The Market for Product Owners Is On Fire! How Can You Benefit From It?
The world has thousands of open positions for Product Owners. If you want to become a Product Owner, that’s your chance!
The world has thousands of open positions for Product Owners. If you want to become a Product Owner, here’s your chance!

“Product Owner is not a job! It’s only a role inside Scrum. Product Manager is the real job.”
“If you are a Product Owner, you should be worried. The days of your position are coming to an end.”
“Don’t embarrass yourself. Product Owner is not a position for LinkedIn.”
I’ve stumbled upon such sentences multiple times. Authors like Marty Cagan and Melissa Perri insist on it. But does it resonate with the market? You can draw your conclusions. Wherever you are, go to LinkedIn and search for Product Owners in Jobs. You will find thousands of open positions waiting for you.
The market for Product Owners is not dying, on the contrary, it’s on fire! If you want to become a Product Owner, there’s no better time than now!
How Is the Market for Product Owners?
I am passionate about the Product Owner role. I think it’s exciting and meaningful; I’ve been doing that for almost a decade. As Product Owners, we have the chance to make the lives of people better.
When I hear people saying that the Product Owner job will soon be extinguished, it annoys me a lot. But before accepting such statements as a hard fact, I decided to evaluate what the market is searching for. My research is quite motivating. The market for the Product Owner is really hot. The demand is growing significantly.
Let me make it more concrete. I went to LinkedIn to understand what the market wants. I found the following:
European Union: 28.160 open positions in total, while last month, 22.240 positions were created.
USA: 34.831 open positions in total, where 26.127 were open last month.


Given such numbers, I don’t think the Product Owner role is dying. Actually, we face a lack of enough qualified professionals to match the market’s demand. Being a Product Owner is a challenging job. As a Product Owner, you have tons of responsibilities on your shoulders. But it’s gratifying to lead teams on building meaningful solutions.
“At the end of the day, your job isn’t to get the requirements right — your job is to change the world.” — Jeff Patton
What Skills Do the Market Expect From a Product Owner?
Companies don’t have a shared understanding of what a Product Owner is. Therefore, you can find completely different expectations among companies. But some expectations are present almost everywhere.
I evaluated thirty positions to create a clear picture. My quick research consists of ten job descriptions from the USA, UK, and European Union. You can see the result in the following graph.
Now, let me clarify the meaning of each term:
Technical Knowledge: software development skills. For example, Java, Mongo DB, and so on.
Track KPIs: ability to monitor Key Performance Indicators and define which ones will help make better decisions.
Decision Making: craft the Product Vision. Decides which problems worth solving. Decide what to do as well as what not to do.
Discovery Process: know-how on discovering the users’ real needs. Ability to empathize with the end-users to identify opportunities to build a meaningful product or service.
Prioritization: leading the team in a unique direction. The Product Owner is empowered to prioritize what will happen when and what will not happen.
Agile Knowledge: mastering of Agile Frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, LeSS, and so on.
User Stories Writing: experience in maintaining the Product Backlog Items within the User Story format.
Product Backlog Management: accountable for the Product Backlog. Responsible for maintaining the Product Backlog relevant and accurate.
Great Communication Skills: master communication among multiple audiences. For example, developers, executives, stakeholders, end-users, and so on.
In my opinion, some expectations are not aligned with the Product Owner’s responsibilities. For example, the Product Owner doesn’t need to be technical to succeed. Although technical knowledge sometimes helps to understand the Development Team, it may lead Product Owners to focus on solutions instead of problems. I also think many companies are ignoring the Discovery Process, which is vital to build relevant products.
Regardless of the companies’ confusions of the Product Owner role, thousands of opportunities are available for you. It’s up to you if you want to become a Product Owner or not. Opportunities are available everywhere in the world. If you want to understand more practical aspects, I wrote one article about the vital skills to thrive as a Product Owner.
Which skills do you need to succeed as a Product Owner?
The six skills that will help you to overcome the daily challenges of being a Product Ownermedium.com
What Is the Average Salary for Product Owners?
The market for Product Owners is quite competitive in terms of salary. The demand is higher than the availability of qualified people. Therefore, companies fight for great professionals.
As you can expect, the salary varies significantly. Also, it depends on your experience and ability to negotiate the salary. To give you an overview, I did a quick research considering an intermediate Product Owner (from 2 to 3 years experience in this job) in some countries:
Germany: €60.654 year on average plus a bonus of around €5K.
USA: $85.835 per year on average plus a bonus of around $7K.
Australia: AU$108.451 per year on average plus a bonus of around AU$9,5K.
You can find more details in the following images.



Becoming a Product Owner
If you want to be a Product Owner, salary shouldn’t be your driver. It’s a daunting and demanding job. To succeed as a Product Owner, you should have some specific skills. For example, how would you answer the following questions?
Do you enjoy talking to many people every day?
Are you ready for numerous conflicts?
Do you enjoy leading meetings?
Do you listen more than you talk?
Are you good at negotiating?
Are you ready to make decisions at any time?
If you’ve answered yes to all questions, being a Product Owner is going to be a pleasurable journey for you. But if you’ve answered no to some of the questions, then you should be prepared to move out of your comfort zone to be a successful Product Owner.
If you want to know what awaits you as a Product Owner, I recommend the following article.
Do You Want to be a Product Owner? You Better Know What Awaits!
Understand what is not said about being a Product Owner.medium.com
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