---
title: "Corporate Executive Chef"
description: "Leads the food for an entire restaurant group, hotel company, or foodservice brand, setting menus and standards across many kitchens."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/corporate-executive-chef"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Corporate Executive Chef

**Category:** Food Preparation and Serving Related · **SOC code:** 35-1011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 35-1011.00

Leads the food for an entire restaurant group, hotel company, or foodservice brand, setting menus and standards across many kitchens.

Also advertised as: Culinary Director; Director of Culinary Operations; Corporate Chef; Vice President of Culinary.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $62,470 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $30.03/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $37,900 to $98,560, with the middle half between $48,440 and $78,750
- **Total US employment:** 200,040
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +6.6% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 25,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 60/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 200,040 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $37,900 |
| 25th | $48,440 |
| 50th (median) | $62,470 |
| 75th | $78,750 |
| 90th | $98,560 |
| Mean (average) | $66,700 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| RI | $79,930 | $78,148 | 740 |
| HI | $77,360 | $70,359 | 1,240 |
| DC | $76,420 | $69,535 | 2,020 |
| WA | $76,010 | $71,029 | 5,320 |
| ND | $74,740 | $84,016 | 100 |
| NJ | $74,280 | $68,269 | 9,100 |
| WY | $73,170 | $78,940 | 240 |
| SC | $71,860 | $76,651 | 2,650 |
| NY | $70,670 | $65,483 | 17,430 |
| TN | $69,810 | $75,988 | 3,820 |
| MA | $69,540 | $65,755 | 6,000 |
| GA | $66,230 | $68,780 | 3,680 |
| VT | $65,440 | $66,804 | 610 |
| CO | $65,400 | $63,463 | 3,970 |
| CA | $64,500 | $58,255 | 31,670 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/corporate-executive-chef/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/corporate-executive-chef.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 220,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 234,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 14,400 jobs, or +6.6%. Faster than average: 6.6% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 25,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** 5 years or more.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 54.2% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 16.7% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 12.5% |
| Some College Courses | 8.3% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 8.3% |

## What the work involves

- Create and standardize menus and recipes for multiple locations
- Train kitchen teams on new dishes, plating, and procedures
- Negotiate with food suppliers and manage purchasing programs
- Monitor food costs and kitchen performance across locations
- Audit kitchens for quality, consistency, and food safety
- Plan kitchens and menus for new restaurant openings
- Mentor and evaluate executive chefs at each site
- Present menu proposals and results to executives or owners

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Coordination — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Food Production — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 5.39 |
| R — Realistic | 4.84 |
| C — Conventional | 4.34 |
| A — Artistic | 3.52 |
| S — Social | 2.95 |
| I — Investigative | 1.68 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 77.1 |
| ESFJ | 70.9 |
| ESTP | 64.4 |
| ISTJ | 62.9 |
| ENTJ | 59.5 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Chef](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chef) — median $62,470
- [Baker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/baker) — median $37,160
- [Cook, Restaurant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-restaurant) — median $37,390
- [Cook, Private Household](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-private-household) — median $47,940
- [Cook, Institution and Cafeteria](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-institution-and-cafeteria) — median $37,450
- [Food Service Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-service-manager) — median $69,390
- [Cook, Short Order](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-short-order) — median $35,880
- [First-Line Supervisor of Food Preparation and Serving Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-food-preparation-and-serving-workers) — median $44,080
- [Food Batchmaker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-batchmaker) — median $42,290
- [Server](https://nuecareer.com/careers/server) — median $35,230

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/corporate-executive-chef