---
title: "Executive Compensation Consultant"
description: "Designs and benchmarks pay packages for CEOs and senior executives, advising boards on salary, bonuses and stock awards."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/executive-compensation-consultant"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Executive Compensation Consultant

**Category:** Business and Financial Operations · **SOC code:** 13-1141 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 13-1141.00

Designs and benchmarks pay packages for CEOs and senior executives, advising boards on salary, bonuses and stock awards.

Also advertised as: Executive Compensation Analyst; Executive Compensation Manager; Executive Rewards Consultant; Compensation Consultant; Director of Executive Compensation.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $78,210 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $37.60/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $49,480 to $128,920, with the middle half between $60,890 and $100,400
- **Total US employment:** 112,380
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +6.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 9,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 16/100 — 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 112,380 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $49,480 |
| 25th | $60,890 |
| 50th (median) | $78,210 |
| 75th | $100,400 |
| 90th | $128,920 |
| Mean (average) | $84,330 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DE | $99,560 | $99,752 | 290 |
| MA | $95,890 | $90,670 | 3,390 |
| CO | $92,560 | $89,819 | 1,980 |
| CA | $91,410 | $82,560 | 13,430 |
| DC | $86,710 | $78,898 | 650 |
| WA | $86,630 | $80,953 | 3,350 |
| NJ | $85,040 | $78,158 | 3,150 |
| NM | $83,540 | $90,596 | 340 |
| OR | $83,320 | $80,611 | 1,330 |
| NY | $83,200 | $77,093 | 11,470 |
| CT | $83,100 | $80,205 | 1,140 |
| VA | $81,190 | $80,303 | 3,500 |
| NH | $80,810 | $77,579 | 380 |
| RI | $80,330 | $78,539 | 300 |
| MD | $79,700 | $75,934 | 1,650 |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/executive-compensation-consultant/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/executive-compensation-consultant.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 118,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 125,200 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 7,100 jobs, or +6.0%. Faster than average: 6.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 9,000 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:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **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 |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 85.7% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 9.5% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 4.8% |

## What the work involves

- Benchmark executive pay against peer company data
- Design annual bonus and long-term incentive plans
- Model payouts under different performance scenarios
- Prepare materials for board compensation committee meetings
- Draft proxy statement compensation disclosures
- Analyze say-on-pay results and shareholder feedback
- Advise on equity award accounting and tax effects

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 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
- Writing — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — 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.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Economics and Accounting — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.6 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 Conventional (C), Enterprising (E), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.80 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.57 |
| I — Investigative | 3.83 |
| S — Social | 3.64 |
| A — Artistic | 1.41 |
| R — Realistic | 1.29 |

### 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 | 78.1 |
| ESFJ | 75.7 |
| ENTJ | 68.0 |
| ISFJ | 64.2 |
| ENFJ | 63.5 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Compensation, Benefit, and Job Analysis Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/compensation-benefit-and-job-analysis-specialist) — median $78,210
- [Compensation and Benefits Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/compensation-and-benefits-manager) — median $149,230
- [Human Resources Assistant, Except Payroll and Timekeeping](https://nuecareer.com/careers/human-resources-assistant) — median $50,610
- [Eligibility Interviewer, Government Programs](https://nuecareer.com/careers/eligibility-interviewer-government-programs) — median $54,210
- [Human Resources Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/human-resources-specialist) — median $75,940
- [Human Resources Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/human-resources-manager) — median $149,280
- [First-Line Supervisor of Office and Administrative Support Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-office-and-administrative-support-workers) — median $69,500
- [Administrative Services Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/administrative-services-manager) — median $114,130
- [Labor Relations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/labor-relations-specialist) — median $95,420
- [Equal Opportunity Representative and Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/equal-opportunity-representative-and-officer) — median $80,730

## 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/executive-compensation-consultant