What Is a Technical Product Manager? (with Leon Belebrov and Alex Stewart-James)

Ever wondered what a technical product manager actually does – and why every modern tech org seems to want one? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Will is joined by Leon Belobrov and Alex Stewart-James to unpack how SEEK builds platform products that power everything from candidate apps to internal tooling – and what it means to be a PM for APIs instead of UIs. This episode's special guests: Leon Belobrov (SEEK Principal Product Manager, Platform) and Alex Stewart-James (SEEK Snr Technical Product Manager) In this episode, we explore: • What platform engineering and technical PMs actually are – internal platforms as products for engineers, boosting delivery velocity and reducing cognitive load across infra, CI/CD, observability and security, plus why platform PMs are a “unicorn” blend of product skills and deep technical understanding. • Technical PM vs “regular” PM – shared foundations (customer value, business outcomes, strategy alignment, success metrics) and key differences when your “UI” is APIs, pipelines and DevDocs rather than screens – including jobs-to-be-done research with engineers and metrics like uptime, security posture and time-to-10th PR. • Designing platforms engineers actually want to use – jobs-to-be-done studies across SEEK, turning 25+ “jobs” into prioritised opportunity scores, tackling notorious pain points like scattered documentation and fragmented health monitoring, and avoiding traps like over-building for a single vocal team or assuming “I’m an engineer, so I know what they need”. • DevOps, cognitive load and minimum viable platforms – how platform thinking evolved alongside DevOps, shifting security and observability “left” without dumping everything on product teams, and finding the balance between sensible defaults, transparency and not turning platform teams into bottlenecks. • Careers and skills for aspiring technical PMs – why you don’t need to be the strongest coder in the room, how to lean on engineering partners while bringing customer/strategy thinking, and the unique advantage of having your “customers” (engineers) sitting right next to you for fast feedback and constant dogfooding. If you’re a software engineer, SRE, platform/DevOps engineer, BA, product manager or IT leader curious about platform teams, internal products and where technical PMs fit into modern tech orgs, this episode gives you a front-row view into how SEEK does it – and how you might shape a similar path. 👍 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode