Behind all of Google’s innovative products, technical product managers (TPM) at Google stand as the leaders who drive product delivery goals from conceptualization to launch.
Even though becoming a technical product manager at Google is the dream job for many ambitious technical PMs, it is a challenging career.
Yet, it is a rewarding career path and an opportunity to formulate new ideas, work with talented engineers, and release innovative products to users worldwide.
Nonetheless, becoming one is far from easy. To succeed in this role, you need to have a strong technical background in Google products from Gmail to Google Cloud and possess the necessary product management skills.
Are you someone who is aiming to become a technical product manager at Google someday?
Then you have come to the right place to learn more. Keep reading to find out what a Google TPM does and the roles and responsibilities.
What Does a Google Technical PM do?
A technical PM at Google does similar job tasks as any other Google product manager. However, their job places more emphasis on the technical side of managing Google products as opposed to other areas of product management.
Technical PMs at Google work on new technologies, products, platforms, and systems. Therefore, Google product managers need to know the basics of data structures and advanced engineering techniques used in their products and services. These include understanding concepts behind products such as:
- Google Analytics
- Google FLOC
- Google Cloud Google Adsense
They provide technical consultation during the full product lifecycle throughout the conceptualization, product roadmap development, execution, and product launch using their strong technical background.
They work with teams like solution architects, engineers, designers, UX, and marketers to create cutting-edge digital products for customers. They also work with internal stakeholders to transform customer requirements into industry-leading innovative products.
Interesting in becoming a technical product manager at Google? Consider taking our Technical Product Manager Certification Course to set you up for your dream job at Google.
Now let’s see the roles and responsibilities a technical PM at Google need to undertake and the skills you need to master to perform well in this role.
1. Product Roadmap Development
The main responsibility of a Google Technical PM is to drive product roadmap development for new products and features.
Credits: Roadmunk
They need to communicate and collaborate with stakeholders like the program manager, other technical product management teams, and non-technical product managers to provide their technical expertise in coming up with an achievable roadmap.
Also, as innovation is a key part of Google, they need to develop new ideas and innovative solutions for customer problems and turn them into new products, which helps Google spread into new avenues and expand the userbase.
If higher management accepts these ideas, Google TPMs then develop a product strategy that includes product requirements, budgets, and resources. With it, they translate the product strategy into epics and user stories addressing specific business requirements.
2. Facilitating Collaboration Among Teams
The whole product lifecycle of any tech company involves communication and collaboration. A technical PM is responsible for managing different teams. Hence, they need to be team players who facilitate continuous collaboration among different teams across multiple functional areas.
You need to collaborate with the engineering teams, UX designers, sales teams, Quality engineers, marketers, third-party teams, and other stakeholders to execute the product roadmap.
Providing a prompt response is essential to building a strong relationship and trust among team members whenever they need feedback, opinions, or requirement clarifications.
This also includes continuous sync-up between teams, resolving any impediments teams face, and providing guidance to overcome challenges and ambiguous situations.
3. Research and Develop Solutions to Problems
Unlike a non-technical product manager, a technical PM must develop solutions to problems by providing their technical expertise to the teams involved.
When required, they must collaborate with stakeholders from different product areas, functions, and even across regions to help develop feasible solutions and implement them.
Google as a tech giant in the IT industry, strives for innovation and has become the market leader in various digital products.
Therefore, research and development are critical areas they work on.
A TPM needs to research different areas using a proper research methodology to develop solutions and find new product development ideas.
Also, it is part of their ongoing learning and development activities that facilitate the growth mindset. Therefore, having strong problem-solving, research, and development skills are must-have skills for a technical PM to thrive in this position in the long term.
4. Market Research and Evaluation of Emerging Technologies
Another key responsibility of a technical PM at Google is carrying out market research. This is critical for several reasons:
- Key to understanding new market opportunities
- Important to discover market trends that affect your product’s success
- Crucial to determine your unique value proposition against competitor products
For market research, technical PMs at Google must conduct interviews, and surveys, collect customer feedback, and find out customer requirements. They need relevant statistics and analytical skills to interpret and derive important insights from the results.
Also, Google always keeps an eye on emerging technologies. Thus, as a technical PM, you need to keep up-to-date with the latest technological advancements in the industry and evaluate them to understand their potential impacts.
This also includes analyzing technologies competitors like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple use, which helps them improve their market position and compete with rival groups.
5. Product Testing and Training
Product review and testing are key responsibilities of a technical PM at Google before the product launch. The iterative testing approach is important to understand the customer interests and identify the features that do not add value to them.
Also, technical PMs need to provide ideas, suggestions, and improvements for the test strategies devised by the testers for the products.
They test the quality and performance of each new feature developed once available in a lower environment. Google offers volunteers worldwide to test their products and gather feedback from those tests.
Then technical PMs at Google work with other PMs to prioritize any bugs identified and provide improvements to the products based on customer feedback.
Become a Google Technical PM Today
Now that you have identified the roles and responsibilities of a Google Technical Product manager, you need to understand what skills you need to master to land this dream job position.
There is a range of technical, managerial, and soft skills you need to sharpen to perform the above-discussed duties of this role.
Building such a skill set is not an overnight achievement. Rather one must work smarter identifying their skill gaps and working harder to fulfill those gaps.
Our PMHQ courses in technical product management aid product professionals like you to jumpstart your career as a technical product manager at Google. Start building your skills, knowledge, and experience to land a job as a Google TPM today.
