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The differences between project leaders and product owners can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become a project leader, becoming a product owner takes usually requires 8-10 years. Additionally, a project leader has an average salary of $98,559, which is higher than the $97,070 average annual salary of a product owner.
The top three skills for a project leader include project management, work ethic and C++. The most important skills for a product owner are user stories, acceptance criteria, and product backlog.
| Project Leader | Product Owner | |
| Yearly salary | $98,559 | $97,070 |
| Hourly rate | $47.38 | $46.67 |
| Growth rate | 9% | 10% |
| Number of jobs | 221,165 | 129,990 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Average age | 44 | 39 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 10 |
A project leader is responsible for supervising the team and managing the distribution of tasks to ensure the project's success with the highest efficiency and accuracy. Duties of a project leader include motivating the team, managing the team's needs and concerns, providing effective strategies to improve the team's performance, creating reports, monitoring the team's progress, and maintaining the coordination between team members. A project leader should have exceptional leadership skills to handle the team's operation and identify areas of improvement to deliver excellent results.
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.
Project leaders and product owners have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Project Leader | Product Owner | |
| Average salary | $98,559 | $97,070 |
| Salary range | Between $70,000 And $138,000 | Between $71,000 And $130,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | San Francisco, CA |
| Highest paying state | California | California |
| Best paying company | Boston Consulting Group | ORIX USA |
| Best paying industry | Professional | Manufacturing |
There are a few differences between a project leader and a product owner in terms of educational background:
| Project Leader | Product Owner | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | University of Georgia |
Here are the differences between project leaders' and product owners' demographics:
| Project Leader | Product Owner | |
| Average age | 44 | 39 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 69.0% Female, 31.0% | Male, 64.3% Female, 35.7% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% | 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 | 11% | 10% |