What are the Key Skills Employers are Looking for in a Product Owner in 2022
Product Owners are generally someone who enjoys being a leader with an interest in learning about new technology and agile methodologies. A technical product owner is someone who can balance product development and product management. If you’re looking to land a job as a product owner, you’ll need to have technical knowledge along with a natural ability to collaborate with product development teams.
We’ll be walking you through the following topics:
- Who is a Technical Product Owner?
- 7 Key Skills Employers Look for in a Technical Product Owner
- Hard Skills
- Soft Skills
- FAQs on Technical Product Owner
Who is a Technical Product Owner?
Technical Product Owners are professionals who help lead one or more projects for a particular organisation. They manage all aspects of a project, right from conception to the evaluation of the finished product.
Most companies hire Product Owners since businesses across different industries use technology to carry out their day-to-day operations and evolve. Product Owners usually work with engineers to develop technology and product architecture.
7 Key Skills Employers Look for in a Product Owner
Some of the most important skills employers look for have been given below and divided into two categories:
Hard Skills
- Knowledge of Web Development
Even though product owners aren’t required to code or do programming, they do need to have a good understanding of the process. Knowledge of product management principles is good but to be a good product owner, you’ll need to know the context.
This will further help you in relating and empathizing with your engineering team. You will also communicate better with them when you need to work on developing timelines and the roadmap.
2. Ability to Write Technical Specs and Requirements
As a product owner, you’ll be required to come up with new product ideas and optimizations. However, if you don’t have specific technical requirements, product development will be delayed and can get stuck in pre-production.
The ability to develop and write technical product specifications, detailed requirements, and the features of any new product is important when guiding an engineering team and designers.
3. Extensive Market Research Skills
Another vital skill for a technical product owner. Right from the conceptualization part of a new product, market research is vital when figuring out whether there even is a market for that particular product.
Further, research also plays an important role in determining in what way could the product best serve the market. This part includes the assessment of customer needs, collecting customer feedback, and carry out interviews and surveys, or collaborating with the user research team.
4. Good Grasp of the Best User Experience Practices
Product teams most often consist of UX and UI experts and to be helpful, you’ll need to have a good hold over the technical knowledge required in the best user experience practices. Knowing these will help you in speaking the same language as the UX product team so that there’s more efficiency.
Additionally, you’ll also be able to communicate your requirements better which will be required when developing wireframes or working on some other product documentation.
Soft Skills
5. Good Critical Thinking and Analytical Skills
A vital must-have for a quality product owner, you need to be able to study information and data and offer deliverable insights to the dedicated teams. This will help you to make sure that the products offer the necessary value to both — the business as well as its customers.
You’ll need to make use of these skills in most of your daily responsibilities and without these, cracking this job, and making smart product decisions might become extremely difficult.
6. Leadership
All product owner roles require the candidate to possess leadership skills since you’ll need to manage and support your team. At all the different levels, product owners should have this skill to work in conjunction with the initiative that’ll help to get the products developed and meet deadlines.
Project management also joins this list since this skill is needed to see any prediction through development and then launch. You’ll also be collaborating with cross-functional teams as a product owner.
This includes working with representatives from the product team, development team, engineering team, marketing team, and so on. Leadership plays an important role in ensuring that each member of every team is on the same page and focused on a common goal.
7. Adaptability
In the product ownership space, priorities are always changing. On one day, a particular product might be the top priority while on the other day, some other product. As a technical product owner, you’ll need to have your prioritisation skills sorted.
You’ll need to keep adapting to the new changes as they come and always make sure that you’re constantly on top of product development. Only once you sort your priorities and work in that manner will you be able to lead your team members to do the same.
So apart from the hard and soft skills listed above, you’ll need to have product vision, emotional intelligence, and the ability to ask the right questions to get the best product owner jobs out there.
FAQs on Technical Product Owner
Q1. How much does a Technical Product Owner make?
For more information, download our latest salary survey.
Q2. What is required to be a Technical Product Owner?
To get the job of a product owner, you’ll need to have a bachelor’s degree to land product owner jobs. But this degree can be in the field of your choice, be it product management, computer science, business information systems, business, commerce, management sciences, or other related fields.
