Engineering and manufacturing
Production manager jobs
Running a manufacturing operation: output, quality, safety, cost and the shift teams delivering all four.
£58,640 median full-time pay, UK, ONS 2025
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Production manager jobs across the UK
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Production manager jobs across the UK: be first to hear
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Open adverts for Production manager jobs across the UK, as a plain list
Published pay
What production manager jobs pay
Median full-time pay for production managers and directors in manufacturing was £58,640 across the UK in 2025. Full-time work of every kind had a median of £39,039, so this occupation sits about 1.5 times that. It is a median, so half of those jobs paid less, and it describes the occupation nationally rather than any advert on this page.
That figure is the reason this role is on the board. Every role here has a published ONS median full-time salary at or above £50,000, and it is checked against the ONS table each time the site is built rather than asserted in the copy. A role that stopped clearing it would stop the build.
Pay varies more by region than most people expect. ONS publishes it for groups of related occupations rather than single job titles, so the table beside this covers production and operations directors across manufacturing, construction, mining and energy, not production manager jobs alone.
Median full-time pay by region, 2025
| Region | Median full-time pay |
|---|---|
| London | £78,135 |
| South East | £56,715 |
| East of England | £56,963 |
| South West | £53,690 |
| West Midlands | £54,489 |
| East Midlands | £55,703 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | £51,524 |
| North West | £55,079 |
| North East | £58,070 |
| Wales | £51,904 |
| Scotland | £58,609 |
What the local data covers
Adding up the published local figures across the 175 areas with data gives 600,597 people in work in this occupation group at the 2021 census. The middle area records 2,152. That is arithmetic over local releases, not a national statistic, and areas the publisher withholds are simply absent from it.
The largest are Essex at 20,646, Kent at 19,126, Hampshire at 18,035, Hertfordshire at 15,568, Surrey at 15,390. Coverage runs across 10 regions of England and Wales.
Census counts follow where people live, not where the jobs are, and they are not a count of vacancies. The business survey figures on each area page count employee jobs located in that area in 2024, which is a different population again. Neither is ever divided by the other.
Production manager: the full picture
The four numbers, and how they fight each other
Output, quality, safety and cost. Push output and quality slips. Cut cost and maintenance gets deferred. Safety is the one that is never traded openly and is quietly traded all the time, which is why the culture a manager sets matters more than the policy.
The best production managers are visible on the floor. It is a job done by being there, and the ones who manage from an office are usually the last to know something is wrong.
Routes in and what employers look for
Many production managers came up through the plant, often through an apprenticeship and a team leader role. Others arrive with an engineering degree and a graduate scheme. Both routes are well represented and the shop-floor route is not a disadvantage.
Lean and Six Sigma appear in most job specs. They are useful and they are also a shorthand: what a hiring manager is really asking is whether you can improve a process rather than only supervise one.
Before you apply
- Manufacturing experience, often from the shop floor up
- Lean or Six Sigma is common and rarely essential
- Right to work in the UK
Production manager jobs: common questions
Does production manager work pay more than £50,000 a year?
On the national figures, yes, and that is why the role is on this board at all. Median full-time pay for production managers and directors in manufacturing was £58,640 across the UK in 2025, against £39,039 for full-time work of every kind. It is a median, so half of those jobs paid less, and it says nothing about what any individual advert pays.
What qualifications do I need to work as a production manager?
Manufacturing experience, often from the shop floor up. Lean or Six Sigma is common and rarely essential. Right to work in the UK.
Where does AceLeads Jobs have local figures for production manager jobs?
In 175 county and unitary areas across England and Wales, from the 2021 census. Scotland ran a separate census in 2022 through National Records of Scotland which is not published in the same place, so Scottish areas have no local figure. Adverts themselves are UK wide.
Do you decide who gets sent to an employer?
No. You read the adverts, you choose one, and you apply to that employer yourself. Nothing on this site forwards a person to a job they did not apply to, and no employer is given a list of people.
What does it cost to use?
Nothing, ever. It is always free for job seekers, and employers pay to advertise. There is no premium account, no paid profile and no fee of any kind on the job seeker side.