Chief Product Officer vs IT Director: Ireland, the UK, and Australia Salary & Career Benchmarks

In Ireland, 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 €165K, whereas a IT Director brings in roughly €142K (a gap of €23K at the median).

This difference narrows and widens depending on tech stack and location. Roles based in major hubs like Dublin typically pay a 15–25% premium to offset local cost-of-living pressures. Fully remote positions across Ireland tend to compress toward the national median. 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.

Essentially, Chief Product Officer tends to owning product strategy, while IT Director holding executive accountability for the full technology function.

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 Ireland in 2026, both roles are seeing strong demand, but with different drivers.

Chief Product Officer demand is high, particularly in Maturing Dublin tech ecosystem and product-led growth adoption across scaleup and enterprise technology companies. IT Director demand is high, concentrated in Digital transformation and the strategic importance of technology across mid-market, financial services, and public sector organisations.

IT Director shows sharper hiring velocity in specialist contexts, particularly as the 2026 AI and cloud transformation push continues across both markets.

Following widespread Return-to-Office mandates across Ireland in 2026, workspace flexibility significantly impacts total compensation values.

Chief Product Officer roles score 55% on our remote-friendliness index (Hybrid). This is because Product strategy, roadmap planning, and stakeholder management work well with hybrid arrangements. Many product leaders have established remote working cultures with their teams.. Where in-office attendance is required, it is typically driven by Customer discovery sessions, cross-functional alignment with engineering and commercial teams, and board-level product strategy discussions benefit from in-person presence..

IT Director roles score 55% (Hybrid). Strategic planning, vendor management, and team leadership can be performed effectively in hybrid arrangements. Most IT Directors operate 3 to 4 days per week on-site. is the primary driver of flexibility. When office days are required, it is usually for Board engagement, executive team participation, major incident management, and senior stakeholder relationships require regular in-person presence at the organisation's primary location..

For candidates weighing up the true financial value of an offer, our Remote vs. Hybrid Savings Calculator shows exactly how transit costs and commute time affect the real net income of any salary figure.