A couple of years back, digital product roles—especially in banking—were booming in Cambodia since after COVID-19. Banks were racing to build online platforms, trying to keep up with dominant leaders like ABA, Acleda, and Wing. But recently, job postings for Product Owners and Product Managers have nearly dried up or rarely see it. So what’s going on? I think it’s a few things:

1. Strong Market Leaders: With ABA and others dominating, it’s tough for other players to compete and justify high product development costs.

2. From Growth to Maintenance: Many banks now focus on maintaining and optimizing rather than adding new features. I usually see hiring for developers role/DevOps or demand planning.

3. Strategic Pause/Shifted: Companies may be reassessing digital investments and considering partnerships instead of building everything in-house.

4. Economic downturn and recession is another factors to slowdowns hiring and reduce company expenses.

Especially Cambodia is not that quite popular destination for tech investment like Vietnam or Thailand. If you go through Jobsdb Thailand there are hundreds of jobs in product management are posting for this month alone. However it’s hard to compare a city of 15 million people to few million like Phnom Penh. Hope some days we could have more opportunities for future tech talents.

The demand may pick up some points again, but it’s a reminder that digital transformation is a long term game with heavy investment. Anyone else noticing this trend?A fun picture generated from DELL-E.

#ProductManagement #Cambodia #DigitalBanking #TechJobs