London Product Management: Product Strategy, Stakeholder Management, Agile Lead 355 Roles -- January 2026

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London's product management market in January 2026 featured 355 direct-hire roles across 269 employers, with fintech leading industry demand at 32% and a 97% flexibility rate among tracked roles. Senior positions made up 58% of openings, while AI/ML product management gained share month-over-month.

This report analyzes 355 Product Management job postings from 267+ companies tracked via direct employer career pages and job board aggregators. Our coverage skews toward tech-forward and scaling companies; large enterprises using enterprise hiring platforms may be underrepresented. Coverage varies by section and is noted throughout.

Key Takeaways for Job Seekers

1.0Target fintech and financial services for maximum opportunity With fintech and financial services together representing roughly 46% of classified product roles among tracked employers, candidates with domain knowledge in payments, lending, or compliance-driven products may find the widest selection of openings.

1.1Build a technical edge with SQL, Python, and data analysis SQL (16%), data analysis (16%), and Python (11%) all appear frequently among tracked roles with skills data. Demonstrating hands-on technical proficiency alongside traditional PM skills like stakeholder management and product strategy can help differentiate your applications.

1.2Explore AI/ML product roles as a growth niche AI/ML PM positions rose to 10% of tracked roles, based on a single month's movement. If you have experience with machine learning product development or AI-driven features, this niche may offer relatively less competition than core PM roles, which make up 67% of the market.

1.3Leverage the flexibility-first market With 97% of tracked ATS roles offering hybrid, flexible, or remote arrangements, candidates can afford to be selective about working conditions. The UK Employment Rights Bill effective April 2026 may further strengthen your negotiating position for flexible terms (UK Parliament, 2026).

1.4Cast a wide net across employers The top 5 employers hold only 14% of tracked postings, meaning the majority of opportunities are distributed across smaller and mid-size firms. Do not limit your search to household names -- scale-ups (47% of roles with size data) and growth-stage companies (50% of roles with maturity data) represent a large share of hiring activity.

Skills Demand

39% of roles with skills data

Low

High

Skills insight: Based on 39% of roles with skills data (138 roles) among tracked employers, stakeholder management and product strategy tie for the most-requested skills at 21% each, followed by agile at 19%. The presence of data analysis (16%), SQL (16%), and Python (11%) in the top ten indicates a growing technical baseline expected of London product managers. AI appears in 14% of roles, consistent with the month-over-month rise in AI/ML PM specializations. Skill pair analysis shows that data analysis plus stakeholder management (12%) and agile plus stakeholder management (11%) are the most common co-occurrences, suggesting employers value candidates who combine analytical rigour with cross-functional communication. The UK digital skills gap (LSE, 2026) may make candidates proficient in both strategic and technical skills particularly sought after.

Seniority Distribution

Junior: 0-2 years | Mid-Level: 3-5 years | Senior: 6-10 years | Staff/Principal: 11+ years (IC track) | Director+: Management track

Low

High

vs December 2025

Biggest Gainer

Junior

+6pp

Biggest Decline

Mid-Level

-5pp

Senior-to-Junior Ratio

9:1

Senior+ roles per Junior role

Entry Accessibility Rate

24%

Junior + Mid-Level roles combined

Senior roles make up 58% of tracked positions, producing a 9:1 senior-to-junior ratio. Mid-level (15%), Director+ (10%), Junior (9%), and Staff/Principal (8%) fill out the distribution. Entry accessibility at 24% (junior and mid-level combined) suggests the market is competitive but not closed to earlier-career candidates. Junior roles gained 6 percentage points from December 2025 while mid-level declined 5 percentage points, based on a single month's movement -- this may reflect seasonal hiring patterns or a shift in employer targeting rather than a sustained change. The UK digital skills gap (LSE, 2026) may also be pushing some employers to open junior pipelines and invest in developing less experienced hires.

Working Arrangement

Onsite: office full-time | Hybrid: mix of office and remote | Remote: work from anywhere | Flexible: employee chooses arrangement

100% of roles with known working arrangement

25%Remote

Hybrid42%

Flexible30%

Remote25%

Onsite3%

Among 76 ATS-sourced roles with full job descriptions, hybrid (42%) is the most common arrangement, followed by flexible (30%) and remote (25%). Only 3% of roles require full onsite attendance, yielding a 97% flexibility rate. This is consistent with UK-wide survey data showing 28% of employees working hybrid and 85% of companies offering hybrid options (Advent Communications, 2026). The upcoming UK Employment Rights Bill, effective April 2026, strengthens the right to request flexible working from day one of employment (UK Parliament, 2026), which may further entrench these patterns. Note that this analysis is based on ATS-sourced roles only, as Adzuna listings have truncated descriptions that do not reliably capture working arrangement details.

Role Specialization

Low

High

vs December 2025

Biggest Gainer

ai_ml_pm

+3pp

Biggest Decline

technical_pm

-4pp

Core product management accounts for 67% of tracked roles, confirming that generalist PM positions remain the backbone of London's product market. Technical PM (12%) and AI/ML PM (10%) together make up roughly one-fifth of roles, suggesting a meaningful layer of demand for product managers with deeper technical or domain-specific expertise. Platform PM (8%) and growth PM (3%) fill out the remaining specializations. Month-over-month, AI/ML PM gained 3 percentage points while technical PM declined 4 percentage points, based on a single month's movement -- this may indicate some reallocation of demand toward AI-focused product work, though one month is insufficient to confirm a lasting shift.

IC vs Management Track

90%IC

Individual Contributor90%

Management10%

Individual contributor roles account for 90% of tracked positions, with management at 10%. This IC-heavy split is typical for product management, where organizations tend to have wide IC teams reporting into a smaller number of group PMs, directors, or VPs. For candidates seeking people management responsibilities, the 10% management share means these roles exist but are comparatively scarce among tracked employers. IC-track candidates benefit from a wider pool of options across seniority levels.

Compensation

Compensation data excluded due to low disclosure rates in markets without pay transparency legislation.

Market Context

1.London fintech hiring projected to rise 37% year-over-year London fintech hiring is projected to grow 37% in 2026 compared to 2025, potentially accounting for 70% of all UK fintech roles. This is consistent with fintech leading product hiring at 32% among tracked employers in this report (Morgan McKinley, January 2026).

2.UK Employment Rights Bill strengthens flexible working from day one The UK Employment Rights Bill, effective April 2026, will strengthen employees' right to request flexible working arrangements from their first day of employment. With 97% of tracked product roles already offering non-onsite arrangements, this legislation may further solidify flexibility as a baseline expectation in London's product market (UK Parliament, 2026).

3.Hybrid and remote work now standard across UK employers UK-wide data shows 28% of employees currently work hybrid and 16% fully remote, with 85% of companies offering hybrid options. The 97% flexibility rate among tracked London product roles appears to exceed the national average, which may reflect the technology sector's earlier adoption of distributed work models (Advent Communications, 2026).

4.UK product manager salaries range from GBP 68,667 to GBP 114,500 Average UK product manager salaries sit at approximately GBP 68,667, rising to GBP 76,250-114,500 at top firms. While compensation data is excluded from this report due to low disclosure rates in London, these benchmarks provide useful context for candidates evaluating offers (Robert Half/Glassdoor, 2026).

5.UK digital skills gap may constrain hiring for technical PM roles UK employers continue to cite a shortage of digitally qualified candidates. With SQL (16%), data analysis (16%), and Python (11%) appearing frequently among tracked product roles, the digital skills gap may make technically proficient product managers particularly competitive in the current market (LSE, 2026).

Methodology

This report analyzes direct employer job postings for Product Management roles in London during January 2026.

Data collection:

1.Over 300 roles from 269+ employers aggregated from multiple sources
2.Recruitment agency postings identified and excluded (5% of raw data)
3.Jobs deduplicated across sources to avoid double-counting

Classification:

1.Roles classified using an LLM-powered taxonomy
2.Subfamily, seniority, skills, and working arrangement extracted
3.Employer metadata enriched from company databases where available

Limitations:

1.Not a complete census of the market - some roles may not be captured
2.Skills analysis based on 138 roles with skill data (39% coverage)
3.Salary data not included due to low disclosure rates
4.Working arrangement based on 76 ATS-sourced roles (Adzuna excluded due to truncated descriptions)

Data coverage:

66%

Seniority coverage

Roles with seniority level classified

100%

Arrangement coverage

Roles with working arrangement known

39%

Skills coverage

Roles with skills extracted from description

57%

Employer metadata

Roles with enriched company data

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