Project Manager Jobs

Yes! Provided you’ve got the skills you’ll need to succeed, embarking on a project management career is a strong career move. If you’re looking for an exciting, fast-paced job that will stretch your soft skills as much as your technical abilities, a PM job satisfies all of these requirements and so much more. Although a junior project manager may start out with more modest pay and projects, senior project manager jobs offer compensation well into the respective six figures, with complex and intriguing projects to match.

When managing highly technical projects, you’ll often be working with diverse, cross-functional teams built to tackle each project’s unique set of goals and stipulations. Each of these projects will be exciting, standing apart from the rest in many respects and providing plenty of challenges for your time management and prioritization skills. But you won’t do it alone! Here are a few general roles you’ll encounter in technical project management positions:

• Assistant Project Manager: These professionals may or may not actually serve as assistants to the project manager, but as this is a junior level role, there’s still plenty for them to do. Assistant project managers typically own specific tasks or feature sets, treating them like mini projects of their very own.
• Senior Project Manager: These experts, generally mid-career or later, are extremely accomplished with regards to project management and are generally charged with supervising several projects concurrently. This job involves lots of delegation and prioritization to keep up with evolving organizational change requests and needs!
• PMO Manager: AKA a project management office manager, this role oversees a company’s standards for projects. Sort of like a super-PM, PMO managers zero in on how the organization runs projects, setting and adjusting policies and guidelines for the project management process that help more projects cross the finish line.

IT project managers are specialists who work within a company’s IT department, which is where the majority of the projects they run will unfold and where their benefits will be realized. These projects are designed to improve a company’s internal technological processes, and can involve matters as complex as developing a new, proprietary sales support application from the ground up. Here are a few of the typical job responsibilities that a PM specializing in IT might encounter from day to day:

• Develop and plan project ideas
• Assemble and direct the project development team
• Monitor progress towards goals and milestones
• Resolve issues and as yet undiscovered progress blockers
• Communicate with stakeholders throughout
• Evaluate success of projects and refine the process for next time

Setting out on the project management career path is somewhat easier than starting out in most other roles with a technical component and may be simpler for you than the long road to becoming a software developer! For example, while a prospective employer would likely be thrilled to see an advanced STEM degree on your project management focused resume, if you haven’t got one, you won’t be at a huge disadvantage compared to other applicants. Here are a few more generalized job requirements to make sure you meet when you look for PM jobs:

• Proven work experience in project management.
• A bachelor’s degree in a relevant field of study (which can be non-tech; e.g., business).
• Superior communication abilities (internal and client-facing, if needed).
• Exceptional organization and time management skills.
• Strong knowledge of standard business applications (e.g., word processing, spreadsheet, and similar).
• Experience with project management software and applications.

PM jobs can be found in any company that runs projects — and nowadays, as you might have guessed, that can be almost any company under the sun! While you probably have a list started of exciting companies and industries to target, take a moment and review this short, generalized list of some of today’s hottest industries that are generally in need of PM specialists:

• Manufacturing
• Construction
• Finance and Banking
• Insurance
• Information Services/IT
• Utilities/Oil and Gas