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

What is a product lead and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted Expert

Sachin Tuli

Product leads are responsible for the development of new products within a particular company. They are key members of cross-functional product development teams that typically include engineers, researchers, technologists, and representatives of marketing, finance, and manufacturing departments. The product lead liaises with different members of the development team to drive projects forward.

The three broad areas that a product lead is responsible for are owning the product direction, building the team, and establishing the product organization and processes. From product vision and strategy to the product roadmap, they devise it all along with a goal. They are also responsible for hiring personnel that will work on the particular product. And finally, they will coordinate with various departments to ensure that deadlines are met, and the final product is profitable for the company. Educational requirements include a bachelor's degree in business administration or marketing; however, an associate's degree may suffice as well, along with relevant proven work experience.

The benefits that you'll receive by qualifying as a product lead are immense. The average hourly wage rate for a traditional workweek is $56.76, which equates to $118,055 annually. The career is expected to grow 8% in the following years, resulting in various job opportunities being created across the United States.

What's a day at work look like for a Product Lead?

Sachin Tuli

Director, International Business Major, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The pandemic accelerated ongoing shifts with work-from-anywhere and use of remote meeting technologies. With mass adoption at all levels, these trends are likely to persist to some degree across fields and industries. There will likely be less travel for a number of years, but concurrently we may see more cross-team and cross-national collaboration and coordination. From an international business perspective, firms do plan to continue their globalization efforts and we know that graduates themselves increasingly seek potential global opportunities and mobility when choosing which organizations to work for.

ScoreProduct LeadUS Average

Salary

8.1

Avg. Salary $118,828

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

7.5

Growth Rate 10%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 8.15%

Black or African American 3.04%

Hispanic or Latino 8.67%

Unknown 5.32%

White 74.58%

Gender

female 28.91%

male 71.09%

Age - 38

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 - 38

Stress Level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

9.0

Complexity Level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

3.5

Work Life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a product lead

Explore product lead education requirements

Most common product lead degrees

Bachelor's

66.3 %

Master's

19.2 %

Associate

8.2 %

Start to develop specific product lead skills

Skills	Percentages
Product Management	8.59%
Project Management	5.99%
Architecture	4.80%
Digital Marketing	4.58%
Lifecycle Management	4.49%

Complete relevant product lead training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New product 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 product lead based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real product lead resumes.

Research product lead duties and responsibilities

Manage multiple teams of designers, information architects, and UI developers across various projects for desktop, mobile and tablets.
Design, manage, and implement internationalization QA process for radiology software in the European office.
Manage horizontal UX prototyping resource needs, implementing effective collaborative expectations and cross-product timeline allocation strategies.
Lead UX designer for multiple scrum teams.

Get product lead experience

Generally, it takes 8-10 years to become a product lead. The most common roles before becoming a product lead include product manager, software engineer team lead and project manager.

Prepare your product lead resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your product 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 product 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 Product Lead Resume templates

Build a professional Product 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 Product Lead resume.

Apply for product lead jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a product 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 product leads rate their job?

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Product Lead reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Aug 2023

Pros

Solve tough problems, work on agile teams, outlet for creativity,

Cons

high expectations, constantly evolving technology, broad range of topics to learn (product management specifics, industry, technology, software development methods

A zippia user wrote a review on Jun 2020