Senior Project Manager

Career Area: Business Management and Operations

Occupation Group: Project and Program Managers

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Senior Project Manager earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $100,755

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $101,455

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Manages work on projects with a defined scope, start and completion point; may manage complex projects or more than one project at a time. Provides mentoring to other project managers and team members. Leads project teams, manages project budgets and schedules; manages contractors and communications with stakeholders. May manage projects in construction, information technology or in other industries.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Senior Project Manager is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
• Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
• Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.
• Project Planning and Development Skills: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
• Microsoft Project: Microsoft Project is a project management software product, developed and sold by Microsoft.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Senior Project Manager that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Microsoft Visio: Microsoft Visio ( VIZ-ee-oh) (formerly Microsoft Office Visio) is a diagramming and vector graphics application and is part of the Microsoft Office family.
• Atlassian JIRA: Jira ( JEE-rah) (stylized JIRA) is a proprietary issue tracking product, developed by Atlassian.
• Waterfall Development Process: Working experience of the Waterfall Development Process. In software development, it tends to be among the less iterative and flexible approaches, as progress flows in largely one direction through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, deployment and maintenance.
• Lifecycle Management: In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from inception, through engineering design and manufacture, to service and disposal of manufactured products.
• Resource Management: In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective development of an organization's resources when they are needed.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Senior Project Manager
• Project Manager III
• Project Manager Senior
• Project Manager IV
• Senior Technical Project Manager

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Director of Project Management
• Operations Project Manager
• Director of Program Management