Leading audit teams and managing audit engagements. You're planning reviews, supervising staff, presenting findings, and ensuring audits are completed thoroughly and on time.
Audit Manager pay typically runs $100K–$179K at this level, and jobs in this field are projected to grow 5% through 2034.
Managing audit engagements means overseeing the planning, fieldwork, and reporting phases while developing the staff who are doing the detailed work. You're reviewing workpapers, resolving complex accounting and auditing issues, managing client relationships, and ensuring that engagements are completed on time and at appropriate quality — all while meeting your own client responsibilities and billable hour expectations.
Staff development is central to the role in ways that individual contributor audit work doesn't require. Audit managers are the primary supervisors for seniors and associates who are building their skills — giving feedback on workpapers, reviewing their documentation and judgments, and creating learning opportunities within engagement work is a significant part of what you're doing beyond your own technical work.
What tends to distinguish people who find audit management rewarding from those who experience it primarily as pressure is genuine interest in the technical and business dimensions of what you're auditing. Audit managers who are intellectually curious about their clients' industries, who ask good questions, and who see the audit as meaningful quality assurance rather than compliance exercise tend to build better client relationships and develop stronger teams. If you can maintain that curiosity through the significant volume and deadline pressure of audit work, management-level practice can be genuinely satisfying.
Still figuring out what you want to become
when you grow up?
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Still figuring out what you want to become
when you grow up?
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Business Operations roles →Leading audit teams and managing audit engagements. You're planning reviews, supervising staff, presenting findings, and ensuring audits are completed thoroughly and on time.
Median pay for an Audit Manager is about $137K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $69K to $228K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Critical Thinking, Reading Comprehension, Writing, Active Listening, and Speaking.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 4.5% through 2034, with roughly 630,980 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Loss Prevention Operations Manager, Environmental Program Manager, and Regulatory Compliance Manager.
Do one small thing to grow in your career this week. Pick one of these; each comes with the words to use.
More career advice
We believe careers grow through small steps taken often, more than big leaps. So we’ve collected hundreds of them for you to try.
Browse career adviceYour job belongs to your employer.
Your career belongs to you.