How to hire a principal product manager

How to hire a principal product manager, step by step

Here's a step-by-step principal product manager hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a principal product manager job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new principal product manager
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a principal product manager do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you start hiring a principal product manager, identify what type of worker you actually need. Certain positions might call for a full-time employee, while others can be done by a part-time worker or contractor.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   You should also consider the ideal background you'd like them a principal product manager to have before you start to hire. For example, what industry or field would you like them to have experience in, what level of seniority or education does the job require, and how much it'll cost to hire a principal product manager that fits the bill.

   Here's a comparison of principal product manager salaries for various roles:

   Type of Principal Product Manager	Description	Hourly rate
   Principal Product Manager	Advertising, promotions, and marketing managers plan programs to generate interest in products or services. They work with art directors, sales agents, and financial staff members.	$50-95
   Web Manager	Web Managers are responsible for managing websites for organizations. Their duties include managing website upgrades, testing for website performance, implement a strategy to increase web traffic and subscribers, troubleshooting website issues, and responding to security breaches... Show more	$25-60
   Product Lead	A product lead is responsible for monitoring the development of new products and services of an organization, starting from brand conceptualization to official market release and distribution. Product leads identify effective product management by conducting data analysis and evaluating market statistics of customer demands... Show more	$41-78

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Product Management
   • QA
   • Product Development
   • Regression
   • User Stories
   • Saas
   • Product Strategy
   • Product Roadmap
   • Digital Marketing
   • Project Management
   • User Experience
   • Market Research
   • KPIs
   • Product Vision

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Lead an initiative to train technical writers on writing QA tests for documentation examples.
   • Lead SaaS application visibility and performance monitoring in hybrid enterprise to accelerate adoption of cloud.
   • Analyze complex business cases to determine product feasibility, prioritization and project ROI.
   • Define strategic direction and KPIs, make recommendations to leadership and execute on approve direction.
   • Develop product marketing positioning with business team, forecasting, competitive positioning and analyzing ROI.
   • Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.

   More principal product manager duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your principal product manager job description helps attract top candidates to the position. A principal product manager salary can be affected by several factors, such as geography, experience, seniority, certifications, and the prestige of the hiring company.

   For example, the average salary for a principal product manager in Kansas may be lower than in Washington, and an entry-level principal product manager usually earns less than a senior-level principal product manager. Additionally, a principal product manager with certifications may command a higher salary, and working for a well-known company or start-up may also impact an employee's pay.

   Average principal product manager salary

   $145,943yearly

   $70.16 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level principal product manager salary

   $106,000 yearly salary

   Updated December 14, 2025

   Average principal product manager salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	California	$170,974	$82
   2	Washington	$163,954	$79
   3	Rhode Island	$157,875	$76
   4	Oregon	$141,853	$68
   5	Massachusetts	$136,207	$65
   6	Arizona	$130,834	$63
   7	Utah	$130,699	$63
   8	New York	$126,707	$61
   9	Minnesota	$126,677	$61
   10	New Jersey	$125,949	$61
   11	Maryland	$125,157	$60
   12	Virginia	$121,855	$59
   13	Iowa	$121,601	$58
   14	District of Columbia	$120,695	$58
   15	Arkansas	$119,572	$57
   16	Texas	$118,271	$57
   17	Illinois	$118,175	$57
   18	Colorado	$116,943	$56
   19	Indiana	$116,942	$56
   20	Ohio	$116,493	$56

   Average principal product manager salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Brex	$220,777	$106.14
   2	Pure Storage	$201,021	$96.64	20
   3	Google	$199,476	$95.90	340
   4	The Walt Disney Company	$199,296	$95.82	158
   5	Turner Broadcasting	$198,336	$95.35
   6	Hearst	$195,642	$94.06	30
   7	Eventbrite	$195,054	$93.78
   8	Hulu	$193,254	$92.91
   9	eBay	$191,557	$92.09	35
   10	Anaplan	$190,230	$91.46	8
   11	Warner Bros.	$189,970	$91.33	85
   12	NVIDIA	$188,489	$90.62	78
   13	Atlassian	$181,786	$87.40	62
   14	Apple	$179,905	$86.49	81
   15	Move	$178,896	$86.01
   16	Walmart	$178,016	$85.58	279
   17	Redis Labs	$177,957	$85.56	3
   18	Safeway	$175,249	$84.25
   19	UiPath	$174,038	$83.67	5
   20	Magic Leap	$174,009	$83.66	1

4. Writing a principal product manager job description

   A good principal product manager job description should include a few things:

   • Summary of the role
   • List of responsibilities
   • Required skills and experience

   Including a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager is also appreciated by candidates. Here's an example of a principal product manager job description:

   Principal product manager job description example

   About Discovery:
   
   Discovery is the global leader in real life entertainment, serving passionate fans around the world with content that inspires, informs, and entertains. Discovery delivers over 8,000 hours of original programming each year across deeply loved content genres. Available in 220 countries and territories and 50 languages, Discovery is a platform innovator, reaching viewers on all screens and services, from linear, free-to-air, and pay-TV channels, to digital products and streaming services, to social and mobile-first content and formats. Discovery's portfolio of premium brands includes Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, Motortrend, Animal Planet, Science Channel, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, and discovery+, a premium streaming services for many of Discovery's beloved brands.
   
   About the team:
   
   Discovery's Direct to Consumer group is a rapidly growing organization focused on developing new, innovative, and immersive digital products and content for iconic brands, including discovery+. We are working at the crossroads of technology, entertainment, and everyday utility. We tell engaging stories to millions of viewers across the Internet every day and bring new interactive experiences to life to not only entertain but improve the lives of our customers. Critical to this mission is ensuring that our customers can trust that we will hold a high bar for data privacy, accessibility, consumer protection, and local regulatory requirements in each region where our services are available. Discovery's Product Compliance team sits within the Direct to Consumer organization, with a mission to ensure our digital products meet all legal and compliance requirements to safely and effectively operate in all available markets worldwide.
   
   Responsibilities
   
   We are hiring a Principal Product Manager to lead the development and management of international compliance-related features with the best customer experience and Discovery's values in mind. This role reports directly to the Head of Global Compliance within the Direct to Consumer Product organization and will have a growing portfolio of product ownership. As a Principal Product Manager, you will collaborate with legal, program, UX, and engineering partners to ensure that we understand and incorporate local compliance requirements into our international feature launches. You'll partner with core product teams to share learnings from international launches and provide competitive analyses on market practices in the EU and UK. You will own delivering locally compliant features for areas such as accessibility, data privacy, digital rights management, parental controls, and more. You will work on the cutting edge of emerging tech and policy in a rapidly growing media space. If you are passionate about building meaningful customer experiences at scale, join our purpose-driven team.
   
   What you will do:
   Partner with product, engineering, data, business, privacy, and legal stakeholders to determine legal and compliance requirements and technical capabilities. Lead the product planning, development, and roadmap for legal and regulatory compliance driven product feature areas for our international expansion efforts. Develop and drive risk assessments and prioritization frameworks for international product compliance initiatives. Partner closely with legal stakeholders and act as primary product expert on commercial regulatory requirements across Discovery's direct to consumer product lines. Collaborate with regional stakeholders to understand and document regional and country specific compliance requirements. Translate those into transparent and scalable customer experiences. Act as lead product contact for compliance related inquiries, project managing response actions across internal teams. Own executive reporting on key goals and metrics for your projects. Develop audit and customer feedback strategy for legal and compliance issues. Advise and train product and engineering teams on building compliance by design into all launches. Proactively identify potential risk areas and opportunities for driving cross-functional collaboration in these areas.
   
   Qualifications
   
   5 - 7 years of product management experience in technology, media, or relevant industries, preferably working on compliance driven products. BA/BS in business or technical field. Advanced degree in Business/Technology/Data Management/Law is a plus. Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills. Experience conducting risk assessment. Familiarity with GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, COPPA, digital rights management (DRM), digital accessibility, and consumer protection regulations is a plus. Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross functional teams to deliver results in a fast-paced environment. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Strong attention to detail and proven track record of driving process improvements. Experience with video and streaming subscription products is a plus.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   To find principal product managers for your business, try out a few different recruiting strategies:

   • Consider internal talent. One of the most important talent pools for any company is its current employees.
   • Ask for referrals. Reach out to friends, family members, and your current work to ask if they know any principal product managers they would recommend.
   • Recruit at local colleges. Attend job fairs at local colleges to recruit entry-level principal product managers with the right educational background.
   • Social media platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have more than 3.5 billion users, and they're a great place for company branding and reaching potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your principal product manager job on Zippia to find and attract quality principal product manager candidates.
   • Use niche websites such as swipe files, exit five, marketinghire, american marketing association.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Your first interview with principal product manager candidates should focus on their interest in the role and background experience. As the hiring process goes on, you can learn more about how they'd fit into the company culture in later rounds of interviews.

   It's also good to ask about candidates' unique skills and talents. You can move on to the technical interview if a candidate is good enough for the next step.

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new principal product manager

   Once you've selected the best principal product manager candidate for the job, it's time to write an offer letter. In addition to salary, this letter should include details about the benefits and perks you offer the candidate. Ensuring that your offer is competitive is essential, as qualified candidates may be considering other job opportunities. The candidate may wish to negotiate the terms of the offer, and you should be open to discussion. After you reach an agreement, the final step is formalizing the agreement with a contract.

   It's equally important to follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that the position has been filled.

   To prepare for the new principal product manager first day, you should share an onboarding schedule with them that covers their first period on the job. You should also quickly complete any necessary paperwork, such as employee action forms and onboarding documents like I-9, benefits enrollment, and federal and state tax forms. Finally, Human Resources must ensure a new employee file is created for internal record keeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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