Hunting analytics · February 2025
Hunting analytics: product managers
What it costs to hire a strong specialist
NEWHR experts have prepared a new piece on what is happening in the labour market right now. It helps employers rely on up-to-date data when looking for staff, and helps candidates assess their own value realistically.
Today our hunting analytics focuses on product managers in IT and IT-adjacent companies.
We cover in detail:
- what it costs today to hire a strong product manager;
- what raises or lowers their price;
- what else, besides money, improves your chances of attracting a candidate.
We covered CPOs in the previous article of the series. Before that, we shared data on data and product analysts and heads of analytics.
We collected the data throughout 2024 directly from candidates and employers. All new pieces on hunting specialists appear here.
Why does this matter?
At NEWHR we know how important it is to rely on real data when dealing with the labour market, both for employers and for candidates. In our practice we see product managers with almost identical profiles asking for amounts that differ by up to 50%, simply because they don't know the market. This spread limits the chances of many strong specialists and prevents companies from setting balanced hiring budgets.
That is why we publish open hunting analytics and run salary research for companies. Our goal is to make the labour market more transparent and easier to understand.
Who we are talking about
First and foremost, we write about Russian-speaking specialists from the IT/Tech industry who work at both B2B and B2C companies.
Most of the product managers we assessed are not actively looking for a job but are open to interesting offers. Such candidates are usually ready for work that is interesting in terms of professional growth and other prospects.
We did not include in our assessment candidates who urgently need a job and are therefore potentially willing to accept whatever the market offers rather than offers that genuinely interest them.
- What is the situation with product manager grades? — In our hunting analytics we cover product managers only at Senior and Lead level, and here is why:
Over the past three years we have seen a significant drop in interest in Junior and Middle product managers. We would even say we see no point in that split. Businesses expect a product manager to have management experience, which a Junior specialist by definition doesn't have. Of course, depending on the scale of tasks and the product, an employer may list different grades of expected candidates in job postings, but will almost always require management experience.
We also take into account switchers: newly minted product managers who have moved from other roles. To compete for vacancies, such candidates need to gain experience on pet projects or serious educational projects. In addition, when assessing such candidates, their background is taken into account, including management experience. So a switcher may be called a Junior product manager without actually being a junior.
Scope of responsibility and tasks of a Senior product manager:
- Responsible for developing a specific product or part of it, its market fit and alignment with user needs.
- Handles strategic and operational tasks related to product growth and hitting key metrics: shaping strategy, market research, feature prioritisation, backlog management, work on monetisation and user retention.
- Works with product metrics (DAU, MAU, retention, conversion, churn), forms and tests hypotheses, runs A/B tests, analyses user behaviour. Works with development, design, marketing and analytics teams to achieve business goals.
How product managers' income is structured
The main part of a product manager's income is a fixed salary. In some cases there is also an incentive component that depends on meeting KPIs (rarely above 15−20%), but when moving to a new job, product managers as a rule don't focus on it. This is because they often don't see their influence on product metrics to the same extent as, for example, a CPO does.
In addition, when changing companies, a product manager needs time to gain tangible influence on the product. This is not always possible in the first year. And sometimes product management is set up in a way where the product manager may not have significant influence (for example, in practice the product is run by the founder or the commercial director), but you can only find this out once you start working at the company.
When hunting a product manager, the thing to attract them with is the level of the fixed salary. They will see the bonus part purely as a supplementary component.
Salary range
It is hard to give an average figure for product manager salaries. As we wrote above, candidates with almost identical profiles may ask for amounts that differ by up to 50%. Most likely, this is due to a lack of understanding of the market situation.
In this review we give averaged data, without extremes. We also describe what can raise or lower candidates' salary levels.
Product manager income (monthly, gross):
- A Senior Product Manager / Product Owner expects on average a fixed salary of 350−550 thousand roubles.
- A Product Lead / Head of Product costs on average from 500 to 700 thousand roubles (fixed).
What raises a product manager's price:
- Technical background: candidates who grew out of development/analytics or have experience with technically complex products are usually at the top of the salary range.
- Experience with well-known and/or large-scale products.
- Experience with a leading product in its segment.
- A position level that implies proximity to the CPO/CEO.
- Successful product cases, for example launching a new product, multiplying a key metric, etc.
- Expertise in a specific narrow niche that the employer needs.
- Experience in a large team, in a matrix structure with a complex system of interaction.
- Experience managing the company's core product rather than its separate components or supporting products.
What can lower a product manager's price:
- No experience with cross-platform products, with all experience focused on a single platform (for example, web only).
- No companies/brands known on the market in the candidate's experience at all.
- No experience working with the required audience (a different geography, cultural specifics, etc.).
- Tenure: a product manager who recently moved from another field (PM, analytics, design, etc.) will cost less than an experienced product manager.
- No experience at companies with a strong product culture and established product processes.
How to hunt a strong product manager?
First and foremost, product managers are attracted by:
Ambitious challenges
The chance to solve real business problems (launching products from scratch, growing in a difficult niche, scaling to new countries) rather than doing repetitive tasks and routine backlog management.
Vision
Experienced product managers want to work on products that have a significant impact on the market or society. They are attracted by companies with a clear and inspiring mission.
What else increases product managers' interest in a vacancy:
A promising product.
The chance to work in a growing, developing market. For example, many people today are interested in AI-related products.
A well-known brand.
What matters here is not only, and not so much, popularity with a broad audience. A strong product culture and a reputation among professionals will interest candidates just as much.
Scale.
Candidates often want to move to products that reach more users or geographies, or have higher revenue, than their current workplace.
The team.
Product managers pay attention to the personality and skills of the CPO (especially if they are well known in the community), as well as to strong specialists on their team: engineers, designers, analysts.
A high level of autonomy.
Freedom in decision-making and no micromanagement from leadership.
The company's stage of development.
Product managers are more often attracted by companies in the growth stage, where a lot already works but there is room for improvement. Roughly speaking, no longer a "startup in a garage", but not yet a bureaucratic corporate machine.
Work format.
Leads and heads value a hybrid format most: they want to communicate with the team in person but be able to stay at home when needed. Senior-level candidates more often prefer fully remote work.
A good salary.
In the current unstable market, the salary should be competitive (not below the industry average), and benefits flexible and personalised (options, remote work, health and learning reimbursement).
Professional growth opportunities.
This can be not only career growth but also the chance to learn from industry leaders, work with cutting-edge technologies or enter new markets. Product managers need to feel that the job expands their expertise.
Factors that make a vacancy less attractive:
The company's unstable financial position.
Only a small share of candidates are willing to consider very young startups without stable funding. As a rule, these are entrepreneurially minded product managers who are more interested in working with companies at the stage of searching for product market fit. They are willing to sacrifice stability for that.
A poor reputation of the company or product.
Bad product reviews, unethical promotion practices or a controversial field overall (for example, Gambling, Adult). This also includes companies with a weak HR brand: high turnover, a reputation for "burning out" specialists.
Working only on the delivery side.
Most product managers prefer tasks related to discovery, or a combination of discovery and delivery tasks.
A boring or dying product.
Product managers are put off by the prospect of maintaining a heavily outdated legacy product with no chance of innovation, or working on something that clearly won't "take off".
No developed product culture
in the company and no willingness to build one
No analytics in the product
and no willingness to build it. Strong product managers value a data-driven approach and making key decisions based on data.
Chaos in goal-setting.
The employer has no clear business development strategy and no understanding of the product manager's areas of responsibility, KPIs and key metrics.
Rigid requirements on work format.
A strict requirement to be in the office five days a week may put a candidate off (and not so much because of the format itself, as some product managers prefer going to the office, but rather because of the company's lack of flexibility on the issue).
Where does this data come from?
At NEWHR we have been researching the labour market since 2018 and talk directly to employers and candidates, so we see important trends as they develop. We supplement expert data with quantitative research (you can explore our latest market research here).
Adapted from the original article in Russian on newhr.org. Read the Russian version.