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

What is a national product manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Sachin Tuli

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a national product manager. For example, did you know that they make an average of $72.45 an hour? That's $150,687 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 33,700 job opportunities across the U.S.

What's a day at work look like for a national 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.

ScoreNational Product ManagerUS Average

Salary

8.9

Avg. Salary $150,687

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 24.04%

male 75.96%

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 national product manager

Explore national product manager education requirements

Most common national product manager degrees

Bachelor's

80.9 %

Master's

10.0 %

Associate

6.8 %

Start to develop specific national product manager skills

Skills	Percentages
Pricing Strategy	10.77%
Product Management	9.22%
Product Line	9.10%
R	7.88%
Sales Growth	6.87%

Complete relevant national product manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New national 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 national product manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real national product manager resumes.

Research national product manager duties and responsibilities

Lead cross-functional team in pioneering the application/game download ecosystem with the implementation of Java games and generating significant new revenue stream.
Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.
Provide statistical analysis and technical responses to customer RFQ.

Apply for national product manager jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a national 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 national product managers rate their job?

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National 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

A zippia user wrote a review on Jun 2020