Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
The differences between project leaders and project directors 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 $98,559 average annual salary of a project leader.
The top three skills for a project leader include project management, work ethic and C++. The most important skills for a project director are project management, oversight, and customer satisfaction.
| Project Leader | Project Director | |
| Yearly salary | $98,559 | $107,396 |
| Hourly rate | $47.38 | $51.63 |
| Growth rate | 9% | - |
| Number of jobs | 221,165 | 116,968 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 5 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 66% |
| Average age | 44 | 47 |
| Years of experience | 6 | - |
A project leader is responsible for supervising the team and managing the distribution of tasks to ensure the project's success with the highest efficiency and accuracy. Duties of a project leader include motivating the team, managing the team's needs and concerns, providing effective strategies to improve the team's performance, creating reports, monitoring the team's progress, and maintaining the coordination between team members. A project leader should have exceptional leadership skills to handle the team's operation and identify areas of improvement to deliver excellent results.
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.
Project leaders and project directors have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Project Leader | Project Director | |
| Average salary | $98,559 | $107,396 |
| Salary range | Between $70,000 And $138,000 | Between $70,000 And $162,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Las Vegas, NV |
| Highest paying state | California | Nevada |
| Best paying company | Boston Consulting Group | Fried Frank |
| Best paying industry | Professional | Technology |
There are a few differences between a project leader and a project director in terms of educational background:
| Project Leader | Project Director | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 66% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | University of Pennsylvania |
Here are the differences between project leaders' and project directors' demographics:
| Project Leader | Project Director | |
| Average age | 44 | 47 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 69.0% Female, 31.0% | Male, 56.2% Female, 43.8% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% | 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% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 10% |