Lead product developer vs product lead

The differences between lead product developers 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 lead product developer and a product lead. Additionally, a lead product developer has an average salary of $122,863, which is higher than the $118,828 average annual salary of a product lead.

The top three skills for a lead product developer include lifecycle management, java and product development. The most important skills for a product lead are product management, project management, and architecture.

Lead product developer vs product lead overview

	Lead Product Developer	Product Lead
Yearly salary	$122,863	$118,828
Hourly rate	$59.07	$57.13
Growth rate	10%	10%
Number of jobs	152,976	95,557
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 64%	Bachelor's Degree, 66%
Average age	39	39
Years of experience	10	10

Lead product developer vs product lead salary

Lead product developers and product leads have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Lead Product Developer	Product Lead
Average salary	$122,863	$118,828
Salary range	Between $87,000 And $173,000	Between $86,000 And $163,000
Highest paying City	San Francisco, CA	San Francisco, CA
Highest paying state	Arizona	California
Best paying company	Meta	Airbnb
Best paying industry	Manufacturing	Hospitality

Differences between lead product developer and product lead education

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

	Lead Product Developer	Product Lead
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 64%	Bachelor's Degree, 66%
Most common major	Mechanical Engineering	Business
Most common college	University of Texas at Austin	University of Georgia

Lead product developer vs product lead demographics

Here are the differences between lead product developers' and product leads' demographics:

	Lead Product Developer	Product Lead
Average age	39	39
Gender ratio	Male, 74.3% Female, 25.7%	Male, 71.1% Female, 28.9%
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 lead product developer and product lead duties and responsibilities

Lead product developer example 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.
Coordinate efforts among vendors to determine the mutual requirements and to define API.
Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.

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.

Lead product developer vs product lead skills

Common lead product developer skills

Lifecycle Management, 27%
Java, 9%
Product Development, 8%
Project Management, 7%
R, 6%
Product Management, 3%

Common product lead skills

Product Management, 9%
Project Management, 6%
Architecture, 5%
Digital Marketing, 5%
Lifecycle Management, 4%
Cloud, 4%