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Product manager vs senior product manager

The differences between product managers and senior product managers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 8-10 years to become both a product manager and a senior product manager. Additionally, a senior product manager has an average salary of $133,868, which is higher than the $111,729 average annual salary of a product manager.

The top three skills for a product manager include product management, QA and product strategy. The most important skills for a senior product manager are product management, cloud, and product strategy.

Product manager vs senior product manager overview

Product ManagerSenior Product Manager
Yearly salary$111,729$133,868
Hourly rate$53.72$64.36
Growth rate10%10%
Number of jobs125,678119,025
Job satisfaction54
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 72%Bachelor's Degree, 72%
Average age3939
Years of experience1010

What does a product manager do?

A product manager is responsible for ensuring product development, providing the best marketing strategies, and effectively handling the sales and marketing team. Product managers' duties include monitoring the market trends and conditions, identifying business opportunities and plan initiatives, and collaborating the product launch process with the appropriate departments. A product manager is also responsible for generating ideas on improving product features, determining timetables and reasonable pricing, and analyzing product sales. A product manager must have excellent strategic and decision-making skills to contribute to its growth and profitability.

What does a senior product manager do?

A senior product manager oversees the workflow and workforce involved in product and service development, ensuring a high return for its investments. They are primarily responsible for assessing and providing recommendations, producing review and reference documents, and obtaining feedback from consumers and high-ranking company personnel. Furthermore, as a senior product manager, they must lead a group of product managers, motivating and supervising them in their joint effort to accomplish goals according to the company's standards and policies.

Product manager vs senior product manager salary

Product managers and senior product managers have different pay scales, as shown below.

Product ManagerSenior Product Manager
Average salary$111,729$133,868
Salary rangeBetween $81,000 And $152,000Between $98,000 And $182,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateCaliforniaCalifornia
Best paying companyMetaRoku
Best paying industryRetailStart-up

Differences between product manager and senior product manager education

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

Product ManagerSenior Product Manager
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 72%Bachelor's Degree, 72%
Most common majorBusinessBusiness
Most common collegeUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia

Product manager vs senior product manager demographics

Here are the differences between product managers' and senior product managers' demographics:

Product ManagerSenior Product Manager
Average age3939
Gender ratioMale, 65.3% Female, 34.7%Male, 68.5% Female, 31.5%
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 product manager and senior product manager duties and responsibilities

Product manager example responsibilities.

  • Lead collaborative efforts within the PMO, vendors, customers, and internal stakeholders.
  • Manage developers accountable for coding, database development, UI implementation, and system architecture.
  • Manage inventory service levels / overstocks /defective inventory and supplier buy-in opportunities to maximize ROI.
  • Lead customization of the company's administrative SaaS software solution by defining features and functionality for internal/external stakeholder teams.
  • Lead weekly meetings between engineering, sales/marketing, and QA departments to facilitate communication, collaboration and resolution of product issues.
  • Handle design and specification of administration system requirements to efficiently manage, operate, and support client API configurations and sessions.
  • Show more

Senior product manager example responsibilities.

  • Manage and lead pipeline visualization project team to successful presentation at annual customer event.
  • Research reimbursement and payment/coding policies with manage care plans and Medicare for new services.
  • Manage customer CRM implementations, upgrades and customer relationships (at all client levels) with sales team as SME.
  • Manage the PLM and PDM product quality data metrics to review process successes and deficiencies enhancing existing product delivery work cycles.
  • Lead SaaS application visibility and performance monitoring in hybrid enterprise to accelerate adoption of cloud.
  • Manage requirements capture, engineering and QA schedules, feature stability and iterative feature revisions.
  • Show more

Product manager vs senior product manager skills

Common product manager skills
  • Product Management, 11%
  • QA, 5%
  • Product Strategy, 5%
  • Project Management, 4%
  • Market Research, 4%
  • User Stories, 4%
Common senior product manager skills
  • Product Management, 11%
  • Cloud, 6%
  • Product Strategy, 4%
  • User Stories, 4%
  • Product Vision, 4%
  • Product Roadmap, 4%

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