Unsure of True Market Value (W/WW/Municipal Engineer)
Hello all, I am a Licensed PE with 9 years of full-time experience having worked in high-rise construction management, Municipal Engineering, and W/WW Engineering. At this point, I am primarily a W/WW guy. I have posted before about my saga at my current firm of almost now 6.5 years, but I have already seen the almost "starring you directly in the face secondly" writing on the wall there in a negative way, and I am stuck beyond belief and need to leave sooner than later.
I have held the title of Project Manager for about 1.5 years now (got promoted via counter offer) and while I am legitimately managing several projects, they have not built enough of a team underneath me so I am more or less wearing 3-4 hats, in some case being the client manager, project Manager, design engineer, and drafter all in one when I do not have younger staff available at a time....I even at times have become an emergency or fill-in inspector due to short staffing.
As a result of this, several recruiters now have seemed to have somewhat devalued my "legitimacy" as a true-blue Project Manager since I am not always just delegating work and am still in a higher production role. As such, they seem to want to market me to clients as a "lower end" PM or APM where my compensation would be lateral at this point.
For those who have been in a similar boat, how did you make this jump, and at this current 2026 market, what do you think I am even worth at this point? I am located in the Northeast US. Thank you.