Technical Product Management Explained in Under 500 Words

 Every great team needs a tech person. 

Think about it. Ocean's 11 had Livingston Dell, Batman had Barbara Gordon, and The Fast and Furious gang had none other than Ludacris. 

In product management, your tech person is the technical product manager. 

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This person works with engineering teams to create products that customers will like and will achieve the business's short- and long-term goals. If you're running a SaaS business, this role helps stakeholders understand how products are being produced and why they should include certain features in their design.

In this post, let's review what a technical product manager does, then dive into some of the key responsibilities they have on the development team.

What's a Technical Product Manager?

A technical product manager is someone who's responsible for the success of the product. They do this by working cross-functionally with the teams building, marketing, selling, and supporting it. Unlike a traditional product manager, technicals ones possess advanced engineering and design skills.

Product managers are usually more external-facing, as they interview customers and collaborate with other teams to conduct competitive analyses and make go-to-market plans. But, since technical product managers have a background in computer science or software engineering, they work more closely with engineering and design teams on product features and capabilities.

Technical product managers aren't just product managers who carry out technical tasks -- it's a specific person in a product management role with a technical background, versus a cross-functional business background.

Depending on the size and breadth of a product, some companies might hire a product manager and a technical product manager, so they have one person focused on coordinating the business around the product, and one person focused on coordinating the technical side of building the product. Others might prefer to have one product manager accountable for the what, why, and how of building and bringing a new product to market.

If you're considering hiring a technical product manager for your business, let's a take a look below at what a job description for this role would look like.

Technical Product Manager Job Description

A technical product manager's job description will be very similar to a product manager's. The main difference will be in the experience and background that the company is looking for in the candidate. 

For example, if you're a SaaS business, you'll probably want a technical product manager with design and engineering skills. But, if you were manufacturing audio equipment, you'd want someone who has experience with building hardware and software. 

Here's an example job description we pulled from Amazon Robotics. 

“We're searching for an innovative and motivated Technical Product Manager who will manage the multi-team development and operational delivery of a large portfolio of technical projects by understanding business requirements, managing changes, removing roadblocks, and communicating broadly with multiple functional groups and stakeholders.

In this position, you will anticipate bottlenecks, provide escalation management, and build consensus by understanding stakeholder requirements and constraints. You will be expected to clearly communicate goals, roles, responsibilities, and desired outcomes to cross-functional teams. You will help identify, prioritize, and advocate for the largest opportunities, as well as create and manage new efficiency opportunities from ideation to launch.”

Before we wrap things up, let's review some of the core responsibilities for technical product managers. 

Duties in Technical Product Management

Here are some of main duties that technical product managers perform on a day-to-day basis. 

Manage the product vision. 

Once the product owner has developed the product vision, it's up to the product manager to bring that vision to life. She or he needs to address any concerns they have about the blueprint and assess the product backlog for anything confusing. It's important to clarify any gray areas as changing features later down the road can often be costly and time-consuming. And, the more they communicate about the product vision, the more likely they are to get the design right.