Project managers need to know what their worth is — and make others know it, as well. Here’s a look at project manager compensation, skills that increase a project manager’s pay scale, and how to negotiate a more competitive project manager income.
Project managers are the front-line officers of the modern white-collar workforce who plan and organize projects, and then shepherd them to completion, making sure they don’t take too long or run over budget. If you’re in this crucial position, you may rightfully feel it’s time to have your role recognized with improved compensation, either from your current employer or somewhere new.
How much does a project manager earn?
Project manager salaries vary widely by industry and geography. According to April 2024 estimates from Payscale, the average annual salary for a project manager in the US is $93,600, with average bonuses ranging from $2,000 to $17,000, and commissions from $15,000 to $25,000. And depending on where you are in your project manager career, pay by experience currently shows:
Entry level with one year or less experience: $66,000
Early career with one to four years experience: $78,000
Mid career with five to nine years experience: $96,000
Late career with 10-19 years experience: $108,000
Experienced with 20 or more years experience: $117,000
As an example of pay range within experience, a mid-career project manager in New York can expect to earn $113,000 annually while someone with equivalent experience in Houston can expect $100,000.
So, what’s the best way for a project manager to boost income? We spoke to a range of career specialists and coaches, along with project managers themselves or people who have supervised them, to find out how to charge up your career and increase your salary as a project manager. There are several routes to a bigger payday, but most of them involve making sure the work you do and value you bring is visible, beginning with having the right mix of skills.
What skills do highly paid project managers have?
Today’s best paid project managers are expected to be equipped with a broad range of technical and soft skills. Compensation, of course, is commensurate with particular industries, but for the purposes of CIO.com readers, here are some of the best-paying in-demand skills for project managers in the technology industry today:
Effective communication: Considering communication plays a significant role in managing projects, teams, and other stakeholders, it’s one of the essential skills for effective project managers. Communication doesn’t just mean being a stellar facilitator, speaker, or writer; it requires good listening skills, too.
Requisite agility: Managing change and uncertainty — the largest factors in determining the outcome of projects today and likely well into the future. It’s the ability to make fast, flexible changes based on current or future internal and external situations.
Business-partner leadership: Top-level project managers bring to their roles higher-level strategic leadership skills in addition to technical management skills. This provides significant advantages for organizations of all sizes, as there are complex factors that can negatively impact projects of all types.
Stakeholder engagement: Project managers work with numerous stakeholders from various departments within and outside their organizations, and those who manage those relationships best understand each stakeholder’s perspective.
Tool insight: Project managers can use various methodologies to move a project forward, and use different controls to mitigate risks. Each tool or technique may be better suited for some situations rather than another. Understanding those points is essential.
A success-driven mindset: Effective project managers believe in their work, and are fully vested in seeing a project through, and even to post-production success. This mindset helps achieve the best results throughout the project.
Behavioral project management skills: Most project work is rooted in human factors, so it makes sense that behavioral methods play a vital role to help predict and deliver projects more successfully.
What steps should a project manager take to earn more?
To negotiate a better pay package, it’s best — and sometimes most difficult — to have a good look in the proverbial mirror to find out what you want, and if you can back those ambitions with evidence to not only support your case, but convince people you deserve what you’re asking for. If not, more work needs to be done. Equip yourself with additional credentials or skills to make a water-tight case. If something is lacking or missing altogether, use these five tips as a guide to help put you on a more secure path to achieving your goals.
1. Ask (in a smart way)
First thing’s first: Most of the time, you’re not going to have a big pay raise just handed to you. “In order to get more money, you need to ask for it,” says Tracy Podell, senior partner at Evolution, a professional coaching and leadership development company. “You can’t assume people will see the great job you’re doing and then just automatically give you a raise.”
That doesn’t mean you should just demand a spur-of-the-moment raise, of course. Going for a raise involves strategic planning, just as any project you manage would. The first thing you need is data. “Research the typical salary range for your role in your industry and location,” Podell says. “This gives you a good range for your current market value.”
Perhaps the biggest question is whether to seek a pay boost at your current employer, or decide to look elsewhere. Which you choose will depend on your situation and what internal opportunities are available. “Even a lateral move in the organization chart can come with a salary boost, especially if the company is evaluating both internal and external candidates,” says David Ciccarelli, tech entrepreneur and former CEO of professional voice talent marketplace, Voices.
On the other hand, as Debra Wheatman, president at career development company Careers Done Write, explains, “depending on how long someone’s been in a role, they might find the market has surpassed them in that they’re no longer in a competitive range for salary. In this case, switching to a new company is a way to realize a significant boost in pay.”
Even if a permanent bump in salary isn’t on the table at your company, Ciccarelli suggests negotiating a one-time bonus. “If you’re confident in your abilities, propose a pay-for-performance bonus, a monetary sum that’s paid upon completion of a project,” he says. “To really demonstrate your ability to complete a project on time, consider a declining bonus for each week or month that it runs over the deadline.”
2. Document your worth
Most people looking for improved pay want it on an ongoing basis, and making that case requires laying the groundwork. “Throughout the year, you should review milestones and positive achievements with your supervisor,” says Wheatman. “This will ensure you share the most relevant and worthwhile achievements, and help set the tone for the coming annual appraisal period. You shouldn’t wait until the annual appraisal period to share this information or ask for a raise. The table should be set before this in terms of accomplishments, and a discussion about salary and expectations. Once the appraisal period occurs, the salary pool has already been approved, which is why having conversations in advance is so critical.”
To keep track of how you’re going to sell yourself — to your current boss or potential new one — you need to document your successes. “My advice is to keep a ‘brag folder’ along the way,” says Mandy Bennett, senior product marketing manager at tech services provider Scorpion. “By the time your performance is evaluated, your business case for the salary boost has already been built.”
Sara Hutchison, an executive résumé writer with a background in working with IT professionals, offers some advice on what sort of things you should brag about. “When you can, track in detailed times you saved a project from going over on cost or schedule,” she says, “or whenever you added clarity to a project that prevented a team from moving in the wrong direction. When your unique expertise or ability to keep everything running smoothly is the reason something went well or exceeded expectations, document that.”
And Elizabeth Harrin, director at RebelsGuideToPM, an education and mentoring site for project managers, says that, when keeping track of your wins, you don’t want people to just take your word for it. “Start collecting all the nice comments from customers,” she says. “Ask for testimonials. Get recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. It’s okay to ask for feedback in writing, then file that away to share with your boss as evidence you’re delivering successful projects.”
[Related reading: 5 project management résumé tips]
3. Upskill yourself
In the process of documenting your own performance, you may decide your case for a salary raise isn’t quite ready. Experts suggest concrete steps to elevate your profile and help make the case for an internal raise or a new job with a bigger salary.
One knock against project managers is that they can be generalists who don’t know the details of how the people they manage do their jobs. This knowledge gap can be particularly problematic in IT. “When you project manage developers, it’s hard to manage without having the knowledge yourself,” says Lovisa Stenbäcken Stjernlöf, project manager at IT security company Truesec. “A way to push your career along could be to learn basic coding along with whatever tools developers use at your company. It’s hard to project manage something when you don’t know what it is. You’ll be dependent on asking your resources, which isn’t sustainable.”
If you’re looking to improve your skills, she suggests using your strategic knowledge of your field to plan. “Learn an area of IT that’s high in demand or more difficult,” she says. “For instance, with Salesforce, it’s hard to find people for us to hire, and the ones out there are very highly paid. Salesforce is also good because they have a free learning platform for anyone to use, so you can learn Salesforce and then get a much higher paying job.”
Tim Bailey, VP at Deltek Professional Services, points out there are project manager-specific technical skills that can boost your standing. “Become an expert in leading PM software, including MS Project or Deltek Cobra,” he suggests, “and gain experience in project, program, and portfolio management. Developing industry and/or product expertise is also important, as there’s high demand for PMs who know specific ERP or professional services automation tools. The most valuable PMs have enough knowledge about the software and can be valuable in the implementation cycles.”
That said, a project manager job is very people-oriented; if you don’t have people skills, you need to develop them, fast. “Spreadsheets, tasks, and calendars will always be integral parts of project management,” says Dave Garrett, senior advisor to the CEO at the Project Management Institute (PMI). “But project managers must be able to think with big pictures in mind and contribute to overarching organizational strategy, something that’s sure to help them grow in their career and increase their earning power. Developing interpersonal or ‘power’ skills, like collaborative leadership, problem-solving, and empathy, in addition to more technical skills, will make project managers infinitely more hirable.”
Ultimately, this isn’t an either/or question. “To me, PMs are the great translators of big projects,” says résumé writer Hutchison. “They’re the ones going between the technical and non-technical teams. Those who can speak both languages are highly valuable.”
4. Get educated and certified
One way to make clear what skills you’ve gained is to go after relevant certifications — and there are plenty in the project management field. “The range of certifications available has expanded in recent years,” says Hutchison, who is CompTIA Project+ certified. “When I have a project manager client and I’m working on their résumé, it always helps to boost their profile when we can mention a recent cert. Lean Six Sigma, CompTIA Project+, and Google Project Management are all great for those wanting to gain a cert and pivot into a full-time PM role.”
One of the reasons these certifications are valuable is because many have formal training content associated with them. “No single project management job is the same, but I see that some formal training helps as well,” says Devin Schumacher, founder of SEO research company SERP Co. “Google, for example, has a project management online course certificate in Coursera, where their experience from within Google has been condensed and conceptualized into four to five courses. I always endorse that my new project management hires take these modules to serve as a common benchmark.”
That said, a cert — or even a degree — on its own doesn’t necessary tell the whole story, says Nate Tsang, CEO of Wall Street Zen, a stock research platform. “You get the biggest salary boost by having a project management professional (PMP) certification or MBA, but only after you’ve racked up real experience working as a PM,” he says. Still, these certs are a good signal to your current, or potential future, employer that you want to take on more responsibilities or oversee a larger team.”
5. Become an asset
Many experts say that getting a project manager salary boost requires operating at a higher level and shifting from a tactical to a strategic mindset.
“Start using your spare time at work to focus less on the execution of the operations you’ve been doing, and more on the high-level strategy of how to make it better,” says Brandon Paul Llewellyn, project manager at consultancy Parakeeto. “Sometimes, nobody knows the process better than you — you’re the most equipped to find those redundancies or bottlenecks. Expose them, bring them up with your management, and be prepared to offer insight on how to make things better.”
Getting the most value to your position, with ambitions to boost pay, it’s important to understand the project from the overarching business viewpoint. “While staying on track with timelines, budgets, and project objectives is a major priority, it’s just as important to see the bigger picture and ensure you meet project expectations that align and play into the company’s overall business goals,” says tech business consultant Tushar Gadhia. “Project managers should continuously broaden and evaluate their scope to determine if the business is properly using technology as an enabler while meeting both project needs and organizational objectives.”
In other words, to be paid more, make yourself more valuable. Your boss, and their bosses, are the people you have to make recognize that value.
“The PMs who are able to negotiate higher salaries are those who genuinely make the job easy for supervisors like me,” says Schumacher. “They should unload a lot of the heavy lifting with good organizational skills, anticipate problems instead of waiting for them to explode, and have an agile mindset when bad things happen and derail projects.”
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