This document discusses the role of product managers in platform and infrastructure engineering. It outlines how product managers of platforms can align technical decisions to business metrics, mediate conflicts, and improve productivity by managing priorities and protecting engineers from distractions. Taking on product management for platforms can lead to more technically interesting work, broader impact, and higher pay compared to feature teams. The document encourages engineering teams without product managers to adopt the role to help communicate strategies and tie efforts to goals.

1. Building Better Tech: The Product
Manager's Role in Infrastructure &
Platform Engineering by Vimeo VP of
Product
productschool.com

2. Accelerate your Product Management Career
Certifications
Product Manager
Certification™
Product Leader
Certification™
productschool.com/online

3. Team Training
Level Up Your Team’s
Product Management Skills
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4. Resources
Free Product Management Resources
Events Courses Podcasts
Newsletters Communities eBooks and
Reports
productschool.com/resources

5. Building Better Tech: The Product
Manager’s Role in Infrastructure &
Platform Engineering
Justin Kim

6. About Me

7. Engineering Platform & Infrastructure
Technologies that power a company’s products and services
Platforms on which
others build, test, and
deploy software
(e.g., backend systems for media
playback)
Platforms that run
elements of the
customer experience
(e.g., payments)
Platforms that are
part of the
company’s offering
(e.g., AWS)

8. Roles & Specialization
Platform teams who do not have product managers find engineers and
engineering managers doing any of the following:
● Communicating and internally “selling” broader architecture and
infrastructure improvement projects.
● Aligning efforts to broader company strategies (such as to
company-level OKRs).
● Tying technical decisions to quantitative business metrics.
● Mediating conflicts of the frequent kind.

9. Product Management
Product Management for Customer-Facing Products and Features
Images from The Phantom Tollbooth
• Know your customer • Develop a product vision
• Build a roadmap • Launch solutions
Product Management for Platform & Infrastructure
• Know your customer • Develop a product vision
• Build a roadmap • Launch solutions

10. Building Trust on Strong Engineering Teams
Quick wins to start
Lean on your strengths
Take on tasks no one wants to do
Develop a project intake process
Manage the backlog
Provide air cover to any and all distractions, executive or otherwise

11. Results
+ Improve productivity as engineers spend more time
coding and less time in meetings
+ Higher return on investment as engineers deliver on the
most impactful initiatives and less time on interruptions
and distractions

12. A Horse For Every Course
Product management for feature teams can be interesting…
…but beware the dark side!
Product management for engineering platform teams can be:
● More technically complex (i.e., more interesting!)
● Broader impact
● Higher paying!

13. Thank you!

14. Part-time Product Management
Training Courses
and Team Training
productschool.com