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

What is a lead product developer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Sachin Tuli

The average lead product developer salary is $122,863. The most common degree is a bachelor's degree degree with an mechanical engineering major. It usually takes 8-10 years of experience to become a lead product developer. Lead product developers with a Certified Product Manager (CPM) certification earn more money. 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 lead product developer?

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.

ScoreLead Product DeveloperUS Average

Salary

8.2

Avg. Salary $122,863

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 25.74%

male 74.26%

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 lead product developer

Explore lead product developer education requirements

Most common lead product developer degrees

Bachelor's

63.6 %

Master's

24.5 %

Associate

5.2 %

Start to develop specific lead product developer skills

Skills	Percentages
Lifecycle Management	27.43%
Java	9.20%
Product Development	8.48%
Project Management	6.84%
R	5.73%

Complete relevant lead product developer training and internships

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

Research lead product developer duties and responsibilities

Manage development resources among development, QA, support, documentation, sales and marketing.
Manage projects build on technologies including .NET, C++, H.264 video, PHP and AJAX, JavaScript.
Target select electrical engineer database to yield increase and additional sales leads.
Used Redgate API to create tools for syncing data across databases.

Get lead product developer experience

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

Apply for lead product developer jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a lead product developer 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 lead product developers rate their job?

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Lead product developer 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