Why AI Will Make Developers and Product Managers Swap Roles in 2026

Your technical background just became your biggest career asset. Are developers becoming product managers, or are product managers becoming developers because of AI?

I was a software engineer many years ago before transitioning to product management. It’s not that I got bored of coding. I just wanted to make more strategic decisions and have a greater impact on the product as a whole.

That was over a decade ago, and back then, the jump felt like crossing a chasm. You had to choose: build or strategize. Code or communicate. Engineer or product person.

Today, that chasm is disappearing.

Last week, I was talking to a product manager friend about how product management itself is becoming more technical. We kept noticing the same pattern in job postings: companies looking for technical product managers with prerequisites such as knowledge of Claude Code, vector databases, and LLM training. Not just “nice to have” skills, but actual requirements.

Then I saw Marco’s note about this exact shift.

His perspective resonated immediately because it captured something I’ve been observing in real time:

AI isn’t just a tool anymore. It’s forming bridges between roles that used to feel worlds apart.

Why This Shift Matters Right Now

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably felt the tension. Should you learn to code? Should you double down on product sense? Can you actually do both when the ground keeps shifting beneath your feet?

Here’s what’s becoming clear: the doors are swinging both ways. Developers are putting on PM hats. Product managers are brushing off their command line skills or learning prompt engineering with the same focus they brought to market research.

The current data trend on AI adoption among professionals in 2025 tell an even more compelling story:

• The Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2025 Future of Professionals Report found that 78% of organizations use AI in at least one business function, indicating widespread strategic adoption.​ Read full report.

• Recent US data shows 40% of employees report using AI at work, which is up from 20% in 2023, illustrating rapid growth though uneven adoption across sectors.​ Read full report.

• McKinsey’s 2025 report reveals 20% of business leaders expect generative AI to be used for more than 30% of employees’ daily tasks within a year, highlighting the expected acceleration of AI integration.​ Read full report.

• Among technical professionals, the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey reports 51% of developers use AI tools daily, confirming strong uptake in tech roles.​ Read full report.

However, the reverse flow is less talked about. Product managers are delving deeper into technical territory, not because they want to be developers again, but because the nature of their work requires it.

Two Paths, One Destination

Developers Moving Into Product Management

If you’ve spent years architecting APIs or building features, product management is closer than you think. The transition from Software Engineer to Product Manager is now the third most common path into product management, accounting for nearly 10% of career moves.

Why does this work? The skills overlap more than people realize. Problem-solving translates directly. Technical intuition becomes strategic advantage. Understanding system interactions helps you see the bigger picture faster.

The challenge isn’t capability. It’s learning to manage stakeholders, prioritize for business outcomes instead of technical elegance, and developing the customer empathy muscle. But those are learnable skills, not impossible barriers.

And here’s the kicker: according to Glassdoor, product managers with technical backgrounds earn approximately 30% higher salaries than software engineers. The financial incentive is real, not theoretical.

Product Managers Going Technical

The future of product work is increasingly technical. We’re seeing roles like “Technical Product Manager” shift from rare unicorn positions to widespread necessity. From cross-functional work in AI to effective prompt engineering, job postings demand practical skill, not just awareness.

The demand is exploding. AI-related product manager positions have grown 40% year over year. Right now, there are 688 open AI PM roles globally, and that number keeps climbing. This isn’t a temporary spike. It’s a fundamental restructuring of what product management requires.

Lenny Rachitsky

puts it plainly here:

“AI will have the most profound impact on the high-level (and historically most valued) skills of product management”.

PMs are now asked to shape product, not just ship tickets. That means developing the ability to form strategy and articulate vision by leveraging, sometimes even questioning, the outputs of advanced AI systems.

How AI Builds This Bridge

AI as Explainer and Accelerator

Where PMs once needed to consult engineers to interpret technical decisions, AI can now translate complex architectural diagrams or explain system dependencies in seconds. PMs with technical backgrounds can use AI to stress test their own hypotheses, generate code prototypes, or orchestrate customer data pipelines without needing a full build cycle.

But it goes further. Developers can use AI to understand product strategy, test market assumptions, and even draft user stories that capture both technical constraints and customer value. The translation layer that used to require human mediation is getting automated.

Lowering Barriers, Raising the Bar

It’s not just about access to information. It’s the quality and speed of insight. As one product leader put it on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: “AI can help me in my day-to-day work and build better products faster and more efficiently”.

This applies whether you’re refining technical requirements or iterating on customer feedback loops. Your value as a PM is moving away from being a bureaucratic go-between to being a co-builder and strategic driver. The same applies for developers with a nose for business strategy.

The New Skill Stack

With AI, what makes you indispensable isn’t memorizing frameworks or mastering Scrum ceremonies. It’s your ability to ask better questions, synthesize multiple perspectives, and generate actionable insights from messy data. As

Leah Tharin

noted in her analysis,

“The PMs who master AI for product management principles now will be the ones leading cross-functional teams and driving strategic decisions”.

The shift is from knowledge worker to wisdom worker. AI handles the knowledge part. You bring the wisdom.

Career Signals Worth Watching

Job boards tell the story better than any think piece. Search for “Technical Product Manager” and you’ll see the transformation in real time.

There are currently over 14,000 job openings for AI product managers on LinkedIn, including nearly 6,900 in the U.S. alone. But here’s what’s even more telling: job postings requiring generative AI skills in non-IT roles are up 9x from 2022 to 2024.

The acceleration is undeniable. Mentions of AI in general job listings have skyrocketed: up 114.8% in 2023, up 120.6% in 2024, and up 56.1% year to date in 2025.

The skill set is not limited to managing “what gets built.” It’s about how you build, how you learn, and how fast you can turn uncertainty into clarity.

This opens new territory for developers who want to zoom out, using their engineering intuition as a strategic asset in product decisions. And for product managers reinventing themselves as builders, prototypers, and facilitators of fast learning.

In 2024, 75% of no-code apps met or exceeded performance expectations. Companies using AI prototyping tools report saving up to 70% on development costs and building apps 10 times faster than traditional methods. This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now, reshaping what’s possible for people who bridge technical and strategic thinking.

The Rise of the Super-Builders

by

Marco Santonocito

I’ve lived this convergence that Elena describes — the blurring line between developers and product managers — not as a theory, but as a personal journey.

I started as a full-stack developer with a big passion for design. I loved code, but I also loved shaping the product itself: how it looked, felt, and worked for people. While working in Silicon Valley with a startup accelerated by 500 Startups, I discovered a word that would define my entire career: agency. The ability to move fast, to make decisions without waiting for permission. To act as an owner, not just a contributor.

Gian Segato explains it beautifully in this post, describing agency as

“The power to act with ownership and initiative, even within complex systems.”

In small startups, that’s what keeps you alive. And now, thanks to AI, that same energy is spreading everywhere.

Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed a silent but radical transformation in how digital products are created. Two-person startups generating millions in revenue. Solopreneurs building, validating, and scaling global products entirely on their own. Tiny teams reaching unicorn status.

Just look around:

• Replit – 60 people, $150 M ARR, valued at $3 B

• Lovable – 45 people, $100 M ARR, $2 B valuation

• Cursor – 12 people, $100 M ARR, $10 B valuation

• Midjourney – 30 people, $400 M revenue, $4 B valuation

Countless solo founders making $1–2 M a year with micro-SaaS projects

AI and no-code tools have demolished the old barriers — technical, organizational, even psychological. A single person can now ideate, launch, and grow a product end-to-end.

We’re moving from large teams to lightweight crews, from rigid processes to fluid ecosystems, from hierarchies to networks of autonomous micro-teams.

The concept of “organization” itself is evolving:

• Value no longer lies in scale, but in speed and direction.

• People become units of impact, not fixed roles.

• Leadership turns into mentorship and enablement.

This shift made me completely rethink my career.

I had grown from developer to CTO, then to Head of Product and CPTO. But something felt tight. I missed building things end-to-end — seeing the whole picture, not just a slice of it.

So I asked myself a question that changed everything: “Could AI make it possible for one person to build a $1 M company?”

That question became my new mission, and the reason I left my job to become a solopreneur. AI became my co-founder. It designs, writes, codes, and analyzes with me. It doesn’t replace my creativity… it expands it. For the first time, the tools felt like teammates.

That’s why we’re entering an era of super-builders: multidisciplinary creators who can think strategically, design intuitively, and execute technically.

Developers who understand users and business models will rise as the next generation of product leaders. PMs without technical fluency will have to evolve or risk obsolescence.

AI won’t replace developers… it will amplify those who can think in systems.

It won’t erase product managers… it will demand that they become builders.

As the cost of development and iteration drops, discovery will increasingly happen through action: by shipping and learning fast, not by debating what to build.

The feedback loop collapses. The frontier between idea and execution disappears.

But there’s a catch. Agency can’t thrive in traditional environments. It has to be designed for.

Many organizations still operate with invisible bottlenecks: people clinging to ownership out of habit or fear. I’ve seen it countless times: a UX designer who insists on having the final word before release; a manager who must review every line of copy. It’s not about quality… it’s about control. And control kills speed.

💡 To unlock agency, leaders must shift from gatekeeping to gardening… creating ecosystems where autonomy, security, and trust coexist.

Everyone should understand not just their tasks, but the vision, the metrics, and the principles behind them.

Teams will be smaller, faster, and built around shared accountability. Each person will be a unit of impact.

In the next few years, I believe product and technology teams will look completely different. A handful of people — fluent in AI, product, and storytelling — will do what once required departments.

—Marco Santonocito

Leaders will act more like mentors than managers.

And traditional roles like “Product Manager” will dissolve into hybrid contributors with wide creative reach.

The line between builder and manager will fade — replaced by teams where everyone is both.

AI is rewriting how we build — but not why we build. This revolution isn’t about replacing people; it’s about liberating potential.

When everyone can build, agency becomes more than a skill. It becomes a culture.

What Stays Human

Both of us landed on the same conclusion: AI is the bridge, but it’s not the destination. The most human parts of product (the patience to earn trust, the curiosity to sit with a user and listen, the stubborn belief that products can always get better) are more important than ever.

AI can show you a path or handle the busywork. But only you can decide which direction to take the product, when “good enough” is actually enough, and how to rally a team around a vision.

If you’re considering a move from code to PM, or from roadmapping back to code, there has never been a time with more tools at your disposal or a lower barrier to experimenting with new skills. The numbers prove it. The opportunities are real. The bridge is built.

Where This Goes Next

Marco’s point about AI forming bridges nails it. I see the evidence every day in hiring trends, in the skills required for PMs to thrive, and in the conversations happening in product communities.

What roles are you seeing emerge in your circles? Are you noticing the same signals? Drop your perspective in the comments. Let’s document together where this shift leads and help the next wave of career switchers find their way.

The future belongs to people who can bridge worlds. AI just made that bridge a lot easier to cross.

Special thanks to Marco for sparking this great conversation about where AI will lead us in the future. If you want to collaborate in this space with your unique ideas, just reach out to me.