Switching career track from researcher to TPM or TAM
I work as research scientist. I think I mostly enjoyed the part of understanding the open ended requirements from the clients and shaping that to a feasible scope leveraging technical knowledge and providing a quick proof of concept type solution. Would it be a good idea to try the role of Technical Product Manager or Technical Account Manager in Amazon? Are these roles considered less challenging or prestigious than pure technical roles?
I think you should think twice before taking on TPM/TAM role. TPM is very project management focussed. If you are like spreadsheets and manage tasks then this could be a good role. Suggest try Product Management role
I think you may have understood the roles wrong. I’ve never seen anyone deciding between a pm role and a sales role. But if you want to consider these two job families, then I think solution architect and product marketing manager are closer to what you described. In fact, if you are currently a rs, then there are ds in proserv who does exactly what you described and they are client facing.
Thanks. Can you please tell which one is pm and which one is sales role?
Technical account manager (TAM) is a sales role. It’s similar to an account manager but they are slightly more technical to ensure the client is happy with the delivery of the solution. Technical Product Manager (usually not abbreviated by TPM because the p is usually ‘program’), is a product manager working closely with the dev team and most often they can act/contribute as architect. But none of which is close to what you want to do according to your description.
The TAM role is very challenging and interesting too. It comes with a lot of responsibility. If you enjoy coding it might not be for you, but it’s technical enough.
What do they do ?
You provide technical expertise on your product like O365 or Azure for instance. Drive the adoption, help hem achieve their workstreams like integrating with other 3 party products. The major part is relationship Management, you need to build a relationship to the CIO/CTO level. You are basically answerable if something fails and how you manage it without business impact.