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Senior product manager vs product director

The differences between senior product managers and product directors 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 manager and a product director. Additionally, a product director has an average salary of $148,910, which is higher than the $133,868 average annual salary of a senior product manager.

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

Senior product manager vs product director overview

Senior Product ManagerProduct Director
Yearly salary$133,868$148,910
Hourly rate$64.36$71.59
Growth rate10%10%
Number of jobs119,025125,200
Job satisfaction4-
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 72%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3939
Years of experience1010

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.

What does a product director do?

The duties of a product director depend on one's place or industry of employment. Typically, their responsibilities revolve around overseeing the product development operations to ensure smooth flow and efficiency, devise strategies to improve processes, gather relevant data such as sales and customer feedback, and coordinate with different departments in developing new products and services. Furthermore, as a director, it is essential to lead and encourage departments to meet goals, all while implementing the company's policies and regulations, including its mission and vision.

Senior product manager vs product director salary

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

Senior Product ManagerProduct Director
Average salary$133,868$148,910
Salary rangeBetween $98,000 And $182,000Between $104,000 And $212,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateCaliforniaCalifornia
Best paying companyRokuMeta
Best paying industryStart-upInternet

Differences between senior product manager and product director education

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

Senior Product ManagerProduct Director
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 72%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorBusinessBusiness
Most common collegeUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia

Senior product manager vs product director demographics

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

Senior Product ManagerProduct Director
Average age3939
Gender ratioMale, 68.5% Female, 31.5%Male, 72.4% Female, 27.6%
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 manager and product director duties and responsibilities

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 director example responsibilities.

  • Lead the overall site ISO implementation.
  • Manage Salesforce integration to SaaS platform and client systems.
  • Lead SaaS application visibility and performance monitoring in hybrid enterprise to accelerate adoption of cloud.
  • Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.
  • Interact with FDA, CDC, and other external agencies as required to introduce novel molecular products into the market.
  • Spearhead transformation of the organization to modern best practices, ISO & lean manufacturing.
  • Show more

Senior product manager vs product director skills

Common senior product manager skills
  • Product Management, 11%
  • Cloud, 6%
  • Product Strategy, 4%
  • User Stories, 4%
  • Product Vision, 4%
  • Product Roadmap, 4%
Common product director skills
  • Product Management, 10%
  • Product Strategy, 6%
  • Project Management, 6%
  • Product Roadmap, 5%
  • Product Design, 4%
  • Software Development, 4%

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