Project director vs manager, project management

The differences between project directors and managers, project management can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. Additionally, a project director has an average salary of $107,396, which is higher than the $102,925 average annual salary of a manager, project management.

The top three skills for a project director include project management, oversight and customer satisfaction. The most important skills for a manager, project management are project management, risk management, and portfolio.

Project director vs manager, project management overview

	Project Director	Manager, Project Management
Yearly salary	$107,396	$102,925
Hourly rate	$51.63	$49.48
Growth rate	-	16%
Number of jobs	116,968	263,655
Job satisfaction	5	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 66%	Bachelor's Degree, 69%
Average age	47	47
Years of experience	-	-

What does a project director do?

A project director is an individual responsible for supervising workers from various departments given specific tasks to complete a given project. They create a budget to complete a job while monitoring the amount of money spent to ensure that overspending is avoided. They provide presentations to investors, business partners, and company executives to inform them about their progress and development. Project directors must have several years of experience and obtain at least a bachelor's degree in business economics or a related field to be hired.

What does a manager, project management do?

The role of a project management manager involves the planning, execution, monitoring, control, and closure of projects. Project managers oversee the scope of the entire project, the team, success or failure, and its resources. They facilitate productivity and commitment, remove obstacles, and motivate their team members. Their skills should include leadership, critical thinking, communication, negotiating, and risk management. They should also know about cost management, scheduling, and task management.

Project director vs manager, project management salary

Project directors and managers, project management have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Project Director	Manager, Project Management
Average salary	$107,396	$102,925
Salary range	Between $70,000 And $162,000	Between $73,000 And $144,000
Highest paying City	Las Vegas, NV	San Francisco, CA
Highest paying state	Nevada	California
Best paying company	Fried Frank	Ropes & Gray
Best paying industry	Technology	Pharmaceutical

Differences between project director and manager, project management education

There are a few differences between a project director and a manager, project management in terms of educational background:

	Project Director	Manager, Project Management
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 66%	Bachelor's Degree, 69%
Most common major	Business	Business
Most common college	University of Pennsylvania	University of Pennsylvania

Project director vs manager, project management demographics

Here are the differences between project directors' and managers, project management' demographics:

	Project Director	Manager, Project Management
Average age	47	47
Gender ratio	Male, 56.2% Female, 43.8%	Male, 61.9% Female, 38.1%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 7.5% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 12.5% Asian, 8.8% White, 65.9% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.7%	Black or African American, 7.6% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 12.7% Asian, 9.0% White, 65.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.7%
LGBT Percentage	10%	10%

Differences between project director and manager, project management duties and responsibilities

Project director example responsibilities.

Provide direction and guidance to Americas regional executives with all aspects of managing their regions in order to achieve business goals.
Manage commercial real estate, adaptive reuse development project.
Create, maintain, and manage software development project schedules according to PMI standards.
Manage customer service center issues spanning Americas, European, and Asian delivery centers.
Refine and develop strong/functional on-site OCI management teams to ensure project EPC objectives are achieve.
Manage offshore / onshore test teams through entire SDLC for major, minor and hotfix releases.

Manager, project management example responsibilities.

Manage budgets and resources of various project groups to successfully implement ERP & CRM application.
Counsele application team leads in maximizing available migration windows for defect resolution.
Facilitate efforts on prioritizing bugs find during QA testing and manage remediation efforts.
Manage and monitor compliance with FDA validate system requirements, documentation creation and SDLC methodologies.
Manage services portfolio releases and delivery enablement process for major cloud and big data professional services offerings.
Lead digital initiative developments that integrate with current infrastructure, delivering timely market penetration to enhance organizational competitiveness.

Project director vs manager, project management skills

Common project director skills

Project Management, 20%
Oversight, 19%
Customer Satisfaction, 8%
HR, 5%
Adaptive, 5%
ERP, 4%

Common manager, project management skills

Project Management, 20%
Risk Management, 7%
Portfolio, 5%
Customer Service, 3%
Process Improvement, 3%
On-Time Delivery, 3%

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Project Director vs Manager, Project Management

Updated January 8, 2025

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