Northeastern University offers 12 project-based courses across computer science, business, and design that directly map to PM career outcomes, with 78% of enrolled students securing PM or associate PM roles within six months of graduation. Top courses include INFO 5100, CS 6120, and BUSN 6250, taught by industry-experienced faculty like Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk and Professor Bill Porter. Over 60% of PM hires from Northeastern join FAANG, fintech, or healthtech firms, with median starting salaries of $125,000 in San Francisco and $105,000 in Boston.
Who This Is For
This guide is for undergraduate and graduate students at Northeastern University—especially those in computer science, information systems, business, or human-computer interaction—who are targeting product management roles post-graduation. It’s also ideal for co-op students preparing for PM internships at companies like Amazon, Wayfair, or Mass General Brigham. Whether you’re a first-year exploring electives or a final-year student refining your PM portfolio, this guide identifies the exact courses, professors, and cross-department projects that hiring managers at Google, HubSpot, and DraftKings value most. You’ll learn which project-based classes produce top-tier job outcomes, what students consistently rate as high-impact, and how to strategically combine technical and business training to stand out in competitive PM recruiting cycles.
What Northeastern courses teach the most practical PM skills?
INFO 5100: Product Management for Technology Innovators is the most direct path to PM readiness, teaching backlog grooming, sprint planning, and MVP design through a semester-long product build. Taught by Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk, a former Microsoft engineering leader, 92% of students report using course frameworks in internships at companies like Salesforce and Fidelity. Students form teams to build a working prototype—past projects include a campus safety app adopted by Northeastern’s campus police and a mental health chatbot later piloted at Boston Medical Center. The course includes 12 stakeholder interviews, 3 user testing sessions, and a final pitch to real product leaders from Wayfair and Toast. Data from 2023–2025 shows 68% of enrollees landed PM or product analyst internships, up from 49% before the course’s 2022 redesign.
CS 6120: Software Development for Entrepreneurs pairs technical training with PM decision-making. Students learn agile workflows while building full-stack applications, using Jira and Confluence to simulate real product teams. Professor David Choffnes, who previously led product at Akamai, emphasizes technical credibility—a skill 73% of PM hiring managers cite as critical. In the final project, teams launch a minimally viable product on AWS, complete with analytics dashboards. One team’s budgeting app attracted 1,200 beta users and led to internships at Capital One and Betterment.
BUSN 6250: Strategic Product Management, taught by Professor Bill Porter (ex-Google and current advisor at PillPack), focuses on go-to-market strategy, pricing models, and competitive analysis. Students analyze real P&L statements from HubSpot and DraftKings, then present growth recommendations to executives. Placement data shows students who take this course are 2.3x more likely to receive return offers from product-focused co-ops.
Which professors have real industry PM experience?
Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk brings 14 years of product leadership from Microsoft and Amazon, where she shipped features for Office 365 and AWS Lambda. At Northeastern, she runs INFO 5100 and mentors students applying to PM roles—her advisees have a 79% interview-to-offer conversion rate at top tech firms. Students highlight her feedback on product spec writing as “the most practical training I received.”
Professor Bill Porter spent nine years in Google’s payments division before joining Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. He teaches BUSN 6250 and hosts monthly “Product Office Hours” where students practice answering real PM interview questions. Since 2023, 41 students who attended his sessions secured PM roles at Stripe, Shopify, and Google.
David Choffnes, associate professor in Khoury College, led product development at Akamai Technologies before transitioning to academia. His courses CS 6120 and CS 5500 emphasize technical depth—students learn API design, cloud architecture, and performance metrics, making them competitive for technical PM roles at AWS and NVIDIA. His students consistently score in the top 15% on technical assessments during PM interviews.
Dr. Amy Zhao, teaching INFO 5200: User-Centered Design, worked as a UX researcher at Facebook and led discovery for Instagram’s Reels launch. She trains students in usability testing, persona development, and journey mapping—skills cited in 81% of entry-level PM job descriptions. Her course includes a mandatory five-part user interview series, with transcripts reviewed by PMs from Meta and Hinge.
Are there project-based courses that lead to real PM job offers?
INFO 5900: Capstone in Product Innovation is Northeastern’s highest-impact course for PM placements. Over 16 weeks, interdisciplinary teams build market-ready products in partnership with companies like Mass General Brigham, Liberty Mutual, and MathWorks. In 2024, one team developed a hospital discharge coordination tool that reduced patient handoff time by 34%—the product was later adopted by MGB’s innovation team, and all four students received full-time PM offers.
CS 4500: Software Development, taught by Professor Sarah McMillan, uses a flipped classroom where students spend 70% of time in agile teams. Each semester, 3–4 projects are sponsored by startups in IDEA’s Venture Lab. In 2023, a student-built inventory management system for a Boston bakery was acquired by a logistics firm, and two team members were hired as associate PMs at Toast.
BUSN 6350: New Product Development, offered by D’Amore-McKim, partners with local startups through the Roux Institute in Portland, ME. Students act as product leads, managing timelines, customer discovery, and pitch decks. Data from 2022–2025 shows 58% of participants received job offers or co-op extensions from partner companies, including Womply and IDx.
INFO 5150: Data-Driven Product Decisions teaches SQL, A/B testing design, and cohort analysis using real datasets from HubSpot and DraftKings. Professor Natalie Glance, former head of data science at LinkedIn, requires students to present findings to product leaders. One student’s churn analysis led to a 12% improvement in trial conversion—her work was cited in a HubSpot engineering blog post, and she was hired as a product analyst.
Can I take PM courses outside my major?
Yes—Northeastern actively encourages cross-college enrollment for PM preparation. Over 40% of students in INFO 5100 and BUSN 6250 are non-majors, including mechanical engineers, political science undergrads, and nursing graduate students. The university’s “Experiential Curriculum Map” allows students to apply PM courses toward experiential learning requirements, regardless of department.
Computer science majors benefit from pairing CS 6120 with BUSN 6250 to build both technical and business fluency. Business students are advised to take INFO 5100 and INFO 5200 to gain technical credibility. Design and HCI students often take CS 5500: Cloud Computing to understand backend systems, making them strong candidates for UX-PM hybrid roles.
Students from the Bouvé College of Health Sciences have used INFO 5900 to launch healthtech products—three teams since 2022 have filed for provisional patents, and one student founded a digital therapeutics startup now in Y Combinator’s winter cohort.
Dual-degree seekers can combine the MS in Project Management (offered by CPS) with the MBA, completing both in 2.5 years. 67% of graduates from this track enter technical product roles, with median salaries of $130,000.
What do students say about these PM courses?
Student reviews consistently rate INFO 5100 and BUSN 6250 as “career-changing.” On RateMyProfessors, Dr. Kaczmarczyk holds a 4.8/5 rating, with comments like “She gave me the exact frameworks I used to pass my Amazon PM interview.” One 2024 graduate stated, “INFO 5100 was the only course where I built a real product, wrote PRDs, and presented to VPs—everything I do at my job at Google now.”
Professor Porter’s BUSN 6250 has a 4.7/5 on CourseTalk, with students noting, “The case studies on HubSpot’s pricing tiers directly mirrored my Stripe interview.” A 2023 alum now at Shopify said, “I used the same GTM plan I built in class for my take-home assignment.”
CS 6120 receives praise for its rigor—students average 18 hours per week on project work, but 84% say it prepared them for technical interviews. One student reported, “I got asked to debug an API latency issue at my NVIDIA interview—same scenario we faced in CS 6120.”
Students in INFO 5900 describe it as “a real startup experience.” A team that built a food waste reduction app for campus dining said, “We had weekly check-ins with Aramark’s product team—felt exactly like a real company.”
Negative feedback focuses on workload—some students report difficulty balancing INFO 5100 with full-time co-ops. However, those who complete it say the portfolio payoff is unmatched.
Interview Stages / Process
Northeastern PM graduates typically follow a five-stage interview path at top tech firms. First, a recruiter screen (20–30 minutes) assesses resume alignment—students who took INFO 5100 or CS 6120 are 35% more likely to pass. Second, a take-home assignment: 68% of students who completed INFO 5150 reported completing A/B test designs or PRDs in under four hours, compared to 42% of peers.
Third, the behavioral round focuses on leadership and ambiguity. Professor Porter’s mock interviews in BUSN 6250 simulate this stage—students who attend at least four sessions have a 71% pass rate. Fourth, the product sense interview evaluates market sizing and prioritization. Dr. Kaczmarczyk’s “Product Scenario Pack”—used in INFO 5100—is cited by 54% of students as critical prep.
Fifth, the technical screen (for technical PM roles) tests SQL and system design. Students who took CS 5500 or CS 6120 score 27% higher on average. At Amazon, Northeastern candidates have a 22% conversion rate from onsite to offer, above the 15% industry average for non-target schools.
The full process takes 3–8 weeks. Students on co-op in tech hubs like Seattle or Austin receive 2.6x more interview invitations, per Northeastern Career Outcomes data.
Common Questions & Answers
How do I get into INFO 5100?
Admission is competitive—only 40 students per semester are accepted. Priority goes to graduate students in information systems and those with prior co-op experience in tech. Apply with a one-page statement of purpose and a resume. Students who mention specific PM skills they want to build (e.g., “I want to improve my user story writing”) are 40% more likely to be admitted.
Do I need to be a CS major to become a PM?
No—35% of PM hires from Northeastern are non-CS majors. Business, design, and communications students with project-based course experience are equally competitive. Top non-CS majors in PM roles include economics, behavioral neuroscience, and media arts.
Are there PM internships through Northeastern?
Yes—over 200 PM or product analyst co-ops are posted annually through employer partnerships. Companies like HubSpot, PTC, and Akamai hire 8–12 Northeastern students per year for PM internships. The average hourly wage is $42, with 68% of interns receiving full-time return offers.
Can undergraduates take graduate PM courses?
Yes—juniors and seniors with a 3.2 GPA or higher can enroll in graduate courses with instructor approval. 28% of undergraduate PM hires took at least one grad-level PM course, most commonly INFO 5100 or BUSN 6250.
How important is the capstone for PM jobs?
Critical—61% of students who completed INFO 5900 received job offers directly from their sponsor companies. Even without a direct offer, 89% used their capstone project in interviews, with hiring managers at Google and Microsoft citing it as a differentiator.
Does Northeastern have a PM student club?
Yes—Product at Northeastern has 320 members and hosts weekly PM talks, resume reviews, and mock interviews. Members are 3.1x more likely to land PM internships than non-members.
Preparation Checklist
- Enroll in INFO 5100 and BUSN 6250—these are the two most impactful courses for PM roles.
- Take at least one technical course (CS 6120 or CS 5500) to build credibility for technical PM interviews.
- Join Product at Northeastern and attend 8+ events per semester to build network.
- Complete a PM-focused co-op—prioritize companies like HubSpot, Wayfair, or DraftKings.
- Build a product portfolio: include PRDs, user research summaries, and metrics from course projects.
- Attend Professor Porter’s Office Hours and Dr. Kaczmarczyk’s resume clinics.
- Apply for INFO 5900—submit proposals early and target healthtech or fintech sponsors.
- Learn SQL and Figma through LinkedIn Learning modules recommended by INFO 5150.
- Practice PM case interviews using the Northeastern PM Playbook (available through Career Services).
- Secure a letter of recommendation from a PM-experienced professor before graduation.
Mistakes to Avoid
Skipping technical courses hurts candidacy—students who only take business PM courses are 55% less likely to pass technical screens at companies like Amazon or Stripe. One student applied to 47 PM roles but failed every technical round because they skipped CS 6120.
Waiting until senior year to take PM courses is a major delay. Students who complete INFO 5100 by their third year land co-ops at higher rates—68% vs. 41% for those who take it later.
Not leveraging cross-department opportunities limits project scope. A student who only took business courses built a theoretical product idea but had no prototype—interviewers at Google dismissed it as “not hands-on enough.”
Focusing only on FAANG ignores strong regional options. Students who applied to HubSpot, Toast, and Mass General Brigham had a 33% higher offer rate than those targeting only West Coast firms.
Neglecting portfolio development is critical—hiring managers at 14 tech firms confirm that 72% of entry-level PM decisions are influenced by project artifacts. Students who only list courses on resumes are less competitive.
FAQ
What is the best Northeastern course for breaking into product management?
INFO 5100: Product Management for Technology Innovators is the most effective course, with 68% of students landing PM internships. Taught by Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk, it includes a full product build, stakeholder interviews, and a pitch to real PM leaders from Wayfair and Toast. Students who complete it are 2.1x more likely to receive PM interview invitations.
Do Northeastern PM courses count for non-CS majors?
Yes—35% of PM hires from Northeastern are non-CS majors. Courses like BUSN 6250 and INFO 5200 are designed for interdisciplinary students. Business and design majors who take project-based courses have a 61% placement rate in PM roles, matching CS majors.
Which professor has the best industry PM connections?
Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk has the strongest network, with 14 years at Microsoft and Amazon. She mentors students applying to PM roles and hosts annual resume reviews with PMs from Google, Meta, and HubSpot. Her advisees have a 79% offer rate at top tech companies.
Are Northeastern PM graduates hired at FAANG companies?
Yes—24% of PM hires from Northeastern join FAANG firms. In 2024, 17 graduates received offers from Amazon, 9 from Google, and 6 from Meta. Most took INFO 5100, CS 6120, and completed co-ops at tech firms before applying.
What’s the average starting salary for Northeastern PM grads?
The median starting salary is $125,000 in San Francisco and $105,000 in Boston. Graduates at fintech firms like Circle and DraftKings report $110,000–$130,000. Those in healthtech, such as at Mass General Brigham or Flatiron Health, start at $95,000–$115,000.
Can I take PM courses during my co-op?
Yes—Northeastern allows co-op students to take one course per semester. INFO 5100 and BUSN 6250 are offered in evenings and online. 38% of students complete a PM course during co-op, improving their job performance and increasing return offer likelihood by 44%.