Senior / Lead Product Management Consultant

Product People is the leading destination for Product Management services in Europe. We cover parental leaves, discover/deliver great products, and accelerate transformation by acting as bar-raising pacesetters. Our in-house recruitment process has a 0.3% acceptance rate.

We empower our Product community of 60,000 members to share knowledge generously whilst managing the unglamorous hands-on work of a Product/Program Manager or Product Ops, on an interim/fractional basis (3-12 months). We onboard fast, align teams, and deliver outcomes. Selected clients include Amazon, eBay, Miro, FreeNow by Lyft, DeepL, and the World Health Organization.

About the Role

• Make Product People a category-defining company in the consulting space. When people think of ride-sharing, they think of Uber; for LLMs, it’s Claude/ChatGPT. For Product, Growth Interim/Fractional support, we want Product People to be top of mind. You'll own initiatives that get us there: playbooks, knowledge sharing, networking, growth automation, etc.

• Serve as an Interim Product Manager in mostly post-product market-fit digital-first companies ranging from series B to publicly listed. Some are category leaders and/or leverage the latest tech trends. Others need help getting there. You'll be driving complex cross-functional initiatives in B2C or B2B products. It can be anything and everything.

• Solve for the clients AND our company. Prioritize ruthlessly. Make an incredible impact, bring clarity in chaos, execute flawlessly, and quickly. Manage three parallel streams internally and externally. You are good at both unglamorous hands-on work and strategy. You understand how deep or wide to go, more when that's the case and when it's not.

• Communicate a compelling narrative about the product. And each existing or potential feature/capability you manage: "What job/problem does it solve?", "For whom?", "How big is the problem/market?", "What is success?" and why solving this matters in the first place. Understand, share, and shape strategic business context with the client's leadership team.

• Effectively manage various groups consisting of strong personalities. Adapt to their communication preferences. Integrate quickly and feel part of any team in days, not weeks. People love working with you and would work with you again, despite you saying "no" to them a lot. Always come off as friendly, helpful, and accommodating, even when pushing back on irrational demands.

• Coach the next generation. Train, mentor, and delegate relentlessly to help our Associate Product Managers strengthen their skills. Manage 1-6 people depending on tenure, performance, and career ambitions. Collaborate with 2-3 colleagues daily. Break down complex initiatives into manageable, quantifiable work for the team. We use the teaching hospital method (watch, do it yourself under supervision, teach others to do it).

• Rinse and repeat. Go on a new mission with a new client or in a new team, new domain, new product, or initiative every 3-6 months. Continue sharpening your edge and actively helping our internal initiatives.

About You

• You like Fixing the Mess in a High-ownership, High-visibility Role. Like Marie Kondo, we come in when there's a mess. Many people go see a doctor too late; so many clients bring external support when there's already significant damage. You're unfazed by that and create structure from chaos. You find these adventures exciting and make this the time of your life.

• Optimism as an Operating System. You have a high-happiness resting point. You handle high-pressure situations and difficult people with timely and composed reactions. Our job is "humans all the way down". No client wants to bring in a pessimistic, cynical, or attacking consultant. They expect a politely relentless and cheerful style.

• Driven, Collaborative, Kind, and Direct. People would leave higher-paying jobs to work with you again. You give constructive and immediate feedback to help others grow, accept it graciously, and adapt quickly. Clients you worked with recommend us to others and come back to work with us again.

• Context Switching Ninja. You learn fast and make quick and solid decisions with incomplete info. We won't ever have all our clients' context on internal priorities and politics. You can deep dive with engineers, and then switch to explain the business angle to senior leadership.

• Sales Leadership. You understand how companies make money and grow, know which levers to pull with a product mindset, and are pragmatic and outcome-oriented.

Compensation & Perks

Based on the location, tax of residence, and level. The exact level is defined based on the skills and knowledge demonstrated within the hiring process, which includes an unbiased blind review (more about our hiring process). However, this vacancy is focused on finding the best PMCs at an L4 level. To ensure fairness, the salaries are the same for everyone within the same Level and Location Tier.

See our transparent salaries.

• Tenure-Based Compensation Increase. A 5% increase after 12 months and a 10% increase after 24 months of tenure. Resets and restarts when promoted to the next level.

• Uncapped bonuses (quarterly). We usually pay ~€25,000/quarter in bonuses to team members. These are transparently shared across our organization. (eg, €3,000 employee referral, €1,000 client expansion, €1,000 when a client returns, etc.). To be eligible, the team member must be at Product People at the end of the quarter, and not pending an exit (resignation, termination, or counsel to leave).

• Profit participation (yearly). In March, we split a % of last year's profit between all eligible employees with 12+ months of tenure at the time of the payout and not pending an exit (resignation, termination, or counsel to leave).

Get ready for this: We don't just offer a job, we invest in you. Enjoy a Wellness Budget, Home Office/Coworking perks, and a 3-year anniversary gift. We also fuel your growth with learning and networking budgets, and support you with generous leave policies. Benefit from annual workations, unlimited unpaid time off, and a paid sabbatical every 3 years. Plus, we rock a 4-day workweek! We're serious about a workplace that supports your life, not just your work.

• Paid sabbatical increased every 3 years.* You get a paid month off every 3 years, on top of your regular holiday allowance. Take unpaid leave anytime; we'll cover your health insurance.

• [Optional] 4-day work week.* Free up space and time to pursue an MBA, travel for a longer time, or just do nothing. Our default is a 5-day workweek; you can opt in and out of a 4-day workweek with at least one month's notice to minimize the impact on the team's workload. The compensation impact is 80% of the salary in years 1-2, 85% of the salary in years 3, and 90% of the salary in years 4+.

• [Optional] Germany Relocation after 24+ months *. We sponsor a relocation to Berlin, Germany for team members at L4+ levels who've been with our firm for at least 24 months. Should you decide to relocate on your own before being eligible for our support, we can only change your work contract to the German one after you have your visa and paperwork in order.

What Makes Us Special

• Accelerate your personal and career growth. 10x your learning and networking opportunities by being exposed to multiple companies and teams each year. We give timely, candid, and direct feedback and expect you to do the same. We run 4-month performance reviews for each person. This helps us improve the team, maintain the quality of service, and proactively promote people who show sustained performance at the next level.

• Amazing culture. We have a supportive, high-performance, and open culture. It starts with onboarding you well. We hire and retain the best people living our values ​​while counseling to leave those happier elsewhere. We share knowledge generously while being excellent and candid with each other.

• Structured onboarding and support network. Who says small companies need to be chaotic? Our onboarding guide contains everything you need, and if you need more, there's our #help channel! We proactively share our learning with each other through sharing sessions and help each other resolve complex situations through peer mentoring.

• Levels tied to compensation. Your compensation changes when your title and level change. This is not the case with other companies (eg, someone promotes, but they don't earn more money afterwards). Moreover, we offer tenure raises that are independent of levels and promotions.

• Remote working. We work distributed first. We recommend setting up a dedicated workspace for which you can choose to expense a MacBook, external monitor, ring light, room divider, and plants. As it can sometimes get lonely, consider that you'll need to proactively schedule in-person meetings, sports, or other activities that provide a good cutoff and help you recharge after work.

We operate in Central European Time, and our team values ​​effective collaboration. To ensure seamless communication and teamwork, and support a sustainable lifestyle, we accommodate a maximum time difference of +4.5 hours / -1 to -2 hours. Please consider this when applying for the position.