What Is a Data Product Manager? An Example from a Role at Apple

“Data product” as a phrase is pretty abstract. It isn’t until we get down to the nuts and bolts that it is possible to say “oh yeah, I can see what you mean”. I’ve written about a data product as a product where the end user experience is enhanced/improved by data. I thought today it would be helpful to look at an open role at Apple to see how they approach the concept. The role is “Data Product Manager - Ad Platforms”. The link is up for now but depending when you read this, that might change. Let’s do two things, look at the role itself and look at the qualifications to help dig into how they view what a data product manager does.

The Role

• We want someone who can define how data furthers product innovation and becomes an integral part of day-to-day decision making.

• This role engages with Ad Platforms teams from the idea stage of the product development cycle to understand the data across products required to run analyses, to advise, and to inspire future business strategy.

• This role includes translating business needs into cross-platform requirements, understand what and where the required data is, then converge it into a set of product requirements.

• We want someone who can define how data furthers product innovation and becomes an integral part of day-to-day decision making.

• This role engages with Ad Platforms teams from the idea stage of the product development cycle to understand the data across products required to run analyses, to advise, and to inspire future business strategy.

• Own data pipelines and aggregates that facilitate highly scalable, in-depth analysis and development of ML and BI workflows which will drive future business decisions, product strategy, feature engineering, customer intelligence.

• Develop methods to explore the collected data so that teams can make data-informed, product decisions and evaluate product success independently.

That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? The role requires understanding the customer, the data, engaging with cross-functional teams and at the same time is responsible for driving data informed decision making processes. What I find most interesting about this is that most of the points above are not about Ads Platform, they can be drag and dropped into most data product manager positions. My main takeaway from the description is that the successful candidate in this role needs to be comfortable looking at problems from data, engineering and product perspectives and needs to excel at driving action across these cross-functional groups.

The Requirements

So, who qualifies for such a role? Here’s the perspective given by the job posting.

• 8+ years experience in product management and technical architecture of mobile advertising platforms.

• 8+ years crafting mobile and web ad experiences/examples through mobile wire frames and mock ups - concept through launch.

• Experience leading design, feature breakdown and projects/products from inception to shipped software

• Significant experience in running product experiments and leveraging product analytics

• A best-in-class product lead who brings strong experience to drive multi-year strategy and execution.

• Previous experience leading who can drive strategic alignment with cross-functional teams, in addition to a proven track record as a strong people leader.

• Proven experience and passion for 0 to 1 innovation and strong execution chops to expand growth and adoption.

• Ability define how data furthers product innovation and becomes an integral part of day-to-day decision making.

What I find most interesting about this job description is that data shows up in a couple of places (e.g. how data furthers product innovation, running product experiments and using analytics) but many of the requirements are about driving alignment, developing strategy, overseeing execution and understanding the particular domain experience around mobile advertising. What is important here is that just by nature of being in data and having an interest in product, you probably are not ready to operate in a data product manager role like this. This speaks to a broader issue - how much product experience does a data product manager need? There’s no perfect answer to this question, but I think we underestimate how much time is really needed to develop product management chops, even if someone indexes really highly on the data aspect of a role.

Given the role and requirements above, I’m curious - do you think there are things missing? Do you think it is asking too much for one person to be all of these things? I’m honestly not sure of my perspective and that is part of why I’m writing this post today.

A Suggestion

As this Substack has grown, I’ve received a number of questions about more clearly defining what a data product is and what it is not. At some point, I think it is helpful to remember that how I define something (or do not) probably doesn’t matter all that much. It is one person’s way of thinking. What matters is understanding how particular companies and domain areas think about data product. As you read things I share, I highly suggest looking for data product manager roles/descriptions to see how they square (or do not) with what I’m sharing. You’ll probably find that I don’t go deeply enough in certain areas or have altogether missed a particular topic/issue. That’s great! I love feedback and would appreciate hearing from you and seeing what we can discuss more deeply.

Thanks for taking the time to read and engage!

---