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Business product manager vs product lead

The differences between business product managers and product leads can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 8-10 years to become both a business product manager and a product lead. Additionally, a business product manager has an average salary of $123,607, which is higher than the $118,828 average annual salary of a product lead.

The top three skills for a business product manager include product management, project management and market research. The most important skills for a product lead are product management, project management, and architecture.

Business product manager vs product lead overview

Business Product ManagerProduct Lead
Yearly salary$123,607$118,828
Hourly rate$59.43$57.13
Growth rate10%10%
Number of jobs189,39395,557
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 74%Bachelor's Degree, 66%
Average age3939
Years of experience1010

What does a business product manager do?

A business product manager is primarily in charge of overseeing a company's product and service development procedures, ensuring quality and marketability. Their responsibilities typically revolve around gathering and analyzing data to understand and identify product requirements, coordinating with the engineering and quality control teams, determining the marketing opportunities, managing the roadmaps, and developing strategies to meet the consumers' needs. Furthermore, as a business product manager, it is essential to lead and encourage the workforce to reach goals, all while implementing the company's policies and regulations.

What does a product lead do?

A product lead is responsible for monitoring the development of new products and services of an organization, starting from brand conceptualization to official market release and distribution. Product leads identify effective product management by conducting data analysis and evaluating market statistics of customer demands. They coordinate with the clients on their specifications and requirements, including the budget limit and timely deliverables. A product lead manages the brand promotion on media platforms, creating content that adheres to the target audience.

Business product manager vs product lead salary

Business product managers and product leads have different pay scales, as shown below.

Business Product ManagerProduct Lead
Average salary$123,607$118,828
Salary rangeBetween $88,000 And $173,000Between $86,000 And $163,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateCaliforniaCalifornia
Best paying companyMetaAirbnb
Best paying industry-Hospitality

Differences between business product manager and product lead education

There are a few differences between a business product manager and a product lead in terms of educational background:

Business Product ManagerProduct Lead
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 74%Bachelor's Degree, 66%
Most common majorBusinessBusiness
Most common collegeUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia

Business product manager vs product lead demographics

Here are the differences between business product managers' and product leads' demographics:

Business Product ManagerProduct Lead
Average age3939
Gender ratioMale, 64.1% Female, 35.9%Male, 71.1% Female, 28.9%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 3.0% Unknown, 5.3% Hispanic or Latino, 8.7% Asian, 8.2% White, 74.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%Black or African American, 3.0% Unknown, 5.3% Hispanic or Latino, 8.7% Asian, 8.2% White, 74.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage10%10%

Differences between business product manager and product lead duties and responsibilities

Business product manager example responsibilities.

  • Lead cross-functional team in pioneering the application/game download ecosystem with the implementation of Java games and generating significant new revenue stream.
  • Create promotional programs, point of sales materials and aggressive go-to-market strategies that significantly increase sell thru revenue and ROI.
  • Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.
  • Perform extensive data analysis including financial forecasting, production planning, promotional ROI modeling and syndicate data review to drive recommendations.

Product lead example 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.
  • Develop the first versions of cloud base web services APIs to integrate enterprise applications as well as 3rd party applications.
  • Used a combination of extreme programming, scrum, traditional waterfall processes to establish a multi-location, engineering and support operation.
  • Show more

Business product manager vs product lead skills

Common business product manager skills
  • Product Management, 14%
  • Project Management, 7%
  • Market Research, 5%
  • Market Trends, 5%
  • User Stories, 5%
  • Emerging Technologies, 5%
Common product lead skills
  • Product Management, 9%
  • Project Management, 6%
  • Architecture, 5%
  • Digital Marketing, 5%
  • Lifecycle Management, 4%
  • Cloud, 4%

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