Product Manager Jobs at Franklin Templeton

Franklin Templeton PM interview guide

Franklin Templeton's PM loop runs long, often four to eight weeks and a reported 59-day average to offer, across roughly five stages: a recruiter screen, a hiring-manager background interview, two technical panels, and a final round with senior leadership (candidates have reported the group CTO). The one thing that defines it: this is an asset manager, so a product sense and stakeholder story is not enough; you also need real finance fluency (ETFs, active vs passive funds, the bond market) and the ability to explain technical ideas in plain language to non-technical business partners.

The interview process

1. Recruiter screen (about 30 min). Phone call covering your background, why this role, and a fit check against the job. Light and conversational, used to confirm experience and motivation before the manager round.
2. Hiring manager / background interview. A deeper phone or video round on your past product work, especially AI-driven or data-heavy projects. They probe your research process, how you gather user insight, stakeholder management, and how you prioritize user needs into a roadmap.
3. Technical panel 1: product panel. A panel with one or more product managers focused on product judgment and cross-functional reality: how you handle engineering pushback, trade off features, and translate user needs into specs. Expect finance-domain questions here too (ETFs, fund types).
4. Technical panel 2: cross-functional panel. A second panel reported with a UX designer and a solutions architect. They test how you communicate across functions and explain technical or design concepts plainly to non-technical stakeholders.
5. Final round with senior leadership. A closing conversation with a senior leader (candidates have reported the group CTO). Higher-level fit, vision, and how you think about product strategy in a regulated asset-management context. Some roles add an aptitude or analytical assessment along the way.
6. What they're really testing. Three signals carry the most weight: (1) finance domain fluency, can you talk ETFs, active vs passive, and markets like an insider; (2) stakeholder and cross-functional communication, can you align engineering, design, and business partners and explain complex ideas simply; (3) analytical rigor, can you back product decisions with data and clear research, not just intuition.

Likely PM interview questions

1. How would you handle a scenario where engineering pushed back on developing a feature that you knew the users needed?Execution
2. Explain UX design as if you were explaining it to someone who is not tech savvy.Behavioral
3. What is an ETF? Explain it.Technical