Director of product development vs product owner

The differences between directors of product development and product owners can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 8-10 years to become both a director of product development and a product owner. Additionally, a director of product development has an average salary of $140,507, which is higher than the $97,070 average annual salary of a product owner.

The top three skills for a director of product development include product development, project management and product management. The most important skills for a product owner are user stories, acceptance criteria, and product backlog.

Director of product development vs product owner overview

	Director Of Product Development	Product Owner
Yearly salary	$140,507	$97,070
Hourly rate	$67.55	$46.67
Growth rate	10%	10%
Number of jobs	175,429	129,990
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 71%	Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Average age	39	39
Years of experience	10	10

What does a director of product development do?

A Director of Product Development supervises and implements product development policies, initiatives, and objectives. They conduct market research to determine consumer needs and identify competitors.

What does a product owner do?

Product owners are at the forefront of an organization's development cycle. They have various duties and responsibilities, which include ensuring that the value of products created by the development team is maximized, creating a vision and defining the goals for development projects, and working closely with all stakeholders. As the product owner, you are responsible for ensuring that the development team maintains a consistent vision and overseeing the product backlog. You are also expected to supervise the actual product development stages and anticipate the needs of clients.

Director of product development vs product owner salary

Directors of product development and product owners have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Director Of Product Development	Product Owner
Average salary	$140,507	$97,070
Salary range	Between $100,000 And $196,000	Between $71,000 And $130,000
Highest paying City	San Mateo, CA	San Francisco, CA
Highest paying state	California	California
Best paying company	Apple	ORIX USA
Best paying industry	Manufacturing	Manufacturing

Differences between director of product development and product owner education

There are a few differences between a director of product development and a product owner in terms of educational background:

	Director Of Product Development	Product Owner
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 71%	Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Most common major	Business	Business
Most common college	University of Georgia	University of Georgia

Director of product development vs product owner demographics

Here are the differences between directors of product development' and product owners' demographics:

	Director Of Product Development	Product Owner
Average age	39	39
Gender ratio	Male, 72.0% Female, 28.0%	Male, 64.3% Female, 35.7%
Race ratio	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%	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 Percentage	10%	10%

Differences between director of product development and product owner duties and responsibilities

Director of product development example responsibilities.

Organize and manage project meetings between partners, vendors, and associates using both scrum and waterfall methodologies.
Manage long-term care, hospital transition, and Medicaid- Medicare expansion initiatives, that includes model of care design and implementation )
Manage packaging design and nutritional labeling within QA guidelines.
Manage company intellectual portfolio and develop key relationships with vendors and clients including leading global technology companies.
Develop using Java, JSP, J2EE, CSS, DHTML, HTML, Plugins and JavaScript.
Prepare proposals for new projects, including project feasibility, ROI, expenses and costs.

Product owner example responsibilities.

Manage remote teams to port core and legacy components into AWS.
Manage a global team to create Java base EDI / XML / XSL mapping suite.
Gather and define requirements for the BSS require to operate and manage the SaaS offerings.
Serve as technical contact for affiliate partners during API integration and create and manage API documentation.
Manage the team to redesign the Java base desktop trading community management product to a web base portal.
Used Microsoft TFS to manage project phases, sprints and burn down chart of various stages of SDLC.

Director of product development vs product owner skills

Common director of product development skills

Product Development, 12%
Project Management, 9%
Product Management, 9%
R, 7%
Product Strategy, 4%
Market Research, 3%

Common product owner skills

User Stories, 10%
Acceptance Criteria, 7%
Product Backlog, 5%
Analytics, 5%
Product Management, 4%
EPICS, 4%

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Director Of Product Development
Director Of Product Development vs Product Owner

Updated January 8, 2025

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