowded backlog against a stated goal and defended their cuts to a sceptical engineer.
Paid scoping and prioritisation exercise
Senior, lead and group levels
Works with your engineers and designers daily
On your team
What a product manager owns on your team.
02Owns
Scope and requirements
Produces short, testable requirements with acceptance criteria and an explicit list of what is out of scope for this release.
03Owns
Roadmap and backlog
Keeps a roadmap tied to outcomes rather than dates alone, and orders the backlog so the team always knows what comes next and why.
04Owns
Discovery work
Runs customer interviews, reviews support tickets and usage data, and tests risky assumptions with prototypes before engineering time is committed.
05Owns
Release follow-through
Defines how success will be measured before launch, checks the numbers afterwards and decides whether to iterate, extend or stop.
Vetting
Skills we test before a product manager joins.
01Tested
Written specification
Writes PRDs and user stories that engineers can estimate and designers can work from, with edge cases and open questions called out.
02Tested
Prioritisation
Uses frameworks such as RICE or opportunity scoring as aids, not answers, and can explain a ranking in terms of goals and evidence.
03Tested
Customer interviewing
Asks about past behaviour rather than hypothetical wishes, avoids leading questions and summarises patterns across interviews honestly.
04Tested
Working with engineers
Understands technical constraints well enough to negotiate scope, respects estimates and protects the team from constant mid-sprint changes.
05Tested
Product metrics
Chooses activation, retention and conversion measures that fit the product, and works with analysts to instrument them before launch.
06Tested
Stakeholder management
Says no to senior colleagues with reasons, keeps sales and support informed of what is coming, and records decisions where others can find them.
Work sample
How the product manager work sample runs.
- 01Step 1
Scope a messy brief
The candidate receives a rambling founder note describing a new feature and returns a one-page PRD with the problem, users, requirements, out-of-scope items and open questions.
- 02Step 2
Prioritise a crowded backlog
Given twenty requests from sales, support and leadership plus a quarterly goal, they rank the top items and explain what they would decline. The exercise is paid.
- 03Step 3
Plan the discovery
They list the riskiest assumption behind the feature and describe the cheapest way to test it before engineering starts.
- 04Step 4
Defend a cut
A short conversation with an engineer and a stakeholder who both disagree with something the candidate removed from scope.
Levels
Product Managers: what changes at each level.
01Level 1
Senior
Owns one product area or squad, writes the requirements, runs discovery and makes day-to-day prioritisation calls with the team.
02Level 2
Lead
Owns the roadmap across several squads, coaches other product managers and sets how requirements, reviews and launches are run.
03Level 3
Group product manager
Shapes product strategy across a portfolio, decides where investment goes between areas and represents product in leadership planning.
Other options
When to hire someone other than a product manager.
01Consider
Technical direction is the real gap
If the open questions are about architecture, stack and engineering hiring rather than what to build, look at fractional CTO support.
Open register02Consider
Scope is clear and capacity is short
If the backlog is already well defined and the team simply cannot build fast enough, add engineers instead.
Open register03Consider
The experience is the problem
If users understand the value but struggle to use the product, a designer will usually help sooner than a product manager.
Open registerThe best product managers remove work
Teams without product management usually have no shortage of ideas. What they lack is someone who will say which ideas matter this quarter, write them down precisely enough to build, and turn the rest down politely. When hiring, look for evidence of things a candidate chose not to ship and the reasoning behind it.
Ask for an example where they cut a feature that a senior person wanted. Strong answers describe the evidence used, how the conversation went and what happened to the request afterwards.
Writing is the job
Much of a product manager’s influence travels through documents: requirements, decision records, launch notes and roadmaps. A candidate who writes vaguely will produce a team that builds the wrong thing confidently. That is why our exercise asks for a written scope rather than a slide deck, and why we look closely at what is left out as well as what is included.
Choosing the level
A senior product manager suits a company with one product and a team ready to build. A lead is right when several squads pull in different directions and the roadmap needs one owner. A group product manager makes sense when there are several product lines competing for the same engineering budget.
What good looks like early on
In the first weeks, the new hire should meet customers, read support tickets and sit with sales calls before changing the roadmap. Early opinions formed without that context tend to be reversed later.
By the end of the first month, expect a written view of the top problems, a reordered backlog with reasons and one well-scoped piece of work the team can start on with confidence.
FAQ
Questions to resolve before the build.
01Why is the work sample for product managers not a coding test?
Because the job is deciding what to build, not building it. Writing a scoped document from an unclear brief and ranking competing requests reveals judgement and clarity, which a case-study presentation or quiz often hides.
02Do your product managers need a technical background?
Not necessarily, but each one on our shortlist can discuss APIs, data models and technical debt well enough to negotiate scope with engineers. Where your product is deeply technical, we favour candidates who have worked in similar products.
03Can a product manager work with an outside development team?
Yes. Many of our candidates have worked with agencies or contractors, and the discipline of written requirements and clear acceptance criteria matters even more when the builders sit in another company.
Works alongside
Roles a product manager works best alongside.
01Pair with
UI/UX designers
To turn scoped requirements into tested flows and prototypes before engineers commit to building them.
Open register02Pair with
Full stack developers
When a small team needs engineers who can deliver a scoped feature across the interface and the server.
Open register03Pair with
Data analysts
To instrument launches, size opportunities from usage data and report whether a release moved its target metric.
Open registerProduct delivery
Need the whole product built instead?
Primary sources
References behind this page
Dated official documentation, standards, and research that support the factual claims on this page.
- 01Scrum Guide
The official definition of Scrum, including the product owner’s accountability for the backlog.
- 02GOV.UK Service Manual: Product manager
The UK government’s description of what each role in a service team does.
How to read this page
Scope, cost and timeline figures are planning guidance until confirmed in a written proposal. Diagrams and screens are illustrations, not client deliverables, and source-code rights and handover follow the signed agreement. See the delivery process and the full disclaimer.
Next decision
Turn the brief into an accepted product scope.
Define outcomes, constraints, evidence, rights and handover before delivery begins.
Commercial rights, repositories, environments, documentation, acceptance and handover remain contract-defined.