How To Become A Director, Product & Project Management: What It Is and Career Path

What is a director, product & project management and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Sachin Tuli

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a director, product & project management. For example, did you know that they make an average of $62.48 an hour? That's $129,963 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 33,700 job opportunities across the U.S.

What's a day at work look like for a director, product & project management?

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.

ScoreDirector, Product & Project ManagementUS Average

Salary

8.4

Avg. Salary $129,963

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 32.14%

male 67.86%

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 director, product & project management

Explore director, product & project management education requirements

Most common director, product & project management degrees

Bachelor's

72.1 %

Master's

16.8 %

Associate

7.3 %

Start to develop specific director, product & project management skills

Skills	Percentages
Customer Satisfaction	44.93%
Architecture	36.34%
Product Development	2.82%
Project Management	2.80%
Product Management	1.22%

Complete relevant director, product & project management training and internships

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

Research director, product & project management duties and responsibilities

Manage horizontal UX prototyping resource needs, implementing effective collaborative expectations and cross-product timeline allocation strategies.
Review design and perform QA testing of deliver products.
Perform QA testing, and direct internal alpha testing and customer beta testing.
Redesign core SaaS product to add industry-leading functionality and enterprise platform.

Get director, product & project management experience

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

Prepare your director, product & project management resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your director, product & project management 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 director, product & project management resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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