Throughline

Business and finance

Project Management Specialist in San Diego

142 postings read · sampled 2026-09-01 · source ats

What employers actually ask for

Credentials named in the 142 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.

What it costs

Exam and application fees plus typical self-study hours. Almost nobody needs every credential on this list — start with the top line.

Most-asked-for, on its own
$555PMP · ~200 hrs
asked for in 14 of 142 postings — 10%
If you earned all 1 of them
$555
fees checked 2026-08
200 hrs
200 hours — about 20 weeks at 10 hrs/wk

Not in the total: Master's Degree — cost varies by institution; TS/SCI — sponsored by an employer, not purchasable.

Lower signal for this role

Credentials that barely appeared in this sample. That is not a claim they are worthless — plenty are valuable for a different job, a different city, or a promotion later. It is a claim that employers here mostly did not ask.

What the official taxonomy says

O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.

Education reported by people doing this job
64%reported bachelor’s degree
  • Bachelor’s degree64%
  • Associate’s degree or other 2-year degree12%
  • High school diploma or equivalent6%

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

O*NET 13-1082.00 · pulled 2026-09-01 · percentages are of surveyed workers, each rounded separately, so they need not total 100

What it pays

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.

$69,660
10th percentile
$117,460
median
$171,400
90th percentile

Every credential above costs $555 — about 1 day's pay at the median.

Who was hiring

Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.

Zoox · Anthropic · Rocket Lab · Scale AI · Deegit Inc · Figma · System Canada Technologies · 360 IT Professionals · Chandos · Verkada · Collabera · Lyft · Roblox · Skyline Construction · SoFi · Chime · Harbinger Motors · Lucid Motors · Mach Industries · Sierra · Agility Robotics · Antora Energy · Applied Intuition · Apptronik · Artech Information System · Ask IT Consulting · DN Tanks (DN LLC) · Gusto · Infojini Inc · Intuitive Surgical · Kodiak Robotics · Reddit · Saronic · SBT Global · SpaceX · Stripe

The same role elsewhere

Next

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