A senior producer leads the production team that is organizing a media project. Senior producers can work on video games, movies, TV shows, or any other kind of media production. They oversee every detail of the project they are working on. Senior producers hire staff, such as camera operators, and on-screen talent and screenwriters. They create a budget for the production after gathering investors and make sure that the budget is met. Sometimes, senior producers get hands-on with the project by editing footage and promoting the work, especially if they are on a smaller production team. Luckily, they do not have to do all of this work themselves but work with a whole team of producers and assistants.
Senior producers earn an average salary of $105,018 a year. This salary can be even higher if a production is very profitable.
However, if you're thinking of going into production chances are it will be many years before you can become a senior producer. Most have five or more years of experience working in production, if not longer. They also have bachelor's degrees in communications or a related field.
How to Become a Senior Producer
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior producer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $55.23 an hour? That's $114,870 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 5% and produce 7,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Senior Producer Do
There are certain skills that many senior producers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, leadership skills and time-management skills.
How To Become a Senior Producer
If you're interested in becoming a senior producer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 83.2% of senior producers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 9.4% of senior producers have master's degrees. Even though most senior producers have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a senior producer. When we researched the most common majors for a senior producer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on senior producer resumes include associate degree degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a senior producer. In fact, many senior producer jobs require experience in a role such as producer. Meanwhile, many senior producers also have previous career experience in roles such as associate producer or executive producer.
Senior Producer Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a senior producer can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as project manager, progress to a title such as owner and then eventually end up with the title senior director of marketing.
Average Salary for a Senior Producer
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Senior Producers
1. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
2. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA • Private
5. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Private
6. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
7. Emory University
Atlanta, GA • Private
8. University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX • Private
9. Northeastern University
Boston, MA • Private
10. California State University - Long Beach
Long Beach, CA • Private
Top Skills For a Senior Producer
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 11.4% of senior producers listed project management on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and leadership skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Senior Producer Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Senior Producer templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Senior Producer resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Senior Producer Demographics
Senior Producer Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among senior producers, 40.4% of them are women, while 59.6% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among senior producers is White, which makes up 70.7% of all senior producers.
- The most common foreign language among senior producers is Spanish at 39.0%.
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Best States For a Senior Producer
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a senior producer. The best states for people in this position are California, Nevada, Connecticut, and New York. Senior producers make the most in California with an average salary of $141,937. Whereas in Nevada and Connecticut, they would average $135,375 and $133,116, respectively. While senior producers would only make an average of $132,133 in New York, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. California
$141,937
Avg. Salary
2. Connecticut
$133,116
Avg. Salary
3. New York
$132,133
Avg. Salary
How Do Senior Producer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Senior Producer Employers
Most Common Employers For Senior Producer
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Microsoft | $172,901 | $83.13 | 30 |
| 2 | DDB | $142,223 | $68.38 | 19 |
| 3 | Activision Blizzard | $138,638 | $66.65 | 23 |
| 4 | Wunderman Thompson | $137,160 | $65.94 | 10 |
| 5 | Electronic Arts | $132,168 | $63.54 | 16 |
| 6 | ESPN | $129,765 | $62.39 | 30 |
| 7 | NBCUniversal | $128,722 | $61.89 | 19 |
| 8 | SiriusXM | $127,445 | $61.27 | 12 |
| 9 | Razorfish | $124,306 | $59.76 | 11 |
| 10 | CNN | $123,063 | $59.16 | 66 |
Senior Producer Videos
