The research is aimed at developing ideas and approaches to the implementation of the city manager model in modern Russian conditions. The research focuses on professionalization of municipal management, the practice of contractual hiring of city managers.  There has recently been the acute controversy whether it is appropriate to implement the "city manager" model in modern Russian conditions, as there are cases of conflict interactions in political practice with the participation of a city manager. to the current study aimed to determine whether it is possible to balance interests and level conflict risks while optimizing the system for selecting and retaining professional personnel in municipalities. In order to answer this question we carried out a qualitative analysis of modern domestic and foreign studies, selected with the principle of  scientific sources differentiation, as well as an expert survey of the heads of local authorities (582 experts from 76 regions of the Russian Federation), which made it possible to eliminate the "gap" between the theoretical substantiation models of a city manager in scientific literature and its real application in modern conditions. As a result of the study, the advantages and disadvantages of the "city manager" model were found, and the key mechanisms for reducing conflict risks during its implementation were identified. Based on the results obtained, we developed recommendations for changing the practice of hiring a city manager, which will eliminate the element of competition and confrontation in his interactions with the Head of the municipality, defining the hierarchical statuses of the two key figures of the municipality.