Senior Leadership Salaries in Residential Construction: What the Market Doesn't Tell You

What are Head Of, Operations Managers, GM’s,and Directors really earning in Sydney's residential construction sector? McKinnel Associates breaks down what the benchmarks miss and why it matters for your next move.

There's no shortage of salary data for construction in Australia right now. A quick search will tell you that Construction Managers in Sydney earn anywhere between $117,000 and $250,000; a range so wide it's almost useless.

For site-level and operational roles, the benchmarks are getting better. But for senior and executive leaders in residential home building specifically your Heads Of, Operations Manager, GMs, Directors, CEO, the data is still pretty thin.

That's a problem we hear about constantly from the leaders we work with. And it's exactly why we've launched our first dedicated Senior Leadership Salary, Benefits & Motivators Report for the residential construction sector.

But before we get to that, here's what four years of placing people at every level of Sydney's home building market has actually taught us about how senior leaders are paid, what they're worth, and what's quietly driving people to consider a move.

Why Generic Salary Data Doesn't Work at Senior Level

The salary aggregators like SEEK, Glassdoor, and Indeed are useful tools. But they have a significant blind spot at the top end of residential construction.

Most of the data they publish is based on advertised job listings or self-reported figures. Senior and executive roles in residential home building are rarely advertised publicly. They're filled through specialist recruiters, referrals, or direct approaches, which means the data simply isn't captured.

On top of that, total remuneration at leadership level is complex. Base salary is just one component. Car allowances, STIs, LTIs, profit-share arrangements, equity in privately-owned businesses, board fees; these can add tens of thousands of dollars to a package that looks modest on paper. Without visibility of the full picture, benchmarking is guesswork.

What We're Actually Seeing in the Market

We work exclusively in residential home building. Every placement we make, from Estimators and Supervisors through to General Managers and retained executive appointments, is in this sector. That gives us a perspective that generic salary guides don't have.

Here's what we're seeing right now, specifically in Sydney:

The gap between operational and senior leadership pay is widening. Demand for experienced Operations Manager’s and GMs in residential construction has increased significantly as builders scale and professionalise their operations. Supply hasn't kept pace. That dynamic is pushing packages up, particularly in the mid-tier builder segment where competition for proven leaders is fiercest.

Base salary is becoming less of the story. At GM and Director level, the leaders we place and the candidates we speak to are increasingly focused on what sits around the base. Meaningful STIs, access to profit-share, and in some cases equity or ownership pathways are becoming genuine differentiators in attracting and retaining senior talent.

Flexibility has shifted from a perk to an expectation. Two or three years ago, outcome-based flexibility was something senior leaders negotiated. Now it's a baseline expectation at leadership level and builders who haven't adapted are feeling it in their ability to attract top candidates.

The wrong hire at senior level is extraordinarily expensive. This is obvious in theory but underappreciated in practice. At GM or Director level, the cost of a failed hire, lost productivity, team disruption, the cost of going back to market, can easily exceed five times the annual salary. That's why more of our clients at this level are choosing retained search over contingent, and why getting the benchmarking right matters so much before making an offer.

What Senior Leaders Are Actually Weighing Up

Base salary gets people to the table. It's rarely what closes the deal or what keeps someone in a seat.

Through hundreds of conversations with senior leaders in residential construction over the past 18 months, the themes that come up consistently are:

Decision-making authority. The most common reason a high-performing leader quietly becomes open to a conversation is a growing mismatch between their accountability and their actual authority. They're responsible for outcomes they don't fully control and eventually that becomes untenable.

Alignment with ownership. In privately-owned residential builders, which is most of the Sydney market, the relationship between the senior leadership team and the founding owners is critical. When that relationship works, people stay for a long time. When it doesn't, no package will keep them.

A genuine growth pathway. The leaders who are hardest to attract and hardest to retain are the ones who are thinking two or three moves ahead. They want to understand where the business is going, whether there's a role for them in that future, and whether the company has the ambition to match theirs.

Total package, not just base. Senior leaders are increasingly sophisticated about reading the full value of a remuneration package and increasingly willing to walk away from a higher base if the structure around it doesn't stack up.

The Data Gap We're Addressing

Because of all of this, we've been building something specifically for this market.

McKinnel Associates' annual Salary & Benefits Guide has been a trusted resource for operational and mid-level professionals in residential construction for four years, with over 350 participants each year. But as our practice has increasingly focused on retained and executive-level search, it became clear that senior leaders needed their own dedicated benchmarking tool.

So this year, for the first time, we're launching the 2026 Senior Leadership Salary, Benefits & Motivators Report, designed exclusively for executive and senior decision-makers in the construction and residential building sector.

It covers:

• Base salary by role, seniority, sector and organisational scale

• Variable and at-risk remuneration (STIs, LTIs, profit-share, equity)

• Benefits and total package composition

• Working arrangements and flexibility at leadership level

• The factors that influence senior leaders' decisions to stay or move

• The biggest challenges and opportunities facing residential construction leaders in 2026

All responses are completely anonymous. Participants receive early access to the full report before public release, which means you'll have the benchmarks before they're available anywhere else.

Why This Report Is Different

There are plenty of salary guides that include construction. Very few of them go deep on residential home building specifically, and almost none of them focus on the senior and executive tier.

This report is built for and by people who work in this market every day. The questions have been designed around the realities of senior leadership in residential construction: the complexity of remuneration structures at this level, the strategic and personal factors that influence decisions, and the specific challenges that leaders in this sector are facing right now.

If you're a Head Of, Operations Manager, GM, Director, or C-suite leader in residential construction, whether you're thinking about a move, negotiating a new package, or simply want to understand how your remuneration compares to peers at the same level, this report is for you.

Take Part

The survey takes approximately 8 minutes. If you leave your contact details at the end, you'll receive priority access to the full 2026 report before it's publicly released.

Take Part in the Survey

And if you'd like to have a conversation in the meantime about the market, about what your experience is worth, or about what's out there, we're always happy to talk.

📩 Get in touch today