Operations Manager
Business
Oversees multiple project teams and their Project Managers at once, the role that scales a contractor's capacity beyond what one PM can run.
What is a Operations Manager?
An Operations Manager oversees a portfolio of active projects and the Project Managers running them, focusing on company-wide execution, staffing, and process rather than any single project's day-to-day details. No personal license is legally required to hold this title. There's a related but distinct legal wrinkle worth knowing: many states require a licensed contractor's business to designate one specific person, a "qualifying individual" or "Responsible Managing Employee", who holds the personal license the company's contractor license is built on. An Operations Manager can be the person a company designates for that role, but it's a single, specific legal designation tied to the business license, not a requirement attached to the Operations Manager job title itself.
What they do
- Oversee multiple Project Managers and their project teams across the company's active work
- Monitor project performance (schedule, budget, safety) across the full portfolio and intervene where projects are at risk
- Support staffing decisions, allocating project management talent across active and upcoming projects
- Standardize and improve company-wide project management processes and tools
- Report portfolio-level performance to company leadership or ownership
- Mentor and develop Project Managers moving up through the organization
A typical day
- 8:00 AMReview status reports across all active projects and flag any at risk
- 9:30 AMMeet with a Project Manager whose project is trending over budget to problem-solve
- 11:00 AMDiscuss staffing needs for a newly awarded project with leadership
- 1:30 PMReview and standardize a project management process that's been applied inconsistently
- 3:30 PMPresent portfolio-wide performance metrics to company ownership
Skills
Software
Pay expectations
Pay for this role, nationally
as of October 2026
Source: ZipRecruiter's Construction Operations Manager percentile data cross-checked against a real general-contractor Operations Manager posting; the generic General and Operations Managers BLS code spans every industry and overstates construction-specific pay
Reviewed October 2026. Operations Manager is typically reached through promotion or years of experience in a related role, not a day-one starting point, so this chart shows the pay range for people already working as a Operations Manager rather than entry-level pay. "Lower range" is the lower part of the national wage distribution for this occupation, "typical" sits around the national median, and "top of scale" is the upper part, since pay isn't actually tracked by years on the job. Real pay varies a lot by state, metro area, union status, and employer, so scale these up or down for your market.
Education
- Required:
- High school diploma or equivalent, since no personal license is legally required for this role. If the company designates this person as its "qualifying individual" or Responsible Managing Employee for its state contractor's license, that specific legal designation carries its own licensing exam and experience requirements, but that requirement attaches to the one person a company designates for it, not to the Operations Manager title generally
- Preferred:
- Bachelor's degree in construction management, business, or engineering, plus significant experience as a Project Manager
- Helpful:
- PMP or CCM certification
- Not necessary:
- A specific operations degree, since this role is almost always reached by being promoted up from Project Manager
Career progression
- 1.Senior Project Manager
- 2.Operations Manager
- 3.Director of Operations
- 4.VP of Operations or Chief Operating Officer