EMERGING ROLES IN TECH
The Four Types of Product Operations Roles You’ll Encounter
“Product Operations” is a nascent but fast-growing field. What is it, and what skills does it require?
I first heard of Product Operations (POps) when I joined Uber in 2019. The product operations function was kicked off at Uber back in 2015 by Blake Samic. As the Uber machine scaled globally, a middle layer between Product and operations teams around the world was needed to prioritize and tackle the most impactful tech and business problems.
According to the State of Product Ops 2021 report by Product-Led Alliance, 89% of companies surveyed had a POps function. Another report from 2019 by Pendo and the Product Collective — “The Rise of Product Ops” — estimates that Linkedin users with the POps title are increasing by 8% YoY. At the time of writing this article, a quick LinkedIn search of the title “Product Operations Manager” returns 6.8k results. For comparison, “Data Scientist”, a field that exploded in 2012, returns 507k. In summary, while interest in Product Operations is rising, the field remains nascent which implies an evolving identity.
Product Operations Archetypes
As I speak to product operations managers and read about their experience at different companies, I get lost in…
