What Is a Solar Project Manager and How to Become One

By ZipRecruiter Marketplace Research Team

A solar project manager oversees the installation of solar projects, from small residential and commercial roofing projects to large-scale solar power plants. Your duties and responsibilities in this career can vary slightly depending on the scale of your project plan, but many of the principles are overlapping. You need to know how to develop budgets, manage proposals and bids from contractors, negotiate prices, pull building permits, coordinate the construction schedule, and be familiar with tax incentives and rebates for which your clients may qualify.

The requirements to become a solar project manager include career experience in solar, clean energy construction, or a related field, such as construction contracting, real estate project management, or other technical project management. You should have a working knowledge of CAD and other design software and a sound background in the principles of electrical engineering. Useful educational qualifications include a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or civil engineering. You should also have excellent communication skills for relaying status updates to clients and strong leadership qualities.

The career path of a solar project manager depends on the scale of the project you are interested in managing. For those who oversee smaller jobs, such as home or small commercial installations, a background as a contractor and several years of experience installing solar systems may be sufficient to find work as a project manager. Larger projects deal with much greater amounts of energy, typically megawatts as opposed to kilowatts, so you must have experience working on projects in the MW range to manage those jobs. However, working your way up to a solar project manager for small projects could open up opportunities with larger jobs.