Product Owner
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
A Product Owner is a member of the product development team who writes user stories and defines the tasks needed for engineers to work using the Agile Development Framework.
Job Outlook
There were 954 Product Owner job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 20906 in the United States.
In combination with other careers in the Product Owner industry, which includes the Product Owner career, the following graph shows the number of people employed for each year since 2016:
Salary
Many new Product Owner jobs have salaries estimated to be in the following ranges, based on the requirements and responsibilities listed in job postings from the past year.
National
The average estimated salary in the United States for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $103,216.
State
The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $101,843.
Percentiles represent the percentage that is lower than the value. For example, 25% of estimated salaries for Product Owner postings in the United States in the past year were lower than $89,756.
Education and Experience
Posted Product Owner jobs typically require the following level of education. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.
| Education Level | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Associate's Degree | 0% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 68.47% |
| Master's Degree | 14.59% |
| Doctoral Degree | 0.87% |
| Other | 7.88% |
Posted Product Owner jobs typically require the following number of years of experience. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Years of Experience | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0 to 2 years | 15.05% |
| 3 to 5 years | 52.41% |
| 6 to 8 years | 23.48% |
| 9+ years | 9.06% |
Skills
Below are listings of the most common general and specialized skills Product Owner positions expect applicants to have as well as the most common skills that distinguish individuals from their peers. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is also listed.
Baseline Skills
A skill that is required across a broad range of occupations, including this one.
- Communication (%)
- Leadership (%)
- Prioritization (%)
- Management (%)
- Problem Solving (%)
- Planning (%)
- Customer Service (%)
- Innovation (%)
- Operations (%)
- Influencing Skills (%)
Defining Skills
A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.
- Scrum (Software Development) (90.42%)
- Agile Methodology (78.4%)
- User Story (59.74%)
- Product Management (54.79%)
- Product Roadmaps (34.04%)
- New Product Development (31.56%)
- Project Management (26.1%)
- JIRA (31.51%)
- User Experience (UX) (26.68%)
- Computer Science (24.42%)
- Business Requirements (24.06%)
Necessary Skills
A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.
- Business Valuation (21.1%)
- Product Strategy (21.42%)
- Sprint Planning (23.35%)
- Product Requirements (16.63%)
- Marketing (14.82%)
- Software Development (14.64%)
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) (16.69%)
- Workflow Management (15.53%)
- Business Process (13.28%)
- Atlassian Confluence (14.69%)
- Data Analysis (13.92%)
- Application Programming Interface (API) (12.67%)
- Product Lifecycle Management (13.64%)
- Sprint Retrospectives (12.65%)
- Continuous Improvement Process (14.43%)
- Business Strategies (10.39%)
- Business Analysis (10.95%)
- Product Delivery (12.07%)
- Agile Software Development (8.56%)
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT) (10.5%)
- Financial Services (10.31%)
- Backlogs (9.85%)
- SQL (Programming Language) (8.73%)
- Systems Development Life Cycle (7.11%)
- Functional Requirement (4.77%)
- Process Improvement (7.48%)
- Acceptance Testing (8.99%)
Distinguishing Skills
A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.
- Digital Product Management (%)
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is listed.
- Product Backlog Grooming (%)
- Computer Science (%)
- Project Management (%)
- Scrum (Software Development) (%)
- Release Notes (%)
Alternative Job Titles
Sometimes employers post jobs with Product Owner skills but a different job title. Some common alternative job titles include:
- Technical Product Owner
- Digital Product Owner
- Agile Product Owner
- Product Analyst
- IT Product Owner
- Lead Product Owner
- Software Product Owner
- Development Product Owner
- Experience Coordinator
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring occupations with similar skills, you may want to research the following job titles. Note that we only list occupations that have at least one corresponding NC State Online and Distance Education program.
Common Employers
Here are the employers that have posted the most Product Owner jobs in the past year along with how many they have posted.
United States
- Prime Therapeutics (616)
- CVS Health (426)
- Synchrony (361)
- Centerwell Limited Partnership (284)
- Eliassen Group (279)
- Johnson & Johnson (267)
- Insight Global (250)
- Humana (234)
- Ericsson (211)
- Evolent (205)
North Carolina
- Truist Financial (52)
- Genesis10 (32)
- Randstad (27)
- Synchrony (26)
- USAA (18)
- Wells Fargo (18)
- Insight Global (15)
- Prime Therapeutics (15)
- BD (13)
- TEKsystems (12)
NC State Programs Relevant to this Career
If you are interested in preparing for a career in this field, the following NC State Online and Distance Education programs offer a great place to start!
All wages, job posting statistics, employment trend projections, and information about skill desirability on this page represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is provided by and downloaded regularly from Lightcast. For more information about how Lightcast gathers data and what it represents, see Lightcast Data: Basic Overview on Lightcast's Knowledge Base website.