Principal Product Manager - Incubation

Principal Product Manager Incubation

This isn't a roadmap-and-PRD PM role. We're building a new incubation team at Qualtrics one that takes early-stage business ideas through a structured, disciplined process to either validate them into real products or kill them quickly and honorably. We're looking for someone with founder energy: intellectually curious, genuinely humble, obsessed with customers, and willing to dig through ambiguity until the right path emerges.

If your best work happens when you have a clear product and a clean backlog, this probably isn't the role. But if you've got the itch to build something from nothing, genuinely enjoy talking to customers before you know what you're building, and can hold conviction loosely until the evidence tells you otherwise we want to talk.

How You'll Find Success

• Take raw business ideas from hypothesis to validated (or honestly invalidated) product concepts through disciplined experimentation.
• Talk to customers constantly not to confirm what you already believe, but to genuinely learn what's true.
• Define what "success" and "failure" look like at each stage of incubation, and use that clarity to move fast and kill bad ideas without ego.
• Work across Qualtrics to pull in domain expertise, data, and resources without needing a formal mandate.
• Make the case for or against a concept clearly and honestly, to the team and to leadership.

How You'll Grow

• Deep, hands-on experience with early-stage product development and structured de-risking methodologies.
• Direct visibility with senior leadership on high-stakes bets that could define Qualtrics' next category.
• Breadth across multiple product domains as you work through successive incubation concepts.
• Sharper customer instincts developed by doing real discovery on real problems, repeatedly.

Things You'll Do

• Run structured discovery on potential product concepts: customer interviews, competitive landscape, market sizing.
• Define and run fast, lightweight experiments to pressure-test core assumptions before significant investment.
• Work with a small pod design, engineering, data to build the minimum needed to learn, not to ship.
• Synthesize signals from customers, partners, market, and internal stakeholders into a clear, honest point of view.
• Present findings and recommendations to leadership including when the right call is to stop.
• Move with urgency. Avoid analysis paralysis. Push to the next learning.

What We're Looking For On Your Resume

• 7+ years of product management experience, with meaningful time in early-stage or 0?1 product work.
• Real evidence of intellectual humility you've changed your mind based on customer feedback, and you can tell that story.
• Demonstrated comfort operating without a clear roadmap, established process, or predefined success metrics.
• Experience building and invalidating product concepts not just launching features on an existing product.
• Strong customer instincts and a genuine preference for being in the room with customers early.
• Ability to connect disparate signals market data, user research, business model, technical feasibility into a coherent thesis.

What You Should Know About This Team

This is a new function at Qualtrics. We're not a polished machine yet and that's intentional.

The team takes potential business ideas and puts them through a controlled de-risking process: structured discovery, fast experimentation, honest evaluation. Some concepts will make it. Many won't. The PM in this role needs to be okay with both outcomes and, honestly, a little energized by the uncertainty.

We believe the best incubation work happens when someone digs, connects the dots, and lets customers shape the path. Not when someone builds a beautifully formatted PRD and calls it done.

If you've ever said "I wish I could just test this from scratch" this is the job.

Our Team's Favorite Perks and Benefits

• Experience Bonus: Qualtrics offers US employees an annual $1,800 "experience bonus" to provide an experience they might not otherwise haveattend a sporting event or concert, travel somewhere new, or even support a nonprofit or infuse funds into a small business in your area.
• The satisfaction of doing genuinely new things not just iterating on what already exists.
• A small, high-trust team where your judgment shapes what gets built (and what doesn't).

The Qualtrics Hybrid Work Model: Our hybrid work model is elegantly simple: we all gather in the office three days a week; Mondays and Thursdays, plus one day selected by your organizational leader. These purposeful in-person days in thoughtfully designed offices help us do our best work and harness the power of collaboration and innovation. For the rest of the week, work where you want, owning the integration of work and life.

Qualtrics is an equal opportunity employer meaning that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected characteristic.

Applicants in the United States of America have rights under Federal Employment Laws: Family & Medical Leave Act, Equal Opportunity Employment, Employee Polygraph Protection Act.

Qualtrics is committed to the inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Qualtrics will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please let your Qualtrics contact/recruiter know.

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For full-time positions, this pay range is for base per year; however, base pay offered within this range may vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, education, skills, and experience. A sign-on bonus and restricted stock units may be included in an employment offer. Full-time employees are eligible for medical, dental, vision, life and disability, 401(k) with match, paid time off, a wellness reimbursement, mental health benefits, and an experience bonus. For a detailed look at our benefits, visit Qualtrics US Benefits.

Washington State Base Annual Pay Transparency Range: $199,500$262,000 USD