Ukraine Product Manager Talent Demand Q4 2025 Explained

So where were we? Right, product manager talent demand. The previous article covered the topic of the product manager talent pool in the Ukrainian tech segment.

This time we’re looking at who is hiring from said talent pool.

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

Product Manager Talent Demand: What’s Going On?

Obligatory introductory section, that’s what is going on! But I digress.

Here are some basics:

• If we look across multiple job search platforms – there are approximately 600 positions regarding all things with Product Manager in the title.
• These postings come from the following types of companies:
  • All sorts of product companies
    • B2B SaaS
    • fintech and banking
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • e-commerce
    • gambling (but i’m not going to waste my time on these guys)
  • VC-funded startups
    • Mainly AI-related schlock designed to prop up and sell.
    • Also dead end money burning meanderings
  • Outsourcing companies handling product-level projects.

The primary focus of this kind of talent demand are senior and lead-level product managers.

• Junior and middle-level product managers are plenty, mostly interchangeable and absolutely disposable. It is nice to have them around but it is not a matter of life and death.
  • In case you think this way of thinking is kinda stupid and counterproductive – yes, it is.
  • It’s not like you NURTURE juniors and middles into senior and leading roles or anything. I mean who does that? These companies are serious people – why would they provide professional development benefits to some bums? They will leave the company for greener pastures and then what? Who’s benefiting then, eh?
    • This paragraph might be in just but it is an actual line of thinking among many companies, especially startups. The exploitation can only go one way.
• But when it comes to seniors – yeah, it’s on. And when it comes to lead-level PM with some credible track record – you can also add salivation to the list too.

Why are companies only interested in seniors and lead Product Managers?

The short answer goes like this:

• Because things are moving too fast and there is no time to waste on unproven or unseasoned talent.
• Nevermind that this whole thing might be the wild goose chase.
  • It might also not be the wild goose chase.
  • It can also turn into a wild goose chase.
  • Overall, there are a lot of geese-related opportunities on the market all the time.

The long answer look something like that:

• Products need strong leadership with functional lateral thinking based on qualitative and quantitative research to make well-informed data-driven decisions that would inadvertently lead to positive outcomes while also taking beneficial risks that open productive opportunities.
  • That’s a mouthful, right? I’m literally copypasting part of the response I’ve got while interviewing one of the domain experts.
  • If you want to know what is “beneficial risk”, buckle up. It’s like a risk, but it only goes the good way not the bad way. So like the risk but excluding all the risk part. VC startups are weird.

So basically, some companies look for Mr. Fantastic who has a theoretical degree in physics. What can go wrong? Anyway.

Basically, product companies and especially startups need someone to take the fall if things don’t go according to data-driven well-informed reasonably realistic plans.

What companies are looking for Senior and Lead Product Managers?

• product ownership

• • • i mean duh. That’s the foundation. product direction, revenue impact, speed of execution, strategic clarity.
    • In essence:
      • Defining product strategy.
      • Determining its roadmap. Adjusting it over and over again afterwards.
        • Such fun things as impact, cost, feasibility, business goals, competitive positioning.
      • Managing stakeholder alignment
        • negotiate product priorities – both technical, business and marketing related.
        • handle stakeholder conflicts.
        • explain feasible technical, marketing and business trade-offs.
        • align leadership, sales, and engineering – ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction.
      • Delivering measurable product outcomes

• But mostly taking the fall when all goes south. Somebody has to do it.

• product analytics.

• • • prioritize correctly
    • see opportunities faster than the competition
    • cut waste
    • tie technical and marketing work to business results

• GTM experience

• • Launch planning
  • Packaging & pricing
  • Adoption & growth loops
  • Sales-support alignment.

As a result junior and middle Product Manager Talent get a raw deal.

Why is the talent demand for Junior and Middle Product Managers considerably lower?

The easy answer is that there’s a lot of them so there is a considerable competition among junior and middle talent for vacant positions.

It’s an EXPERIENCE FIRST type of hiring situation. So unless you have considerable technical or analytical background and have shipped products, not just “managed backlogs” – tough shit, pal.

• Experience and track record is a critical factor in talent evaluation. Companies want accomplished talent.
• They are also unwilling to establish talent development infrastructure.
  • So there’s this thing called cognitive dissonance. Well, that’s it.

And since there is a lot of junior and middle talent to choose from and all of them are disposable – companies get very selective and can screw people over quite a lot.

That’s also the reason why Product Manager salaries across the board move in two opposing directions at once.

• Junior and middle goes further down.
• Senior and lead goes further up.

Product Manager Talent Demand By Niche

Product Companies (B2B SaaS, Fintech, AI, eCommerce)

Ukrainian product companies are always in the tough spot. Because they operate in Ukraine. Which is a wonderful place to do business if you like needless challenges (and I’m not even talking about full-scale war).

Where to start:

• Nonexistent internal market that mostly cannot afford your products.
  • Consequently not making products for the internal market because they can’t afford them at the price you want them to pay.
  • Even though there is a business opportunity with a lot of upward potential – why bother? It’s risky. Who does that?
• Complete reliance on external markets with overextended infrastructure and constant need to keep tabs on multiple markets while having limited view on the markets and thus limited flexibility in market-based strategy adjustments.

This kind of business model requires a special kind of product management talent. The ones that treat Lovecraft as PM gospel, I guess. Or not.

Mostly Product Companies are interested in these guys:

• Senior PMs in general
• Growth PMs
• PMs with data analytics experience
• PMs with SaaS or fintech background especially regarding expanded metrics.
• Junior or middle talent is fine to fill the ranks but career growth occurs from changing jobs because it is better to hire away seniors than to nurture your own. Who does that anyway?

The key skills product companies focus on while considering product manager tech talent are as follow:

• End-to-end product ownership

• • • Define strategy
    • Manage roadmap
    • Prioritize according to business value
    • Monitor metrics (specifically activation, retention, revenue)
      • In addition to those four key ones, there are also conversion, churn, ARR, LTV, cost-to-acquire, virality loops, and product adoption.
    • Enable cross-functional – bring together engineering, design, marketing, sales into one efficient unit.

• Data-driven Development

• Experiment with features and packaging
• Conduct A/B testing
• Use analytics tools to measure the adoption potential (such as Amplitude, Mixpanel, GA4, SQL)

VC-Funded Startups 

Do you like confusion? I thought so. Unlike traditional product companies in the Ukrainian Tech Segment, Ukrainian startups are mostly not really about developing a product that would establish itself on the market for substantial time generating consumer value and building upon the customer engagement.

Nah, that’s for nerds.

Ukrainian startups are all about moving fast, getting hot and making a lot of money before it gets cold. The product can be a literal gimmick but if the marketing clicks and engagement follows into conversion – does it even matter? It works, it makes money. Technically, that’s a success. Nevermind, that economically that’s bullshit. Don’t think too hard about it.

• So basically, propping the idea up for sale.
• That’s a completely different set of skills that requires completely different talent.

Here’s what kind of talent VC-funded Ukrainian Startups are looking for:

• Creative-first management
  • the one with experimentation and discovery
    • fast idea validation
    • quick adjustments
    • constant vox populi research with direct communication with the customers
    • quick and dirty prototyping
    • tight feedback loop with stakeholders.
• Multifaceted skill-set. Basically – a little bit of everything:
  • Marketing analysis
  • Business analysis
  • UX research
  • Project management
  • Product design

Because of that, Ukrainian startups hire a wide variety of talent.

• They can go for proper product managers.
• But they can also experiment with experienced professionals from adjacent domains who have overlapping skills that enable them to do product management.
• If it is not full-on product manager, it might be:
  • business analyst
  • project manager
  • product designer
  • lead marketer

Product-focused Outsourcing 

Hoo boy, here we go. So imagine regular product companies, you do all the things the same except it is not your product and the stakeholders are out there. Yeah, this sucks. But there’s money to be made so let’s go! That’s the reality of modern Ukrainian outsourcing.

• It played a gigantic role in nurturing the modern tech talent pool into the shape it is today.
• Outsourcing was the lifeline for the Ukrainian tech segment when the economy was down because it operated elsewhere.
• But it also played a role in neglecting the Ukrainian internal market to the point product companies can’t really rely on their own home economy to provide a solid bedrock for their business operations.
• Instead, somebody else from elsewhere benefits from that and we have outsourcing companies at large to thank for that. Never forget!

As time went by, outsourcers started to switch focus from smaller and more detached projects into bigger and more complex proper products. The whole application boom of the 2010s completely transformed the niche into this hybrid monstrosity.

As a result, it looks like a product niche but there are a couple of very specific nuances that require extra skills.

Namely:

• discovery with client stakeholders
• managing expectations and communicating challenges
• prioritizing development
• ensuring delivery matches business goals

In other words, outsourcing PM is more of a project+product hybrid and that creates its own can of worms.

• The main thing has less to do with hard skills and more to do with communication skills and its sheer diversity.
  • You need to communicate with a lot of people and keep everybody on the same page. In addition to regular PM stuff and also other PM stuff.

As a result, the talent pool for outsourcing Product Manager is actually a lot more narrow compared to the product one.

• Because of this, outsourcing companies focus more on nurturing talent into product management roles. Unlike some other companies.
• Project managers and business analysts are the primary focus while marketers are secondary.
  • The majority of skills are already there; you just need to put them into the right order and fill in the gaps.
• The other reason why outsourcing companies rely on internal recruitment more is because outsourcing is not very popular among product manager talent pools.
  • When there are two offers on the table – one from a product and one from outsourcing, the product can look worse but it is a product and that’s it.
    • There’s no prestige (even imaginary) in working for outsourcing companies. The money is all over the place. The employee turnover is high.

1. That’s about it about product manager talent demand. Next time – PRODUCT MANAGER SALARIES Q4 2025!