Private Market Product Strategy Consultant

Private markets means investments that aren't traded on public stock exchanges - private equity, private credit (lending directly to companies), infrastructure, real estate and venture capital. A product strategy role sits between the investment teams who run these funds and the people who sell them, working out what funds the firm should launch, how they should be structured, how to explain their performance and strategy convincingly, and what competitors are offering. In practice you spend most of your time producing analysis and written material about funds - market research, competitor comparisons, performance data, pitch documents and answers to detailed investor questions - for asset managers, investment consultancies or the private markets arms of banks and insurers.

Starting salary: £32k–£45k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Asset management graduate schemes are the most common route
They usually ask for: A 2:1 is the usual bar at larger firms

Approximate graduate salary

Roughly around £32,000–£45,000 to start in London, and this varies widely - large global managers and firms with a strong private markets franchise pay at the higher end and often add a discretionary bonus, while smaller firms, investment consultancies and roles outside London (Edinburgh, Leeds, Birmingham) tend to sit lower. Treat these as rough approximations only.

What you'd actually do

Pulling together data on how a fund has performed - returns, how much capital investors have committed versus how much has actually been drawn and invested, and how the portfolio is spread across sectors, countries and deal sizes - usually in Excel, then turning it into charts and commentary
Building and updating pitch decks and fund overview documents used when the sales team meets pension schemes, insurers, wealth managers or family offices
Researching what competing funds are doing: fee levels, fund sizes, target returns, lock-up periods and where they invest, and summarising the differences for senior colleagues
Drafting responses to due diligence questionnaires and RFPs (requests for proposal - long, structured question sets a potential investor sends before committing money), which means chasing the investment, legal, compliance and operations teams for accurate answers

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Sitting in on or minuting calls with portfolio managers to understand a fund's strategy well enough to write about it in plain language
Contributing to work on new fund launches or new structures - for example an evergreen or semi-liquid fund aimed at wealth clients rather than a traditional closed-ended ten-year fund - which involves gathering market intelligence on demand, fee structures and minimum investment sizes
Answering ad hoc questions from sales colleagues at short notice: a client has asked something about a fund's exposure to a particular sector or country and someone needs the number and an explanation today

How graduates get in

Asset management graduate schemes are the most common route. Many large managers rotate graduates through distribution, product, investment risk and operations, and product strategy is one of the seats. Roles are usually advertised generically as 'investment management graduate programme' rather than by this exact title.
Direct entry as an analyst into a product, product specialist or investment specialist team. This happens but is less common straight from university - firms often want a year or two of experience first, so it's a realistic move after a spell in fund operations, client reporting, performance analysis or a graduate role elsewhere in the firm.
Investment consultancy graduate schemes are a strong adjacent route. Consultants advise pension schemes on which managers to use, so you learn private markets from the buyer's side, and moving to a manager's product team afterwards is a well-worn path.
Spring weeks and summer internships in asset management or investment banking. A summer internship at a large manager is the single most reliable predictor of getting a graduate offer at that type of firm, and internships often convert directly.

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Sideways from an investment bank, Big Four transaction services or a fund administrator. Private markets teams value people who already understand how deals, valuations and fund structures work, so this is a very common entry point in your mid-twenties rather than at graduation.
Boutique and mid-sized private markets firms sometimes hire graduates directly without a formal scheme, usually through networking, speculative applications or specialist recruiters. Fewer roles, less structure, often broader work.

What employers ask for

A 2:1 is the usual bar at larger firms, though some accept a 2:2 with strong other evidence and smaller firms are often more flexible. Some employers still screen on A-level grades or UCAS points; many have moved away from this.
Degree subject is fairly open. Economics, finance, accounting and maths are the most common backgrounds and make the numerical parts easier, but history, languages and other essay subjects are well represented because so much of the job is writing. Genuine interest in markets matters more than the subject on the certificate.
Evidence you understand what private markets are and how they differ from public equities and bonds - illiquidity, capital calls, J-curves, ten-year-plus fund lives. This is usually tested at interview and is where a lot of candidates fall down.
Strong Excel and PowerPoint. Not optional - these are the tools the work is produced in. Python or SQL is a nice differentiator at some firms and irrelevant at others.

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The IMC (Investment Management Certificate) is the standard entry-level UK qualification and many employers pay for it and expect it in your first year or so. CFA is common but usually started later; some firms sponsor it, some don't. CAIA, which focuses on alternative investments, is more relevant to private markets specifically and turns up in some teams.
Most roles are regulated to some degree, so expect background and credit checks.

Skills that matter

Writing clearly about complicated things

A large share of the output is prose - fund descriptions, DDQ answers, market commentary - that has to be accurate, compliant and readable by someone who isn't an investor.

Excel fluency with fund performance data

You'll be manipulating cash flow data, calculating and checking IRRs and multiples, and reconciling numbers that don't quite match between systems.

Understanding fund structures and mechanics

You cannot describe or compare a private markets fund without grasping commitments, drawdowns, distributions, fee bases and lock-ups - this is learnable on the job but you're judged on how fast you pick it up.

Chasing people politely and persistently

Most of your material depends on answers from portfolio managers, legal and compliance who are busy and don't report to you, and deadlines are usually driven by an external investor.

Attention to detail under compliance pressure

Anything sent to an investor is a regulated marketing document, so a wrong number or an unsupported claim about performance is a genuine problem, not a typo.

Commercial curiosity about who buys what

Product strategy is ultimately about judging what investors will actually want to buy in two years' time, which means paying attention to fee trends, regulation and shifts in demand rather than just processing data.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Analyst or graduate for roughly the first couple of years, doing the data pulls, deck updates and DDQ drafting, while getting the IMC out of the way.
Associate or product manager, where you own particular funds or a strategy area - you become the person sales come to for anything on private credit, say - and start joining client meetings rather than just preparing for them.
Senior product manager or product specialist, presenting to institutional investors directly, shaping fund terms and fee structures, and leading the internal work on new fund launches. Timelines to this point vary a great deal by firm size and how fast the business is growing.
From there the paths fork: head of product for an asset class, a move into distribution or client relationship management, a move into the investment team itself (possible but not automatic - it usually needs deliberate effort and often a CFA), or into investor relations at a private equity or private credit house, which is a very common and often better-paid destination.
Longer term, senior product and distribution people move into business development leadership, strategy roles, or to the buy side as a consultant or in-house at a pension scheme or insurer assessing managers.

What people get wrong

“'Consultant' in the job title means you work at a consultancy doing client projects.”

In this context it usually means an internal expert who consults to colleagues - you're a permanent employee of an asset manager, and 'consultant', 'specialist' and 'strategist' are used almost interchangeably for the same job. Some genuine consultancy versions exist within investment consulting firms, so read the job description rather than the title.

“You'll be picking investments or evaluating deals.”

You almost never make investment decisions. The investment team does that; you explain, package, position and compare what they've done. People who join wanting to be an investor often find this frustrating, and moving across into an investment role is possible but a deliberate career change rather than a natural promotion.

“It's a heavily quantitative, modelling-led job.”

There's real numerical work, but the bulk of the day is writing, coordinating and answering questions. If you enjoy building complex models all day you may be better suited to an investment or risk role.

“Private markets roles are all like private equity - deal-driven and brutally long-houred.”

Hours in product strategy are generally more predictable than in deal teams, though they spike hard around fund launches, quarter-end reporting and big RFP deadlines. It's not a nine-to-five, but it's not deal-team hours either.

Where this varies

The job differs a lot depending on who you work for. At a large multi-asset manager, private markets product strategy is one specialist team among many and the work is fairly structured and process-heavy, with lots of RFPs and formal reporting. At a dedicated private equity, private credit or infrastructure house the same work often sits under 'investor relations' or 'fundraising' and you're closer to the fundraising cycle, with intense periods when a fund is in the market and quieter stretches between. At an investment consultancy you're on the other side, assessing managers for pension scheme clients. There's also a growing split between teams focused on institutional investors (pension schemes, insurers) and teams building semi-liquid products for wealth managers and private clients - the latter involves more regulatory and structuring complexity and more work on how a product is explained to less specialist buyers. Geographically, most roles are in London, with some in Edinburgh and a scattering elsewhere.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.