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Technical product manager vs product owner

The differences between technical product managers and product owners can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 8-10 years to become both a technical product manager and a product owner. Additionally, a technical product manager has an average salary of $120,052, which is higher than the $97,070 average annual salary of a product owner.

The top three skills for a technical product manager include technical product, product management and cloud. The most important skills for a product owner are user stories, acceptance criteria, and product backlog.

Technical product manager vs product owner overview

Technical Product ManagerProduct Owner
Yearly salary$120,052$97,070
Hourly rate$57.72$46.67
Growth rate10%10%
Number of jobs185,305129,990
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 69%Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Average age3939
Years of experience1010

What does a technical product manager do?

A technical product manager's responsibilities revolve around performing research and analysis to identify consumers' needs, utilizing new technologies to develop strategies and products, coordinating with different teams, and monitoring the entire progress of production. There are also instances when a technical product manager must perform clerical tasks such as producing reports, preparing presentations, responding to issues and concerns promptly, and managing schedules. Furthermore, as a manager, it is essential to lead and encourage staff to meet goals while implementing the company's policies and regulations.

What does a product owner do?

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.

Technical product manager vs product owner salary

Technical product managers and product owners have different pay scales, as shown below.

Technical Product ManagerProduct Owner
Average salary$120,052$97,070
Salary rangeBetween $89,000 And $161,000Between $71,000 And $130,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateCaliforniaCalifornia
Best paying companyMetaORIX USA
Best paying industryTechnologyManufacturing

Differences between technical product manager and product owner education

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

Technical Product ManagerProduct Owner
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 69%Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Most common majorBusinessBusiness
Most common collegeUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia

Technical product manager vs product owner demographics

Here are the differences between technical product managers' and product owners' demographics:

Technical Product ManagerProduct Owner
Average age3939
Gender ratioMale, 75.8% Female, 24.2%Male, 64.3% Female, 35.7%
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 technical product manager and product owner duties and responsibilities

Technical product manager example responsibilities.

  • Manage user interface design for PC products, working with designers and developers to create look and feel.
  • Manage the UI domain team encompassing user interface functionality, global behavior definitions, new user paradigms and concepts.
  • Task with product ownership; implement and improve the product operations following SDLC methodologies, managing and meeting the stakeholder expectations.
  • Design and lead implementation of web-base Java application for high volume transaction processing.
  • Manage horizontal UX prototyping resource needs, implementing effective collaborative expectations and cross-product timeline allocation strategies.
  • Involve championing the development of product requirements, use cases, and user stories for a target cloud document delivery service.
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Product owner example responsibilities.

  • Manage remote teams to port core and legacy components into AWS.
  • Manage a global team to create Java base EDI / XML / XSL mapping suite.
  • Gather and define requirements for the BSS require to operate and manage the SaaS offerings.
  • Serve as technical contact for affiliate partners during API integration and create and manage API documentation.
  • Manage the team to redesign the Java base desktop trading community management product to a web base portal.
  • Used Microsoft TFS to manage project phases, sprints and burn down chart of various stages of SDLC.
  • Show more

Technical product manager vs product owner skills

Common technical product manager skills
  • Technical Product, 10%
  • Product Management, 7%
  • Cloud, 6%
  • User Stories, 5%
  • Project Management, 4%
  • Scrum, 4%
Common product owner skills
  • User Stories, 10%
  • Acceptance Criteria, 7%
  • Product Backlog, 5%
  • Analytics, 5%
  • Product Management, 4%
  • EPICS, 4%

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