How To Become An Audit Partner: What It Is and Career Path

What is an audit partner and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an audit partner. For example, did you know that they make an average of $94.08 an hour? That's $195,691 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 81,800 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScoreAudit PartnerUS Average

Salary

10.0

Avg. Salary $195,691

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.0

Growth rate 6%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.46%

Asian 12.10%

Black or African American 8.88%

Hispanic or Latino 11.22%

Unknown 3.97%

White 63.36%

Gender

female 16.94%

male 83.06%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress level

7.0

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.9

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.1

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an audit partner

Explore audit partner education requirements

Most common audit partner degrees

Bachelor's

80.5 %

Master's

15.3 %

Associate

1.7 %

Start to develop specific audit partner skills

Skills	Percentages
Client Service	22.51%
CPA	20.57%
Client Relationships	10.69%
Audit Services	7.46%
Real Estate	6.69%

Complete relevant audit partner training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New audit partners learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as an audit partner based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real audit partner resumes.

Research audit partner duties and responsibilities

Manage audits of monthly closings, bank reports, cash flow, operations analysis, revenue accounting, and IPO documents.
Frequent speaker to professional organizations on FASB activities.
Implement audit risk practice utilizing COSO methodology, updating internal audit approach from traditional substantive testing to risk-base auditing.
Involve in planning and execution of testing revenue/ cost adjustments relate to an early adoption of ASC 606.

Prepare your audit partner resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your audit partner resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on an audit partner resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable audit partner resume templates

Build a professional audit partner resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your audit partner resume.