How Much Will Our Jobs Change by 2027?

A reflection on product management. In 2027 we’ll need to manage fleets of AI agents shipping features while we sleep. We’re not ready.

I have spent my entire career in product management. I have written countless roadmaps, groomed thousands of backlogs, stood at whiteboards mapping user journeys, and argued in conference rooms about whether to prioritize feature A or B. I have partnered with engineers, designers, and marketers, moving from one sprint to the next, always believing that the core of product management was about bringing the right ideas to life.

But lately, I have been thinking about how fast that definition is changing. And I believe that in just a few years, the role of the product manager will look very different than when I started.

This is not just about AI hype. It is about how AI is reshaping the very fabric of work.

By 2027, based on scenarios like those in the AI-2027 report, product managers will not simply lead cross-functional teams. Instead, we will orchestrate fleets of semi-autonomous AI agents. These agents will not wait for Jira tickets or sprint planning sessions. They will act almost like junior employees embedded in Slack, building, testing, and deploying on their own.

The AI-2027 report is worth pausing on for a moment. It was written by a team of highly regarded forecasters and researchers, including Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean. These are experts with a strong track record of accurately anticipating trends in technology and AI. The report is not a piece of speculative fiction. It is a serious, research-backed attempt to model the likely trajectory of AI's impact over the next few years. It draws on deep technical knowledge, trend analysis, and interviews with leading figures in AI development. When they predict that by mid-2025 agents will be working like autonomous employees and by 2027 entire fields will be restructured, it is something we should take seriously.

Managing a product in 2027 will be less like steering a ship with a crew, and more like orchestrating a fleet of autonomous drones, fast, semi-independent, and capable of colliding if you are not careful. It will require a new way of thinking about leadership and responsibility.

Today, when I think about product management, I see someone prioritizing a backlog, writing user stories, aligning stakeholders, and tracking feature adoption or NPS scores. That version of the role will not vanish, but it will be eclipsed by something much more complex.

We will move from managing people to managing systems of intelligence. Setting objectives for hundreds of AI agents. Defining guardrails, escalation paths, and quality control metrics. Success will not just mean shipping features; it will mean ensuring that fleets of semi-autonomous systems behave ethically, stay aligned to human needs, and operate within financial and environmental budgets.

The metrics will tell the story.

By 2027, a product manager’s success may include metrics like:

• ARR ÷ Compute-$ margin (profitability after AI compute costs)

• Alignment incident rate (how often AI agents behave incorrectly)

• Carbon per 1,000 queries (environmental footprint of AI operations)

• Human-Experience Score (HXS) (a composite score of how agents perform on usability, trust, and satisfaction)

Managing AI agents will also mean managing compute and carbon budgets, something few product managers have had to consider before. It will mean understanding not just feature success, but the health of an entire AI fleet.

When I look at today’s job descriptions from companies like Airbnb, OpenAI, and Google, I see the early signs. They already ask for familiarity with generative AI, experience working across technical teams, and the ability to shape vision and strategy. But by 2027, product managers will be expected to orchestrate AI systems across multiple vendors, write governance policies for agent behavior, and collaborate deeply with FinOps (Financial Operations, managing cloud costs), Security, and Legal.

The tension for leaders will be timing. Move too early, and you risk hiring for skills your systems cannot yet use. Move too late, and you risk falling behind faster, more adaptive competitors who already treat AI agents as core contributors.

For HR and talent leaders, this shift means rethinking hiring profiles today, not tomorrow. It means building upskilling programs around AI orchestration, governance literacy, and cross-disciplinary leadership. It also means evolving career ladders to recognize new specialties like AgentOps and DesignOps before candidates start demanding them elsewhere.

One way to start preparing now is by updating product manager job descriptions to include AI governance, compute literacy, and cross-functional agent collaboration. Even signaling these expectations can help attract the kinds of candidates who will thrive in 2027.

Career paths will evolve too. New functions like AgentOps and DesignOps will emerge, creating roles that focus on managing AI fleets and ensuring that autonomous outputs stay ethical, usable, and on-brand. Product managers will not just build new features; they will help design entirely new organizations.

And here is the optimistic truth. The more AI takes over execution, the more human qualities, strategic judgment, empathy, and ethical reasoning, will determine who thrives as a product leader.

I find all of this thrilling and daunting.

Thrilling, because it reminds me why I fell in love with product management in the first place. It is a career that sits at the messy intersection of technology, people, and possibility. Daunting, because it demands we learn entirely new skills, rethink how we measure success, and build resilience in the face of change that feels faster than anything we have ever seen before.

The spirit of the role will remain: deeply understanding problems, crafting visions of better futures, and marshaling resources to make those futures real. But the tools, collaborators, and fabric of execution will be radically different.

And it leaves me asking the questions that I think all of us should be asking: Are we preparing our product managers for the world of 2027, or are we still hiring and training for a world that is already slipping away?

Leaders should be thinking now about how every role in a company will change by 2027. Like it or not, the change is coming.