Associate Product Management Consultant (f/m/x)

Product People is the premier 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 0.5% 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 eBay, DeepL, and the World Health Organization.

🚀 About the Role

When people think of streaming, they think of Netflix. For music, it’s Spotify. When they think about Product Management, they should think of us.

You’ll jump into high-impact client projects, helping post-product market fit digital-first companies tackle strategic and executional challenges. Our clients include category leaders and companies navigating growth, innovation, or transformation.

1. Solve problems for clients and for Product People.
   You’ll prioritise, zoom in and out, and make a real impact. You bring clarity to chaos and orchestrate seamless execution. You’ll manage discovery and delivery for three streams at once, internally and externally. You're comfortable with both strategy and hands-on, unglamorous work, and you know when to go deep or stay broad.
2. Work with strong personalities and diverse teams.
   You adapt to communication styles and integrate quickly, feeling like part of the team within days, not weeks. People enjoy working with you, even when you push back. You're approachable, constructive, and always professional, even when challenging unrealistic demands.
3. Support Senior Product Management Consultants who serve as Interims. Our clients are usually post-product market-fit from series B to publicly listed. You’ll be supporting the client-facing PMs who drive complex cross-functional initiatives in B2C or B2B products. It can be anything from setting and reaching quarterly OKRs at a scale-up to Continuous Discovery/Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) or A/B tests elsewhere. 
4. Craft and communicate compelling product narratives.
   For every feature or capability, you can answer:
   • What job/problem does this solve?
   • For whom?
   • How big is the market/problem?
   • What does success look like?
   • Why does solving this matter?
   • You’ll share and help shape strategic context with clients’ CPOs, VPs, Directors, or Heads of Product.
5. 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 Product People's internal initiatives. 

🧠 About You

• You Fix the Mess (and kind of love it).
  You arrive when things are messy, and leave behind clarity, structure, and surprisingly joyful spreadsheets. Most clients don’t bring us in during the calm; they call when it’s “uh-oh” o’clock. You don’t just handle chaos, you thrive in it and somehow make it fun (for you and them).
• Optimism as an Operating System.
  Your emotional operating system is set to “can-do.” You stay calm during meltdowns, and you deliver difficult truths with a smile and a plan. You’re relentlessly polite, cheerfully persistent, and immune to drama. Basically, if Product were a weather system, you’re the high-pressure zone that clears the storm.
• You’re Driven, Collaborative, and Charmingly Direct.
  You’re the teammate clients want back, and your ex-colleagues leave cushy roles to work with you again. You speak human, not jargon. Feedback? You give it kindly, take it well, and treat it like a cheat code for levelling up. You’re here to do excellent work, lift others up, and make the team better.
• You Context Switch like it’s a superpower.
  You can drop into an engineer’s Slack thread, jump to an exec pitch, and then sketch out a roadmap, all before your second coffee. Clients don’t always come to us at their most organised times (read: M&A, staff turnover, existential crisis). You roll with it, find the signal in the noise, and make magic across shifting priorities. At the same time, you know how to create boundaries that support effective collaboration.
• You think commercially.
  You get how businesses grow, where money comes from, and which bets matter. You speak in impact, not just input. Whether it’s retention, expansion, or efficiency, you know how to chase the outcome, measure it, and ship value without gold-plating the roadmap.

💸 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). People with prior work experience tend to get levelled as L3. To ensure fairness, the salaries are the same for everyone within the same Level and Location Tier. 
  
  1. Associate Product Management Consultant II (L3) 
     1. Location Cluster 1 (High cost of living countries: Germany, Netherlands, etc.) €48,000/year
     2. Location Cluster 2 (EU countries, medium cost of living: Spain, Portugal, etc.) €33,000/year
     3. Location Cluster 3 (Non-EU, lower cost of living: South Africa, Pakistan, etc.) €26,000/year
  2. Associate Product Management Consultant I (L2)
     
     1. Location Cluster 1 (High cost of living countries: Germany, Netherlands, etc.) €35,000/year
     2. Location Cluster 2 (EU countries, medium cost of living: Spain, Portugal, etc.) €24,000/year
     3. Location Cluster 3 (Non-EU, lower cost of living: South Africa, Pakistan, etc.) €18,200/year
• 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 organisation. (e.g., €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.

📚 Growth Opportunities

1. Measurement of success. We prioritise continuous growth and feedback. Regular performance appraisals are led by Line Managers and the VP/Director of Product and involve monthly reviews of a 3-month development plan focusing on skill growth. Evaluations encompass 360-degree feedback, client feedback in conjunction with internal reviews, direct observations by managers, and adherence to Product People Levelling Expectations.
2. Promotions. To be promoted, meet the role's tenure criteria, demonstrate performance at the next level for 6 months, and submit an approved promotion case. We have a strong track record of promoting people from within and taking team members from Associate to Product Manager or from Senior to Director of Product during their successful tenures at Product People.
3. Continuous learning. Continuous learning is at our core. Embracing "Spread knowledge generously," we foster growth through weekly Sharing and Rubber Ducky sessions, a dedicated #help channel, and promoting peer mentorship. These opportunities complement the structured mentoring from line managers and mission supervisors in the Product People Trio framework. We also offer a Learning Budget to expand your Product Management knowledge.