In 2021–23 the mantra in enterprise SaaS was: hire great engineers, roll-out the code, steady the stack. In the last year, the focus has shifted.
Companies that were focused on hiring engineering talent are now asking for product leaders who can turn stable software into growth and user retention. From our vantage point, this is not just a trend but a signal of market maturity.
Companies hire engineering talent to get their house in order; they hire product talent when they want to build and scale.
Engineering eras have a job to do
The past few years demanded an engineering-first framework. Startups had to harden infrastructure, modernize architectures, pay down technical debt and keep the lights on while global VC funding was near a decade low. Given the lack of cheap capital, survival favored dependable software over speculative bets. Talent markets reflected this: employee retention for engineers remained steady, with demand consistently outstripping supply, even as companies trimmed other functions.
Why the product pivot? And why now?
Investors are rewarding disciplined product economics
There has been much talk and anticipation of deploying “dry powder”, but it is concentrated and the bar is high. Reports on 2024–25 show capital flowing to companies that combine growth with clear paths to monetization and efficiency vs betting on a founder and a dream. This raises the value of leaders who can translate customer problems into defensible products, coherent pricing, and crisp segmentation.
AI is changing how software is developed
Dynamic AGI tools are beginning to automate routine engineering tasks and compress certain build cycles. Adding fuel to fire, engineers are increasingly leaning on AI to fast track the coding process, decimating time-to-market and widening the scope for engineering output. This does not eliminate the need for great engineers; it elevates the premium on what to build and how it fits a commercial strategy.
McKinsey expects team structures and workflows to be reorganized around human-AI collaboration, with what they call “artisan” and “factory” patterns to reshape how tech work gets done. Equally, Gartner projects that by 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants, shifting dev time from implementation to design.
In that world, product judgement (prioritization, user understanding, monetization) becomes the value-add.
The product is now the distribution
In the enterprise SaaS space, growth has become increasingly product led. Product managers now operate across the full funnel, aligning roadmap with usage stats and customer feedback. Expectations for PMs in product-led-growth (PLG) environments have broadened to include data fluency and ownership of adoption mechanics, not just delivering features.
We have seen this in scorecards for the Product searches we have done recently. These executives must be able to work closely with and endear themselves to the engineering team while at the same time manage the relationships on the go to market side effectively. A great product hire helps mature the product function from the manic order taking from key clients, to execution of a strong product roadmap with a clear north star goal.
So where's the balance?
Hiring more product people does not mean hiring fewer engineers. It means balancing the team. Thoughtful hiring will avoid the trap of parallel roadmaps between product and engineering. They align both around customer value and time to impact. In our experience, the organizations that move fastest pair strong engineering leaders with a VP Product who owns outcomes: adoption, retention, expansion.
It's worth noting that product hiring itself changes as firms scale: early "strong athletes” give way to specialists, under the wing of a product leader who can recognize the right timing. Naturally, as pressure for growth rises, products need to be stickier at scale, and it becomes more important to institutionalize learnings from customers. That means building out product teams with multiple specialists, and heading it up with strong cross-disciplinary leadership.
What does this mean for founders and boards?
Invest in product strategy earlier than you think
Technical founders sometimes delay the first senior PM, assuming the role is a nice-to-have or they are reluctant to give up control of the product direction. That can be a misstep for PLG or AI enabled categories, where the opportunity cost of product investment is high. A credible Product leader anchors your roadmap and partners with engineering on quality and speed.
Your talent strategy is your differentiator, your edge.
For investors, the right mix of talent tells them where a company is headed. They look for signal on whether the business is looking to steady the ship (ensuring the capability to develop new features at pace and scale), or whether the business is ready to compete, relying on the product positioning and stickiness to gain market traction.
The Qurated perspective
In placing leaders across both sides of the house, engineering, and product, we can see the swing in real time. Since 2024 our inbound mandates have tilted decisively toward product leadership.
The brief is rarely “deliver more functionality” anymore, it’s:
- Make the product more sticky
- Bring in AI without breaking trust
- Make our product easier to integrate
In the AI era, engineering remains the driving force, but product determines the direction, and ultimately the business outcome. Firms that rebalance toward product leadership demonstrate they’re serious about their customers and mature in the market.
If you are planning your next leadership hire, start with a question: who owns the product story, end to end? If the answer doesn’t immediately spring to mind, it’s probably no-one. Qurated can help you make it someone.
