Last updated: October 19, 2026
By Jennifer Burdick, Recruiting Manager, KORE1
As of October 16, 2026, a mid-level contract IT project manager or scrum master bills $72 to $93 an hour nationally, median $81, or about $42,200 for three months. Senior program managers bill $93 to $114, median $106. KORE1’s own placements, mostly in Southern California, bill $105 to $124 (median $116, n=21), and that gap is the interesting part of this page.
Most project manager contract rates you’ll find online are pay rates. Salary-site numbers, dressed up as a project manager hourly rate. A budget owner who plugs one into a request for a contractor gets a surprise on the first invoice. It happens constantly.
I run recruiting and delivery at KORE1, and our contract staffing desk fills a lot of project, program, and scrum seats. We’re paid when a client brings in a contractor through us, so read what follows with that in mind. The sources and arithmetic are on the page so you can check them.
Video chapters
- 0:00 — What a Contract IT Project Manager Costs per Hour
- 0:36 — What Project Managers and Scrum Masters Bill at Each Level
- 1:43 — How Bill Rates Change by Metro
- 2:17 — What Is Inside a Contract Bill Rate
- 3:12 — What Budget Owners Ask Before Hiring a Contract PM
- 3:40 — Before You Approve the Budget Line
Read full transcript
That project manager hourly rate you found online? It’s probably a pay rate. A salary-site number, dressed up. Plug it into a request for a contractor and the first invoice comes as a surprise. A bill rate is the hourly number on a staffing firm’s invoice for a W2 contractor, and it already has payroll taxes, insurance, and the firm’s own costs sitting inside it. We’re KORE1, and we get paid when a client brings in a contractor through us, so weigh what follows with that in mind. As of October 2026, a mid-level contract IT project manager or scrum master bills $72 to $93 an hour nationally. Median $81. Call it $42,200 for 3 months.
Seniority moves the number more than anything else except the city. Junior runs $56 to $70 an hour, mid-level sits at $72 to $93, and senior, which means program managers and technical program managers, jumps to $93 to $114 an hour. That step from mid to senior is $25 an hour at the median. Bigger than the $20 step from junior to mid. It’s modeled from Bureau of Labor Statistics wages plus a 24% employer burden, and since that BLS category also covers project coordinators, treat it as an approximation rather than a census. Our own placements, 21 project, program, and scrum contracts started between 2023 and 2026, billed $105 to $124. Median $116. That’s $35 over the national mid-level median, and we’re publishing it anyway. Why so high? Those 21 were mostly senior IT and program seats in Southern California, with few coordinators, and the modeled senior median for Orange County and Los Angeles is $112, within $4 of ours. So it’s the mix, not a premium. Small sample, one region.
The city changes it a lot. Same job description, and the gap from Dallas-Fort Worth to the Bay Area is $29 an hour, or $14,900 over 3 months. At mid-level, the Bay Area median is $107. Seattle’s $103 and New York’s $100. Orange County and Los Angeles land at $86, Chicago at $84, and Dallas-Fort Worth at $78. Chicago surprises people. It’s only $3 over national. Orange County and Los Angeles run $5 above national, and that’s local wage data doing its job, not a California surcharge.
What’s inside a bill rate? Say the pay is $100 an hour. California burden runs about 24%, so the loaded cost is $124 before the firm earns anything, and the bill rate likely lands around $150 to $160. Round numbers, but the mechanics are real. And that 24% isn’t a fudge factor. It’s Social Security at 6.2% on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, and Medicare at 1.45% with no cap. Then unemployment, workers’ comp, liability coverage, and paid sick leave. None of it shows up on a salary site. When a firm quotes a markup percentage, ask whether it sits on the pay rate or the loaded cost. It matters. A lot. On loaded cost it starts from $124, not $100, so it sounds smaller than the real distance between pay and bill. Ask for the all-in hourly bill rate instead.
Is a scrum master rate different from a project manager rate? In our index they share one row, so a mid-level scrum master bills the same $72 to $93. The market does separate them, and a seat mixing both jobs usually gets priced as the senior of the two. And a senior program manager? About $54,900 for 3 months at the $106 national median, with Seattle and the Bay Area at $128 to $129.
Set the salary-site number aside. It’s the pay. Take the bill rate for your level and metro, $81 for a mid-level PM or $106 for a senior at the national median, and multiply by the hours you expect. Leave room for the extension. The median contract we see runs 116 days, across 1,887 ended assignments. That’s a bit more than 3 months, and month 4 bills at the same hourly rate. If the project can slip a quarter and nobody notices, you probably don’t need a contractor yet. If the date can’t move, send us the role, level, city, and start date through KORE1.com, and we’ll come back with a range before anyone forwards a resume.
How Much Does a Contract IT Project Manager or Scrum Master Cost per Hour in 2026?
Start with the national numbers. Bill rate means the hourly figure on the staffing firm’s invoice for a W2 contractor, with payroll taxes, insurance, and the firm’s own costs already inside it. Costs assume 40 hours a week, 13 weeks for three months and 26 for six.
| Level (United States) | Bill rate range | Median | 3-month cost | 6-month cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior (associate PM, junior scrum master) | $56 to $70 | $61 | $31,700 | $63,400 |
| Mid-level (IT project manager, scrum master) | $72 to $93 | $81 | $42,200 | $84,400 |
| Senior (program manager, technical program manager) | $93 to $114 | $106 | $54,900 | $109,800 |
Need a number for your own metro and start date? Get a bill rate quote for a contract IT project manager, program manager, or scrum master. Send us the role, level, city, start date, and length, and we’ll come back with a range before anyone forwards a resume.
Two pieces of shorthand. The mid-level median works out to $3,240 a week. The senior median is $4,240.
What Do Project Managers, Program Managers, and Scrum Masters Bill at Each Level?
Junior runs $56 to $70. Mid sits at $72 to $93. Senior jumps to $93 to $114, and the step from mid to senior is $25 an hour at the median, which is bigger than the $20 step from junior to mid.
Where do those come from? Bureau of Labor Statistics wages, mostly. In the BLS Occupational Employment and Wages release for May 2025, published May 15, 2026, project management specialists (SOC 13-1082) earn $37.71 an hour nationally at the 25th percentile, $49.19 at the median, and $63.99 at the 75th. Junior takes the first figure, mid the second, senior the third. Add the 24% burden, apply our observed bill bands, done. The full method, sample sizes, and exclusions are on the KORE1 Contract Rate Index methodology page.
One caveat I’d rather say out loud. SOC 13-1082 is shared with project coordinators and has no line for scrum masters. Approximation, then. Not a census of IT program managers.
Titles blur. Here’s the translation I use when a hiring manager and I are staring at the same req. A mid-level IT project manager gets one project, a defined scope, a budget, and a steering committee that meets every other Tuesday. A mid-level scrum master gets two or three teams, a sprint to protect, and the blockers the engineers can’t clear themselves. Senior is a different animal. A program manager or technical program manager owns several projects that lean on each other, answers to an executive sponsor, and reports in dollars and risk rather than tickets.
Now the awkward number.
Our own project, program, and scrum placements, 21 contracts started between 2023 and 2026, billed $105 to $124. Median $116. That’s $35 over the national mid-level median, and I’m publishing it anyway, because hiding the one figure that came from our own invoices would defeat the purpose of an index.
| Cell | Source | Bill rate range | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project, program, and scrum, all levels, KORE1 placements (primarily Southern California) | KORE1 observed, n=21, 2023 to 2026 starts | $105 to $124 | $116 |
| Mid-level, Orange County / Los Angeles | Modeled, BLS OEWS May 2025 | $76 to $100 | $86 |
| Senior, Orange County / Los Angeles | Modeled, BLS OEWS May 2025 | $98 to $121 | $112 |
| Senior, United States | Modeled, BLS OEWS May 2025 | $93 to $114 | $106 |
Check the senior rows. Our $116 sits within $4 of the modeled senior median for Orange County and Los Angeles ($112), and our $105 to $124 range lands right on top of the $98 to $121 band there. Why? Those 21 contractors were mostly senior IT and program seats. Few coordinators, few junior scrum masters. So it’s the mix, not a premium. Small sample, one region, mostly senior work. Treat it as a benchmark for experienced Southern California program seats and nothing broader.
How Much Do IT Project Manager and Scrum Master Bill Rates Change by Metro?
A lot. Mid-level runs from $78 in Dallas-Fort Worth to $107 in the San Francisco Bay Area, a $29 gap an hour and $14,900 over three months for the same job description. Senior spans $104 in Dallas to $129 in Seattle.
| Metro and level | Bill rate range | Median | 3-month cost | 6-month cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orange County / Los Angeles, mid | $76 to $100 | $86 | $44,700 | $89,400 |
| Orange County / Los Angeles, senior | $98 to $121 | $112 | $58,400 | $116,800 |
| San Francisco Bay Area, mid | $94 to $120 | $107 | $55,700 | $111,400 |
| San Francisco Bay Area, senior | $115 to $138 | $128 | $66,500 | $133,000 |
| Seattle, mid | $90 to $119 | $103 | $53,800 | $107,600 |
| Seattle, senior | $114 to $139 | $129 | $66,900 | $133,800 |
| New York, mid | $88 to $116 | $100 | $52,300 | $104,500 |
| New York, senior | $112 to $137 | $127 | $65,900 | $131,800 |
| Chicago, mid | $75 to $95 | $84 | $43,400 | $86,900 |
| Chicago, senior | $95 to $115 | $106 | $55,300 | $110,500 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (Plano, Irving, Frisco), mid | $70 to $91 | $78 | $40,800 | $81,600 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (Plano, Irving, Frisco), senior | $91 to $112 | $104 | $54,100 | $108,300 |
Chicago surprises people. A mid-level PM there bills an $84 median, three dollars over national, while Seattle and New York run $100 or more. The BLS metro wage for project management specialists in Chicago tracks the national figure closely, and the bill rate follows it.
Orange County and Los Angeles land $5 above national at mid-level and $6 above at senior ($86 and $112). That’s the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim wage data doing its job, and not a California surcharge. The IT side of the same index, metro by metro, is in IT contractor rates by city, and the Orange County view is in our IT contractor rates for the same OC market.
What Does a 3-Month or 6-Month IT Project Manager or Scrum Master Contract Cost?
National mid-level for three months runs $42,200, and six months runs $84,400. Senior runs $54,900 and $109,800. Add a Seattle or Bay Area seat and the senior six-month figure passes $130,000.
Most project work doesn’t end on a quarter, though. So take the median engagement we actually see, 116 days (more on that below). At 40 hours a week every week, that’s about 660 hours, or roughly $53,500 at the national mid-level median. Rough arithmetic. Not an index cell. Still the right order of magnitude. Budget for a bit more than three months and a bit less than six.
A line item people forget. The extension. If the sponsor changes scope in month three, you’re buying month four at the same bill rate, not renegotiating a project fee. Plan for it. Hourly billing is how we work, and I’d rather you know that going in.
What Is Inside a Contract Bill Rate?
When I walk a budget owner through this, I use round numbers. Say the contractor’s pay is $100 an hour. Employer burden in California runs about 24%, so the loaded cost is $124 before the staffing firm earns anything. My colleague Devin Hornick, a partner here, puts it this way. “$100 an hour pay plus a 24% burden is $124 loaded; the bill rate on that pay would likely be around $150 to $160.” Round numbers, but the mechanics are real.
That 24% isn’t a fudge factor. It has line items. The employer side of Social Security is 6.2% on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, and Medicare adds 1.45% with no cap, per IRS Publication 15. Then federal and state unemployment, workers’ compensation, liability coverage, and paid sick leave. California requires at least 40 hours or five days of paid sick leave a year, and a contractor carries that entitlement whether the assignment is six weeks or six months. None of that shows up on a salary site.
So here’s the question I’d ask any firm that quotes you a markup percentage in place of a bill rate. Is the percentage sitting on the pay rate, or on the loaded cost?
It matters. A lot.
On that $100 example, the burden alone is $24 an hour before any margin. A percentage quoted on loaded cost starts from $124, not $100, so it sounds smaller than the real distance between pay and bill. Some firms quote the small number and leave the burden out of the conversation entirely. The buyer finds it on the first invoice. Ask for the all-in hourly bill rate. Compare those.
For the longer version of how pay, burden, and margin stack up across tech roles, our guide to tech contractor hourly rates in 2026 breaks it apart. And if a firm offers a 1099 or corp-to-corp project manager at a suspiciously low number, read W2 vs. C2C vs. 1099 contractor arrangements first. The difference is usually who carries the payroll tax and the misclassification risk.
What Moves a Project Manager Rate?
Four things, in rough order.
Seniority and scope, first. It isn’t close. The $25 step from mid to senior at the national median is bigger than anything else on this page except the metro. A PM who manages one workstream and a program manager who manages six interdependent ones are different purchases.
Then domain. A project manager who has run an ERP cutover, a NetSuite or SAP migration, a SOC 2 readiness program, or a cloud move off a data center has done something a generalist hasn’t, and the seat pays for it. Our IT project manager staffing page covers how we scope those seats, and on ERP or security work one missed cutover weekend can cost more than the contractor’s entire bill.
Certifications are third. Honestly the muddiest. A PMP or a SAFe credential gets a resume past a screen, and some requisitions require it outright. Does it move the bill rate on its own? The index doesn’t price certifications separately, and I won’t invent a premium for you. In my experience the credential matters less than whether the person has shipped something like your project. Ask for the project, not the badge.
Fourth, executive reporting. If the person will present to a steering committee or a board every two weeks, you’re buying communication as much as scheduling. That reads as senior.
One more distinction worth a sentence. A scrum master is not a project manager, even though the index groups them for rate purposes. If you’re after a coach for teams that already work in sprints, our scrum master staffing page and agile coach staffing page describe how those seats scope.
How Long Do Project Manager Engagements Run?
Longer than most budgets assume. Across 1,887 ended KORE1 contract assignments, the median ran 116 days. A quarter ended within 44 days, a quarter ran past 227, and the longest tenth went beyond 444. For IT roles alone, the median is 136 days (n=410).
Starting is quick. Faster than most expect. Across 1,997 KORE1 contract starts, the median gap from offer to first day was three days, and 86% started within a week. The bottleneck is usually your own approval chain.
And sometimes the contract turns into a hire. Of our contract-to-hire placements, 37.5% have converted to direct employment (207 of 552), and a contractor who completes 1,040 hours can convert to your payroll at no additional fee from KORE1. For a project manager that’s a real option. You see how they handle a bad week with your vendors before you commit to a salary, and our project manager salary guide and scrum master salary guide show what the permanent seat would cost.
What Breaks If the Project Doesn’t Finish?
Devin put the question to our marketing team in a content planning email on October 16. “What technology initiatives are already funded that you can’t push into 2027?”
That’s the right filter for a contract PM. Funded, dated, unstaffed. Devin’s email makes the point that companies may not approve three or four permanent hires but can absolutely approve the people needed to finish a $300K or $500K initiative that is already funded. The initiative is funded, the date is fixed, and the person who runs it is missing. That’s the gap.
Picture a VP of IT with a data center exit date in March. The lease ends whether or not the migration does. Six weeks without a program manager costs more than the contractor does, and a quarter at $42,200 for a mid-level PM or $54,900 for a senior looks small beside a lease extension. Not every project is that dramatic. But the ones that justify an interim project manager usually share one trait. Someone senior has already said the date can’t move. If the program also needs cloud engineers, what a contract cloud engineer costs by level and metro is priced the same way.
If that isn’t your situation, if the project can slip a quarter without anyone noticing, you probably don’t need a contractor yet. We’ll say so.
What Budget Owners Ask Before Hiring a Contract PM
Realistically, what does a mid-level contract project manager bill per hour?
$72 to $93 an hour nationally, median $81, which is about $42,200 for three months at 40 hours a week (KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4).
In Orange County or Los Angeles, plan on $76 to $100. A six-month engagement at the national median runs about $84,400.
Why does KORE1’s own project manager rate come in at $116?
Because those 21 placements, started 2023 to 2026 and mostly in Southern California, were weighted toward senior IT and program seats, so the median of $116 sits above the modeled mid-level rate.
The range ran $105 to $124, which overlaps the modeled senior band for Orange County and Los Angeles ($98 to $121). Treat it as a senior-seat benchmark, not the price of a coordinator.
What does a senior program manager cost on contract?
Senior bills $93 to $114 an hour nationally, median $106, or about $54,900 for a full three months (KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4).
Seattle and the Bay Area run $128 to $129 at the median.
New York or Dallas, does it change the mid-level rate?
$88 to $116 an hour for a mid-level project manager in New York, median $100, or about $52,300 for three months.
Dallas-Fort Worth is $70 to $91 with a $78 median, about $11,500 less over the same three months. Same title, same scope, and the metro wage does the work.
Is a scrum master hourly rate different from a project manager rate?
In our index they share one row, so a mid-level scrum master bills the same $72 to $93 an hour nationally.
The market does separate them, though, and a seat that mixes both jobs is usually priced as the senior of the two.
Before You Approve the Budget Line
Set the salary-site number aside. It’s the pay. Take the bill rate for your level and metro, $81 for a mid-level PM or $106 for a senior at the national median, multiply by the hours you expect. Leave room for the extension. A quarter of mid-level is $42,200. A quarter of senior is $54,900.
The KORE1 Contract Rate Index refreshes every quarter. The next update is in January 2027, with new placements and the next BLS release folded in. If you want a real quote for your project, your city, and your start date, talk to our recruiters. And if you’re still sizing the permanent alternative, the salary benchmark assistant is the faster tool.
