Chief Product Officer vs IT Director: Salary & Career Benchmarks in Australia

In Australia, Chief Product Officer roles typically command a higher median salary than IT Director positions. According to our 2026 live benchmark data, a mid-level Chief Product Officer earns a median salary of A$342K, whereas a IT Director brings in roughly A$212K (a gap of A$130K at the median).

Seniority, tech stack, and location all move this gap. Senior practitioners in either discipline can exceed the upper range through specialist skills. See the skills premium section below for the specific certifications and tools that push offers to the top of the range.

While both positions are vital to a modern tech organisation, Chief Product Officer and IT Director have fundamentally different daily workflows.

Chief Product Officer focuses primarily on owning product strategy, roadmap, and product-led growth agenda, leading the product management function and aligning every product decision with customer insight and business objectives. Day-to-day work revolves around setting product vision aligned with CEO and board, managing the product portfolio and roadmap prioritisation, leading a team of Product Managers and Directors, partnering with engineering and design leadership, monitoring product performance and growth metrics, building key customer relationships, and representing the product function to investors.

IT Director focuses on holding executive accountability for the full technology function, setting IT strategy and multi-year roadmap, leading IT leadership teams, and ensuring technology enables business objectives. Their time is spent setting IT strategy and multi-year technology roadmap, leading the IT leadership team across infrastructure, applications, support, security, and projects, managing IT operating budget and capital investment, presenting IT strategy and performance to the board, overseeing technology transformation programmes, managing strategic vendor relationships, ensuring cybersecurity and compliance posture, and driving digital transformation initiatives.

Transitioning between these two paths is achievable but requires targeted upskilling.

Moving from Chief Product Officer to IT Director: Heads of IT, Heads of Infrastructure, or Heads of Engineering who develop board-level engagement and full IT function accountability, and senior IT consultants moving into direct leadership roles.

Moving from IT Director to Chief Product Officer: VP of Product, Head of Product, Director of Product Management, and senior product managers with 3 or more years of product leadership experience at scaleup or enterprise level.

Neither path requires starting from scratch. Professionals in both roles share underlying technology fluency; the gap is usually domain knowledge and specific tooling rather than core engineering fundamentals.

In Australia in 2026, both roles are seeing demand, but with different drivers.

Chief Product Officer demand is high, particularly in . IT Director demand is high, concentrated in .

Workspace flexibility significantly impacts total compensation value in Australia.

Chief Product Officer roles score 55% on our remote-friendliness index (Hybrid). This is because . Where in-office attendance is required, it is typically driven by .

IT Director roles score 55% (Hybrid). is the primary driver of flexibility. When office days are required, it is usually for .