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

What is a senior product developer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted experts

Brian Glas,

Christian Hansen Ph.D.

Senior product developers oversee the process of product development. You will be responsible for facilitating product development by conducting research, collaborating with manufacturing and technical specialists to develop prototypes, and seeing to the final production of the product. Your job doesn't just end there, though; you will be required to manage budgets, ensure all operations are cost-effective, track the progress of the team with the product development operation and ensure that all company guidelines, policies, and standards are upheld.

You will also be required to develop partnerships and negotiate IP licensing. Beyond all this, you must ensure that adequate technical support and guidance are available to team members and the right working environment is provided for them.

An average senior product developer earns $52 weekly and about $113,000 yearly. The top skills for any senior product developer are product development, java, API, AWS, and other skills. The most commonly required educational qualification for this role is a bachelor's degree in computer science or a related discipline.

What general advice would you give to a senior product developer?

Brian Glas

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Union University

Build relationships: Different technologies will interest and challenge you, but throughout your career, you'll find that it's the relationships that are the most important. This is harder to grasp earlier in your career, but much easier to understand after 15-20 years.
Gain different perspectives: Spend time with people in other roles that your job interacts with, and gain a solid understanding of how they view things; this is most valuable for career progression and understanding of how your work fits into the big picture.

ScoreSenior Product DeveloperUS Average

Salary

8.0

Avg. Salary $114,125

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.0

Growth rate 21%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.17%

Asian 29.78%

Black or African American 4.61%

Hispanic or Latino 8.38%

Unknown 4.85%

White 52.21%

Gender

female 42.78%

male 57.22%

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

4.0

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.2

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.6

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior product developer

Explore senior product developer education requirements

Most common senior product developer degrees

Bachelor's

73.3 %

Master's

14.0 %

Associate

9.0 %

Start to develop specific senior product developer skills

Skills	Percentages
Product Development	7.07%
Java	6.53%
AWS	5.64%
Development Process	4.43%
API	4.39%

Complete relevant senior product developer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior 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 senior product developer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior product developer resumes.

Research senior product developer duties and responsibilities

Conduct market research, develop partnerships, manage financial administration, and negotiate IP licensing.
Design user friendly GUI, and telephony API applications.
Design and develop converter applications for SFTP client and server in JAVA.
Perform porting activities of original LogMaster Unix code base to work for NT.

Get senior product developer experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a senior product developer. The most common roles before becoming a senior product developer include product developer, senior software engineer team lead and software engineer.

Prepare your senior product developer resume

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

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