What Is a Product Engineer?

Product engineer is a specialization within the career of software engineering, where the engineer has put focus and effort into building out their capability of delivering products. I often get asked how this differs from a “normal” software engineer, why it’s important and “how do I become a [better] product engineer?”

This post covers the why, what and how of the product specialization for engineers.

Why product engineers matter

If you’re developing products, then as a rule, software engineering or some type of engineering is needed at some point in your production path to create your products for sale to your customers. If you’re building tech products, then there is a good chance engineering is a significant part of the time, cost and effort involved in shipping product.

This means it makes sense to have people who are both knowledgeable and passionate about working in this type of environment and toward the outcome you’re looking for (successful products).

They can bring their knowledge to the translation between the technical and engineering world through to the product world, which ultimately, translates into your customers’ world and the financial success of your organization.

In this way, it’s often good to have a team with 1–2 engineers with a product specialization paired with engineers who may be more technically specialized.

You can have business, sales, product management and marketing people with all the product capability in the world, but if the engineers are too technically focused, you’ll find challenges having the software you develop embody your ideas within your commercial constraints.

Sometimes, what seem like small technical nuances can turn into serious product issues. A product-minded engineer will be able to balance the technical with the product considerations.

So, why isn’t every engineer a product engineer, then? Shouldn’t we make every engineer product-minded? Ideally, yes, but in reality, people have different strengths and interests. In an organization of any reasonable size, you’re better off playing to people’s strengths (it’s kind of what our entire economy is built on — specialization). Time spent researching product-related practices for engineering is time not spent researching the latest in self-training machine-learning algorithms. It’s too hard for someone to cover everything, and you usually need a high-performing team, not a set of rock stars.

Side note: Look at most sporting teams that win consistently; they usually have stars, but everyone acts as equals.

If you’re an engineer, why specialize as a product engineer?

To the engineers reading this, treat product as a specialization just like any other. Product, team lead, AI and ReactJS front-end are all specializations you can pursue.

At the very least, getting a base-level understanding of product will set you up to function better as a product development team member. You will come to understand why decisions are being made and whether the team is following appropriate practices, and you’ll probably gain some empathy with your customer and other stakeholders.

At the very best, you’ll be an indispensable member of a product development organization. You’ll be able to see shortcuts that make people say, “Wow, they delivered what the customer needed without the customer knowing they needed it.” You’ll become relied upon by your non-technical colleagues to find solutions that span technology, product, customer and timeline. You’ll likely understand the customer more and gain a different appreciation for your job. You’ll probably become a welcome mediator between your more technical colleagues and your less technical colleagues. You might even be in a good spot to transition into a more product-focused role (such as product ops, product management or product analytics).

What is a product engineer?

Just as someone might specialize as a back-end .NET engineer or mobile Android engineer, they may also specialize as an engineer who excels at building products — a product engineer.

The product engineer specialization is no different from the more technical specializations. As a product engineer, you also focus on learning particular patterns, techniques and technologies, where they are relevant to product development specifically.

I have seen product engineers pitted as an either/or to being a software engineer, but where a product engineer is just a sub-specialization. You can specialize in both being a .NET engineer and a product engineer.

The capabilities and knowledge areas you want to focus on as a product engineer are guided by the principles of a product-led approach:

Work from the outside-in

1. Understand how to understand the customer. (Ultra quick start: Use the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology.)
2. Understand and apply product analytics.
3. Understand personas.
4. Understand markets (e.g., total addressable market).

Rapid, early validation

1. Get involved in developing hypotheses.
2. Build prototypes, MVPs, work in “slices” (engineers find it easy to do technical prototypes, but often find customer/feature-focused ones “not meaningful” enough).
3. Know when to use throw-away code and build for scale.

Mature through iteration

1. Pragmatically apply Agile.
2. Be confident and comfortable with an evolving approach to technical challenges (e.g., performance/scaling).
3. Be able to design software in product iterations. (Sometimes what you first create will need to evolve toward the ideal architecture. Also, refactor later, as it may not be tech debt.)

Disciplined prioritization

1. Apply frameworks to how you prioritize.
2. Invest time in (re)evaluating your priorities.

How to develop as or become a product engineer

Learn

The best way to increase your product engineering capabilities within yourself or your team is a two-pronged approach: Learn and apply, then mature through iteration.

Apply

To kick off your learning, get started with some of the links above, as well as research into the topics called out. You might want to read online, get books, or listen to podcasts.

Start bringing each concept into your daily work, as you learn it.

Originally published at https://www.terem.com.au on March 11, 2020.