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Senior product line manager vs product lead

The differences between senior product line managers 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 senior product line manager and a product lead. Additionally, a senior product line manager has an average salary of $141,769, which is higher than the $118,828 average annual salary of a product lead.

The top three skills for a senior product line manager include product line, product management and cloud. The most important skills for a product lead are product management, project management, and architecture.

Senior product line manager vs product lead overview

Senior Product Line ManagerProduct Lead
Yearly salary$141,769$118,828
Hourly rate$68.16$57.13
Growth rate10%10%
Number of jobs158,62495,557
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 72%Bachelor's Degree, 66%
Average age3939
Years of experience1010

What does a senior product line manager do?

Senior Product Line Managers primarily provide an enterprise with product and market intelligence to increase their market share. It is their job to define the product, pricing, promotion strategies, and positioning of the company. They guide product line distribution and its activities to boost profitability and the development of new products. Part of their tasks is to maintain high-level profit margins in line with product revenue generation. Among the skills, they need to develop include market research, management, and communication.

What does a product lead do?

A product lead is responsible for monitoring the development of new products and services of an organization, starting from brand conceptualization to official market release and distribution. Product leads identify effective product management by conducting data analysis and evaluating market statistics of customer demands. They coordinate with the clients on their specifications and requirements, including the budget limit and timely deliverables. A product lead manages the brand promotion on media platforms, creating content that adheres to the target audience.

Senior product line manager vs product lead salary

Senior product line managers and product leads have different pay scales, as shown below.

Senior Product Line ManagerProduct Lead
Average salary$141,769$118,828
Salary rangeBetween $106,000 And $189,000Between $86,000 And $163,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateWashingtonCalifornia
Best paying companyQuidelAirbnb
Best paying industryEnergyHospitality

Differences between senior product line manager and product lead education

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

Senior Product Line ManagerProduct Lead
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 72%Bachelor's Degree, 66%
Most common majorElectrical EngineeringBusiness
Most common collegeUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia

Senior product line manager vs product lead demographics

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

Senior Product Line ManagerProduct Lead
Average age3939
Gender ratioMale, 80.5% Female, 19.5%Male, 71.1% Female, 28.9%
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 senior product line manager and product lead duties and responsibilities

Senior product line manager example responsibilities.

  • Lead market intelligence task-force and PLM teams.
  • Manage CRM implementation leading to efficient operations and improve customer care.
  • Maintain high product margins while generating the most product revenue within the Citrix SaaS division.
  • Use of business models to develop the business case and show the ROI for implementing systems-base approach.
  • Optimize ROI and capitalize new opportunities.
  • Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.
  • Show more

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.
  • Show more

Senior product line manager vs product lead skills

Common senior product line manager skills
  • Product Line, 13%
  • Product Management, 10%
  • Cloud, 9%
  • Lifecycle Management, 6%
  • Product Roadmap, 4%
  • Market Trends, 4%
Common product lead skills
  • Product Management, 9%
  • Project Management, 6%
  • Architecture, 5%
  • Digital Marketing, 5%
  • Lifecycle Management, 4%
  • Cloud, 4%

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