WANTED: Product manager to create our next-generation Internet offering. Duties: Discover market opportunity, develop customer requirements, research the competition, define positioning, create business plan, coordinate software development with marketing, evangelize to all internal departments, keep everything on schedule and everybody happy, launch product, plan ongoing marketing, start all over again when the CEO puts his arm around a new business model.

Are you intrigued? Intimidated? A bit dizzy? You should be all three. Product management is one of the most rewarding and demanding Internet jobs that doesn't come with keys to an eight-passenger jet. Before you decide whether to go for it, take a closer look at the challenges of shepherding a virtual product through its life cycle.

What Product Managers Do

Managers of Web-based products have more diverse responsibilities than their offline counterparts. "If you're a product manager at Nabisco, you're more of a brand manager, more interested in external messaging and branding," says Shelley Moore, director of product management at Authoria in Waltham, Massachusetts.

With a Net-based offering, product managers need to grasp the dynamics and limitations of the software development process and help make realistic decisions about which features can be coded, tested and debugged in time for launch. "You've got to balance time-to-market, quality and resources," says Moore. So product managers must interface extensively with software team leaders and sometimes with engineers in the trenches.

But product managers have to do more than understand how various departments, like marketing, customer services, operations and software development, work. Product chiefs must persuade their diverse colleagues that if they don't hang together they will be hanged separately. "You have to set expectations and be an excellent politician," says Shayne Gilbert, author of 90 Days to Launch: Internet Projects on Time and on Budget and founder of consulting firm Silverweave in Boston.

And the job's not over when the product launches. Many aspects of the project's evaluation are left to the product manager, whose responsibilities can span the product lifecycle. If a bank creates a Web-based version of an offline product, there should be an analysis of whether the customers acquired and the operational savings realized will justify the substantial project cost. "It all comes back to one question: What's your return on investment?" Gilbert says.

What's Required and Preferred

Internet product managers must truly be jacks-of-all-trades. Perhaps the most sought-after candidates are those with top-notch people skills, MBAs, substantial marketing experience, deep familiarity with the product's subject matter and a strong grasp of what the relevant technologies can and cannot do.

"But every individual is going to be imperfectly weighted in all those attributes," says Moore, who oversees two product managers and a business analyst. The bottom line: If you've got the communications skills, marketing savvy and are willing to learn the technology, give it a shot. On the other side of the coin, if you're a politically savvy technologist with a strong feel for marketing, you may be an attractive candidate.

Salary and Career Path

Speaking of the bottom line, what do Internet product managers earn? They earn from $60,000 to $115,000.

"As a product manager, you're really running a mini-business," says Moore. "You're the center of the universe for that one product." Maybe that's why many top executives -- masters of corporate universes -- have learned the ropes by leading product teams.