How to Become a Product Lead: The Complete Guide

As more and more companies rely on these coveted professionals to drive innovation and success, there’s never been a better time to break into the field.

If you’re thinking about a career in product management, you’ve come to the right place. This guide will cover absolutely everything you need to know to get started—even if you don’t have any prior experience.

By the end, you’ll know exactly what steps to take to get your product management career off the ground.

Here’s how we’ve structured our guide. If you’d like to skip ahead to a specific section, just use the clickable menu:

A product lead plays a critical role in the success of a company’s products. As a product lead, you oversee the entire product lifecycle from ideation to launch and iteration. You bridge the gap between customers, engineering, design and other teams to bring products to market that deliver value.

If you’re interested in product development and have leadership abilities, becoming a product lead can be a rewarding career path In this complete guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to become a successful product lead.

What Does a Product Lead Do?

Before diving into how to become a product lead. let’s look at what a product lead’s day-to-day responsibilities entail

Develop product strategy and vision based on market analysis, customer feedback, and company goals
Lead cross-functional teams including engineering, design, marketing, and more through the product development process
Create roadmaps and write specifications for new products and features
Prioritize features and functionality based on resources, timeline, and impact
Conduct user research through surveys, interviews, and usability studies
Analyze metrics and data to inform decisions and measure product performance
Communicate product plans and updates to stakeholders and leadership
Manage product launches including development, marketing, and sales enablement
Oversee product changes and iterations to improve customer experience

Skills and Qualities of a Successful Product Lead

To determine if a product lead role is right for you, assess if you possess some of the key skills and qualities required:

Leadership Skills

A product lead needs to be able to inspire teams and rally them around a shared vision. Strong communication and relationship-building abilities are essential to lead cross-functional groups effectively.

Technical Knowledge

While not expected to be an engineer, a product lead should have a solid grasp of technical concepts and challenges to guide engineering decisions and trade-offs.

Data-driven Mindset

Product leads rely heavily on data from customer research, product analytics, market analysis, and other sources to make strategic decisions. Being metrics-focused and data-driven is critical.

Product Vision

Successful product leads have a keen sense for developing product strategy and envisioning solutions that will create value for users and move the business forward.

Business Acumen

Understanding the company’s overall business goals, competitors, and industry landscape allows a product lead to develop aligned strategies and prioritize effectively.

Agile Approach

Due to rapid change, product leads must be comfortable with ambiguity and able to adapt plans iteratively and quickly based on new learnings.

Educational Backgrounds for Product Leads

While some product leads take unconventional paths, most have an educational background in technology, business, design, or marketing. Common degree choices include:

Computer Science or Engineering: Technical degrees provide useful foundations in how products are built.
Business Administration: Understanding business strategy helps align product plans.
Design: A design background enables user-centered design thinking.
Marketing: Knowledge of customers, positioning, and messaging informs product development.

Other common majors for aspiring product leads include economics, psychology, industrial design, and communications. Formal education is just one part of the journey, however. The hands-on experiences and skills you develop along the way also matter tremendously.

How to Gain the Necessary Product Lead Experience

Education can only take you so far. The best product leads have experience actually building, designing, and marketing products. Here are some roles that can provide relevant experience:

Product Manager: This role works closely with the product lead and gets hands-on product management experience.
UX Designer: Gain first-hand exposure to creating user-centered designs.
Data Analyst: Develop data analysis skills and learn how to interpret product metrics.
Software Engineer: Technical knowledge and understanding of engineering processes is useful.
Product Marketing Manager: Build knowledge of positioning products and generating adoption.
Scrum Master: Experience facilitating Agile product development teams.

While these roles provide relevant experience, any cross-functional role that allows you to contribute hands-on to product development can be valuable. Seek out opportunities to get involved in different facets of product management like research, design collaboration, technical planning, and launch go-to-market strategy.

Developing Leadership Skills

Beyond product development skills, leadership capabilities are equally critical for a product lead. Here are some ways to build vital leadership skills:

Take on leadership roles in student organizations or extracurriculars. Running a club or coordinating a team project, for example, can teach you how to motivate and organize groups to achieve goals.
Volunteer to lead projects or teams at your job. Stepping up to lead shows initiative.
Enroll in classes on leadership, management, organizational psychology or related topics to build knowledge.
Find a mentor who can share their leadership wisdom and advice.
Read books and articles on leadership concepts like giving feedback, building trust, handling conflict, and emotional intelligence.
Assess your own leadership strengths and growth areas through 360 reviews or personality tests.
Observe great leaders you encounter and analyze what makes their leadership effective.

Developing leadership takes practice over time. Seek out opportunities to demonstrate and build those skills wherever you can.

How to Showcase Your Abilities to Land Product Lead Roles

Once you’ve gained sufficient experience and skills, how do you break into your first product lead position?

Develop a portfolio: Create a website or document that highlights your work on product development projects, key accomplishments, and leadership examples.
Contribute product ideas: Share product concepts or improvements during your current role, even if informal, to exhibit your strategic thinking.
Highlight leadership examples: Make sure your resume, portfolio, and interview answers emphasize real cases where you’ve led product initiatives or cross-functional teams.
Do informational interviews: Talk with product leaders to learn more about the role and get your foot in the door at companies you’re interested in.
Ace the interview: Come prepared with thoughtful ideas on the company’s product challenges and how you’d approach them as product lead.
Consider a more junior PO role first: Taking a product owner or associate product manager role can provide a stepping stone to lead positions.
Join product communities: Attend meetups and engage with product leaders through networking to increase visibility.
Consider incubators/accelerators: Some programs like Product School support launching product management careers.

With the right mix of education, experience, capabilities, and interview preparation, you can successfully transition into an exciting and meaningful role as a product lead.

Key Steps on How to Become a Product Lead

To summarize this guide on how to become a product lead, follow these key steps:

Earn a relevant degree in technology, business, design, marketing, or related fields to build foundational knowledge.
Gain hands-on experience in product development roles like product management, UX design, engineering, or marketing.
Develop critical leadership abilities through roles, coursework, mentors, and self-study.
Analyze your skills and address any gaps through training or volunteering for impactful projects.
Create a portfolio and resume tailored to product leadership opportunities.
Network and interview for entry-level and junior product roles to get your foot in the door.
Showcase leadership examples from your background during the interview process.
Continually seek new challenges to demonstrate readiness for leading products and teams.
Consider a formal program (optional) like Product School to help transition your career.
Land your first product lead role! Continue learning and leading bigger initiatives over time.

The path to becoming a product leader requires dedication but pays off in a meaningful role shaping the products of tomorrow. Follow these steps and invest the time needed to gain the right mix of skills through diverse experiences. Before long, you’ll be leading the next generation of innovative and impactful products.

how to become product lead

Build your product management portfolio

In addition to learning the necessary product management skills, you also need to demonstrate these skills to potential employers.

You can do this with your very own product management portfolio—a website which showcases projects where you’ve taken on the role of product manager (or at least applied and demonstrated the product manager mindset).

To build your product management portfolio, you’ll need to turn your projects into case studies and host them on your own website. A portfolio is also an excellent opportunity to share a little bit about who you are, your previous experience, and why you’re a great product manager.

As already mentioned, the best product management courses will include practical projects which you can put straight into your portfolio. And the best of the best courses will show you how to build your portfolio, too.

To get an idea of what your product management portfolio could look like, here are some examples:

Network in the field

Step five in learning how to become a product manager, is going out and meeting some of them in the wild.

Networking is especially important for new and aspiring product managers. It can open the door to new opportunities, and be a great source of product mentorship, advice, and industry insight. You’ll find it in all kinds of places from advice-filled Reddit forums, to local bars and cafés in your nearest city.

The prospect of networking can feel intimidating—especially if you’re brand new to the field and don’t have a natural “in”. But there are many ways to get started, and not all of them involve crowded rooms and awkward conversations.

Network in a way that feels comfortable and authentic for you. If you have product management colleagues you can connect with at work, reach out to them and ask for a quick coffee or video chat. Join online communities, attend local or virtual meet-ups and events, and connect with fellow aspiring product managers on your course.

Start early and small, and you’ll organically build a solid product management network. Here are some ways to get started:

How to Become a Product Manager in 2024

How do I become a product lead?

Becoming a product lead is difficult. You need to have a combination of experience, knowledge, and judgment to be effective in the role. With that in mind, here are four tips that will help you become a product lead and succeed once you get that role. By definition, a product lead is a very experienced product manager.

What makes a good lead?

Great design skills allow a lead to understand when a product works and when it doesn’t and helps them find methods for improvement. Communication: Leads communicate with many types of professionals and often lead teams during product development.

Do you need a certification to become a product lead?

Since practical experience is such a critical factor for product leads, you can’t expect to get a product lead role by taking a certification course. You also may not need a bachelor’s degree in something directly related to product. That said, continuous learning is key to becoming an effective product lead.

How to become a lead product manager?

On top of this, any modern product lead should have a working knowledge of product management software. Becoming a lead product manager is a matter of understanding how all the elements of product development work. Furthermore, it’s about being able to implement them in real time.