So there’s this Fleetwood Mac album “Heroes are Hard to Find”. It has nothing to do with product managers, the topic I’m going to talk about. I just have to start somewhere.

• Product managers are a cornerstone of the modern Ukrainian product tech segment. These folks literally “keep it together”.

However, just because it is a critical role in almost every project big or small does not mean the talent pool for product managers is all sunshine and roses. It’s not.

• I’m not going to go as far as to call it a mess (I tend to overdo that bit sometimes), but it is very complex and tangled to the point its understanding can be very limited and incomplete.

In this article I will explain the nature of Product Manager Talent Demand as seen amidst Q4 2025.

• KEEP IN MIND THAT IS JUST A DEMONSTRATION OF WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH WE CAN DO.
• THE REAL THING IS BIGGER AND BETTER AND YOU CAN BUY IT HERE.

Why Product Managers?

Well, it’s better to break it down the fundamentals first:

• Product managers take care of  product’s
  • strategy;
  • development roadmap;
  • feature definition and explication.
• It’s like being in charge but instead of holding actual authority (the “because is said so” stuff) over the product and its team you only get the responsibility. Because you’re going to take the fall eventually.
  • Yeah, product managers are usually the fall guys for products not working out that someone fantasized. Deal with it.
  • Instead of having authority, product managers need to translate data into reasonable proposals for what to do next, including calculated risks. Sounds fun, right?

Now that is out of the way and we can talk about real stuff.

The State of Ukrainian Product Manager Talent Pool Q4 2025

Here are several things you need to know about the Product Manager Talent Pool in the Ukrainian Tech Segment.

• Technically, there are a lot of product managers.
  • I’m putting it this way because there are a lot of people who call themselves product managers and even have some experience as such but in reality they don’t exactly fit the bill due to the nature of the product they were working on.
• The thing is – some companies (especially those with an outsourcing background) tend to call their stuff fancy names to look better than they are.
  • That happens with product managers a lot. So you get regular project managers called product managers.
  • Except they do the project manager job – not the “building the right product for the right market” thing but “getting things done in time on budget” thing.
  • At the same time, the real product manager is called something else. My favorite title is “Head of Vision”.

That’s not all.

Even if we exclude all the product managers in name only – we still have plenty of talent to deal with. Right? Well, yeah. But there’s a catch.

• There’s high demand for Product Manager talent. With a legitimate track record that is. 
  • You might say “any senior-level product manager onwards has a track record”. Well, yeah, but there’s a catch.
    • You see what companies understand as a track record is basically “track record of leading products into success and profitability that firmly established them in the market niche”. That’s a mouthful.
  • Except, these folks ain’t coming in cheap and there’s like 10 of them on the market overall and none of them are changing jobs.
• So what does it even mean?
  • Mostly “UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS”.
  • As a result you get the following – a product manager gets hired. They do their thing for a while. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Something goes wrong – they’re out. Rinse and repeat.
    • It’s a vicious cycle of the Ukrainian startup fast and loose product development mentality. It also wastes a lot of time, money and human resources to stumble into success instead of cultivating it. But hey, those long resumes filled with past projects that went nowhere sure look impressive on the founder presentation. But i digress.
  • This is a problem for immature barely defined startup projects. But since these are the majority of non-corporate-adjacent startups on the Ukrainian market – it is substantial.
  • Meanwhile, corporate-adjacent Ukrainian startups just chug along until the parent company figures out how to prop it up and sell it off for a lot of money. So it’s basically “we did a thing that looks nice enough for people to think they want to buy it wholesale”. Now that’s a track record of success.

Anyway.

• At the same time, tech talent is shifting from outsourcing companies into product companies. That’s where the money is these days (comparatively speaking).
• There’s also a general labor shortage, exacerbated by demographic crisis and mobilization. Businesses struggle to fill roles, competition and salaries go up.
• High demand combined with limited and inconsistent talent supply perpetuates longer hiring cycles for senior product manager roles.

Who are Ukrainian Product Managers? Talent Pool Overview

Let’s take a step back and break down the profile of the Ukrainian product manager:

• Background engineering, project management, business analysis.
• Lots of switchers from project manager, business analyst, design, development positions
• There is a tendency towards a more generalist skill set that combines various facets of strategy, execution, analytics. Jack of all trades – master of none kind of thing.

Common skill gaps include:

• Experience with product analytics. 

• • • Just because you know how to use the analytics tool doesn’t mean you can actually “read” analytics. Especially when the analytics are multidimensionals sets of behavioral loops and call-and-response scenarios or use case engagement dynamics heatmap.
    • As a result, misreadings and wrong decisions.
  • Lots of product managers get hired specifically for driving user and revenue growth. That’s technically their job anyway, but there’s a difference between nurturing a product overall and pushing it on the market all guns blazing.
    • This gap comes in combo with inconsistent market knowledge and understanding of consumer segments that drive growth.

• Overall leadership skills can be a problem.

• • • Lots of product managers come from the project management or business analysis background. These are not the domains where you take the charge into the fray. So folks struggle with it a lot. Some figure it out by trial and error. They can also change a couple of jobs in the process. And companies lose money and momentum over that.

• Consumer Market Domain Knowledge 

• • Have you ever thought why this is merely a good-to-have requirement for a product manager position? Exactly. It is going to take forever to find someone who knows how to engage with unicorn compulsive gambles in Bahrein.
• Believe it or not – stakeholder communication skills can be a gap too.
  • It is one thing to keep things spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table.
  • Stakeholders need to understand what is going on too and it would help if the product manager communicates the product’s state of affairs using human languages.
  • So the specialist can be top notch and they can get results, but they can’t explain what’s going on to save their lives. Yeah, this happens.
  • Part of the reason is language skills being a barrier. Not everyone speaks English with the proficiency of Seth Godin.
  • The other reason has more to do with the presentation skills. Some folks can’t sell a win.

And then there is Internal Talent Development

• This one is more on the companies. For whatever reason, product managers  tend to only progress when changing companies. Middle managers turn Senior upon changing jobs not because they grew into higher levels. Why?
• Lack of talent development vision and lack of infrastructure to handle that properly. Also, it’s not like the market is in shape for these humanitarian causes anyway.

OK, time to wrap it up. Coming up next – product manager salaries as seen during Q4 2025. Stay tuned!