Post job

Technical consultant vs lead consultant

The differences between technical consultants and lead consultants can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 4-6 years to become both a technical consultant and a lead consultant. Additionally, a lead consultant has an average salary of $103,221, which is higher than the $89,290 average annual salary of a technical consultant.

The top three skills for a technical consultant include java, database and customer service. The most important skills for a lead consultant are customer service, digital transformation, and business process.

Technical consultant vs lead consultant overview

Technical ConsultantLead Consultant
Yearly salary$89,290$103,221
Hourly rate$42.93$49.63
Growth rate9%9%
Number of jobs173,37478,252
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 66%Bachelor's Degree, 61%
Average age4343
Years of experience66

What does a technical consultant do?

A technical consultant is an individual who provides technical support and performs troubleshooting functions for the company's product or application. A consultant should be highly knowledgeable about the product or application so that he/she can assist users and clients with whatever issues they may be facing. A bachelor's degree is required to work as a technical consultant, particularly a degree in Computer Science or Engineering. Also, a consultant should conduct training sessions and therefore, must possess excellent communication skills.

What does a lead consultant do?

The lead consultants oversee the work of a consultant team and are responsible for offering clients their advice and recommendations on the given project. They are multi-focus experts that assist the company in improving its business performance by acting as liaisons between clients and the consultancy team. Their main job is to ensure the daily management of client's projects. They help the client identify and understand their needs together with finding solutions to their difficulties. Additionally, they analyze and review proposals from the team and then provide relevant solutions to the problems.

Technical consultant vs lead consultant salary

Technical consultants and lead consultants have different pay scales, as shown below.

Technical ConsultantLead Consultant
Average salary$89,290$103,221
Salary rangeBetween $67,000 And $118,000Between $80,000 And $132,000
Highest paying CitySeattle, WASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateWashingtonAlaska
Best paying companyPillsbury Winthrop Shaw PittmanGoogle
Best paying industryProfessionalTechnology

Differences between technical consultant and lead consultant education

There are a few differences between a technical consultant and a lead consultant in terms of educational background:

Technical ConsultantLead Consultant
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 66%Bachelor's Degree, 61%
Most common majorComputer ScienceBusiness
Most common collegeStanford UniversityStanford University

Technical consultant vs lead consultant demographics

Here are the differences between technical consultants' and lead consultants' demographics:

Technical ConsultantLead Consultant
Average age4343
Gender ratioMale, 79.1% Female, 20.9%Male, 67.9% Female, 32.1%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 10.2% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 11.2% Asian, 15.3% White, 58.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%Black or African American, 9.9% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.7% Asian, 19.5% White, 54.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage8%8%

Differences between technical consultant and lead consultant duties and responsibilities

Technical consultant example responsibilities.

  • Develop several Unix scripts to automate routine operating system and application maintenance tasks.
  • Lead design, development and implementation of business intelligence and ETL solutions for client organizations.
  • Collaborate with developers, technical leads and management to develop technical standards for PL/SQL coding and documentation.
  • Create and manage several SharePoint team sites to host, communicate and collaborate about project information and documentation.
  • Provide emergency support to internal/external customers requiring the ability to effectively manage multiple tasks and rapidly troubleshoot complex applications.
  • Extract, clean and validate from XML file into database using SSIS task (XML source).
  • Show more

Lead consultant example responsibilities.

  • Lead a team of 10 members including both onsite and offshore.
  • Create and manage financial feed from BW to Hyperion for corporate reporting and processing.
  • Manage design and development of cloud-base billing application for streamlining payroll and invoicing, as well as offering real-time business analytics.
  • Create mainframe XML parsers and XML generators using COBOL.
  • Work onsite at client's home office in Washington, DC.
  • Design and implement test cases for verifying proper behavior of a large & complex ERP project viz.
  • Show more

Technical consultant vs lead consultant skills

Common technical consultant skills
  • Java, 9%
  • Database, 5%
  • Customer Service, 5%
  • Project Management, 5%
  • C #, 4%
  • Technical Support, 4%
Common lead consultant skills
  • Customer Service, 11%
  • Digital Transformation, 10%
  • Business Process, 9%
  • Project Management, 5%
  • Architecture, 5%
  • App Development, 4%

Browse computer and mathematical jobs