How To Become A Functional Lead: What It Is and Career Path

What is a functional lead and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted Expert

Dr. Neil Eldin PhD, PE

The functional lead is the person responsible for making sure that a business's various systems function well. They analyze a business's needs and match those needs with the technological systems, such as AppWorx and ResQSoft, that work best to fulfill them. They also maintain those systems and analyze ways to make them more efficient.

One of the main tools that a functional lead works with is Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP. ERP is a piece of software that is used to manage business transactions and processes all in one place. While this is a very important tool that improves efficiency, it can also be very complicated, and many businesses rely on the functional lead to improve the organization's usage of ERB.

Becoming a functional lead takes a lot of knowledge of both business and the latest technology. No wonder that most functional leads have bachelor's or even master's degrees, even though it's possible to do the job without one.

What general advice would you give to a Functional Lead?

Dr. Neil Eldin PhD, PE

Professor, Website

Things don’t just happen. You must develop a career plan to maximize your salary potential when starting your career. Find the right employer for yourself. For example, if you are mobile and willing to travel, target employers with international projects. After working for a few years, you can request a transfer to an overseas assignment, and this will instantaneously almost double your salary. If you are not mobile and your circumstances do not allow your travel, seek employment with major corporations and seek positions that are done at the home office (e.g., estimating, procurement, and contracting).

ScoreFunctional LeadUS Average

Salary

8.0

Avg. Salary $113,422

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

5.3

Growth Rate 9%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.3

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.19%

Asian 24.92%

Black or African American 8.42%

Hispanic or Latino 9.52%

Unknown 4.90%

White 52.05%

Gender

female 31.87%

male 68.13%

Age - 42

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 42

Stress Level

5.3

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

8.3

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

4.8

Work Life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a functional lead

Explore functional lead education requirements

Most common functional lead degrees

Bachelor's

64.4 %

Master's

24.8 %

Associate

5.0 %

Start to develop specific functional lead skills

Skills	Percentages
ERP	9.79%
Client Facing	6.94%
Enterprise Solutions	6.09%
Gl	6.05%
Business Process	5.11%

Complete relevant functional lead training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New functional leads learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a functional lead based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real functional lead resumes.

Research functional lead duties and responsibilities

Manage the FI project plan and training.
Direct and manage subject matter expert (SME) activity during analysis and content development.
Lead functional staff in planning stage of system migration from client-server architecture to web base environment via ResQSoft conversion tool.
Monitor all prototyping and user acceptance testing.

Get functional lead experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a functional lead. The most common roles before becoming a functional lead include functional consultant, sap mm consultant team lead and business analyst.

Prepare your functional lead resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your functional lead resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a functional lead resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Functional Lead Resume templates

Build a professional Functional Lead resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Functional Lead resume.

Apply for functional lead jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a functional lead job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do functional leads rate their job?

-/5

5 Stars

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1 Star

Functional Lead reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Aug 2020

Pros

Challenges, problem-solving,communicating with differnet individuals

A zippia user wrote a review on Jun 2020