How To Become A Junior Product Manager: What It Is and Career Path

What is a junior product manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Sachin Tuli

The junior product manager is generally the personnel who is responsible for researching, analyzing, and finally communicating the needs of the consumers to the product manager and eventually throughout the entire business. This communication finds its importance, especially with the product engineering team, who will enhance and improve the product.

As a junior product manager, you work with product engineers and other product managers to produce well-written recommendations, preferably in narrative form. Working with product teams, you also develop an intimate understanding of the consumer base and its importance. You then use this knowledge to identify opportunities for the business's product.

As an ideal candidate, you must hold a degree in a technical field; for example, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, or business administration or the equivalent inexperience.

What's a day at work look like for a junior product manager?

Sachin Tuli

Director, International Business Major, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The pandemic accelerated ongoing shifts with work-from-anywhere and use of remote meeting technologies. With mass adoption at all levels, these trends are likely to persist to some degree across fields and industries. There will likely be less travel for a number of years, but concurrently we may see more cross-team and cross-national collaboration and coordination. From an international business perspective, firms do plan to continue their globalization efforts and we know that graduates themselves increasingly seek potential global opportunities and mobility when choosing which organizations to work for.

ScoreJunior Product ManagerUS Average

Salary

6.5

Avg. Salary $83,812

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.5

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 8.15%

Black or African American 3.04%

Hispanic or Latino 8.67%

Unknown 5.32%

White 74.58%

Gender

female 56.28%

male 43.72%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a junior product manager

Explore junior product manager education requirements

Most common junior product manager degrees

Bachelor's

73.3 %

Master's

20.0 %

Associate

4.6 %

Start to develop specific junior product manager skills

Skills	Percentages
Project Management	19.70%
User Stories	14.12%
Cloud	10.54%
Market Research	8.91%
Product Development	6.46%

Complete relevant junior product manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New junior product managers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a junior product manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real junior product manager resumes.

Research junior product manager duties and responsibilities

Manage COOP/MDF spend and evaluation ROI with advertising dollars.
Manage the promotional activity, POS materials elaboration for department stores, and price guidelines.
Modernize and manage MSDS labeling system within the division, as part of the development of ISO.
Manage marketing budget, evaluates program ROI, and ensure they are in-line with quarterly and annual budgets.

Prepare your junior product manager resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your junior product manager resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a junior product manager resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable junior product manager resume templates

Build a professional junior product manager resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your junior product manager resume.

Apply for junior product manager jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a junior product manager job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do junior product managers rate their job?

-/5

5 stars

4 stars

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1 star

Junior product manager reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Aug 2023

Pros

Solve tough problems, work on agile teams, outlet for creativity,

Cons

high expectations, constantly evolving technology, broad range of topics to learn (product management specifics, industry, technology, software development methods