Project Management Specialists salary in Virginia Beach, Virginia

About 6,050 Project Management Specialists work in the Virginia Beach metro, which gives the local market real scale. The 2024 median annual wage was $102,300, roughly 1% above the national median of $100,946 but about 11% below the Virginia statewide median of $114,990.

That gap from the state figure is worth pausing on. Virginia's statewide median is pulled up by the Washington, D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia, where federal contracting and tech firms concentrate a large share of the state's highest-paid project managers. Virginia Beach sits in a different labor market, anchored more heavily by military installations and defense contractors, where project management roles are plentiful but compensation tends to run closer to national norms.

The spread between low and high earners here is wide. The 10th percentile came in at $60,620 and the 90th at $163,050. Top earners make about 2.7 times what those at the bottom of the range earn. That kind of range usually reflects real differences in seniority, clearance level, and whether a role sits on the civilian or contractor side of a defense program. A cleared senior program manager overseeing a Navy contract and an entry-level coordinator tracking timelines for a regional construction firm both fall under the same occupational code.

The mean wage of $108,430 sits about $6,100 above the median. That gap suggests a portion of higher-paid specialists pull the average up, though the effect is less pronounced here than in markets with a heavier concentration of large-scale federal programs. For most of the 6,050 people in this role locally, the median is the more representative figure.