What does the career path for a product operations manager look like?

This is such a new field I think we are all still trying to figure it out together. However ...

• Product Ops should be a feeder role into other product roles like Product Manager. There are so many barriers to entry into PM roles, If done right Product Ops can be a great bridge into Associate PMs. Product ops can help people develop the right mindset, learn through observation, apply product thinking (e.g., forming and testing hypotheses based on data) to Product Ops work, and show off their potential to hiring managers
• I personally want to hire mid/senior Product Ops people who have been a Product Manager, Product Designer, etc. role before. This is because if you don’t know the work, pain, joy, methodologies of the roles you are helping to scale, then there is going to be a steep learning curve. I see Product Ops as a great way to pivot your career where you have a Product Mindset, but you want to use that in a different way with different customers.
• Your company should support dual track career ladders where your contribution can scale with your compensation. This means you can have Principal level roles as well as leadership roles for Product Ops. An inconvenient truth is that there are a lot more individual contributor roles out there today than there are people leadership ones. 
• Another aspect here is that Product Ops shouldn’t be seen as a one-way door. If you are really great and loving the ops part, you could parley those skills in to other ops roles in the company. If you love the product part you could always go back to a PM role (if you came from one), or if your manager is really focused on developing you into a PM (or other product role) then you could go that route.

Given that it’s such a nascent function, I think there’s a lot of flexibility – I see that as a good thing! But I know the flexibility can also be daunting, so here’s how I talk about it with my team.

Once you’ve been a Product Operations Manager, I think there are four primary paths:

1) Stay in Product Operations – “level up” within Product Operations and find a way to increase the scope or complexity of what you’re working on. At Oscar we have 6 levels for Product Ops, from Associate to Director and we promoted someone this past performance cycle!

If your company has only one Product Ops role or title, make the business case for expanding your scope and a title change. Or look externally – many companies are building Product Ops and prior experience can be a huge asset.

2) Transition into Product Management – a benefit of working closely with Product Managers is that you get exposure to what they work on day-to-day. There are overlapping skill sets between Product Ops and Product Management, including translating needs into actionable requirements, strong prioritization skills and a deep understanding of the product you work with.

I’ve had folks on my team successfully transition from Associate Product Operations Manager to Associate Product Manager – they enjoy that they’re working earlier in the Product Development Lifecycle.

Note: I would be cautious if you are planning to use Product Operations as a stepping stone into Product Management. It can be a very different role from being a Product Manager and you may not get an opportunity to demonstrate Product Management skills in your day-to-day. For most folks on my team, they’ve had to take on side projects or volunteer for work outside of their swimlane to build those PM skills.

3) Transition into another Operations role – if the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning is improving processes or how things function, you may want to consider another Operations role after Product Ops. This could be within Product and Engineering – large Product Design teams are starting to build out Design Ops and/or User Research Ops. Engineering teams can have Engineering or Tech Ops (distinct from DevOps), to focus on optimizing the Software Development Lifecycle, improving Engineering onboarding and/or evaluating tools to increase developer productivity.

You may want to get more creative and look beyond the Product and Engineering – the skill sets of organizing chaos, making playbooks, putting structure around things that are ad hoc, etc. are invaluable and very transferable.

4) Transition into Program/Project Management – I believe there is a big distinction between Product Ops and Program Management (I answered another question about the differences!), but there are overlapping skill sets as well. In both roles, you need to make sure people are delivering on their commitments. If your company does not have a specific Program or Project Management function, it’s likely that these responsibilities are bundled with another role – maybe even Product Ops!

If your favorite parts of Product Ops are when you are coordinating across teams, tracking dependencies or chasing follow-ups, you might want to consider transitioning into a Program Management role. This can take the flavor of Technical Program Management (which may require specific technical skills) working with engineering teams or more general Program Management, which can span across all lines of business.

If this career path is exciting to you and Program Management doesn’t exist at your company, define the opportunity and make a business case for these new responsibilities. There may be an opportunity to incubate the role within Product Ops, maybe as a component of your day-to-day. In talking to other Product Operations leaders, some have had Program Management teams organically form within Product Ops and before spinning them out into their own team.

In taking an end-to-end business leadership approach to this role, it opens up multiple career paths. For example- if your goal is to become a product GM, this is well aligned. If your ambition is to be a future COO, I think this is a great role to dig into. I think it's also a great extension to leadership roles in customer success and GTM as well. I definitely see it as a choose your own adventure skillset.