Senior Cost Manager / Quantity Surveyor – New York, NY

Location: New York, NY (hybrid: 4 days in-office / site-based)

Role level: Senior Professional (Senior Cost Manager)

Compensation: $125,000 – $165,000 base salary + comprehensive benefits package, commensurate with experience

The Opportunity

HeatherDaniel International (HDi), a construction recruitment specialist, is seeking an experienced, client-focused Senior Cost Manager to join a premier, independent global construction consultancy in New York City. Operating with complete structural independence and a partnership-focused culture, the firm provides client-side commercial advisory, cost planning and project-control services to leading institutional owners, developers and corporate occupiers across North America.

This seat suits a commercially sharp quantity surveyor or cost consultant who protects client capital across complex capital projects, high-end commercial office fit-outs, hospitality developments and technical build-outs.

Key Responsibilities

• Commercial leadership: Autonomously lead cost-management services across multi-stage, complex capital projects, acting as a trusted commercial adviser to institutional clients and project stakeholders.
• Cost control and reporting: Oversee project budgets, feasibility estimates, detailed cost plans, cash-flow forecasting and value-engineering exercises from early design through final closeout.
• Post-contract administration: Review contractor applications for payment, evaluate change orders, audit cost-value reconciliations (CVRs) and manage final-account negotiations.
• Contractor interrogation: Interrogate contractor pricing, sub-tier bid breakdowns and change-order rationale to defend client baselines, rather than performing passive administrative reporting.
• Mentorship: Support team development by delegating tasks, guiding junior cost managers and contributing to internal commercial best practice.

Requirements

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Quantity Surveying, Commercial Management, Construction Management, Civil Engineering or a related discipline.
• Accreditation: RICS accreditation (MRICS) or a degree from a RICS-accredited institution is strongly preferred.
• Experience: 5–10+ years of dedicated cost management or quantity surveying within an independent consultancy, owner’s representation firm or professional advisory practice.
• Technical proficiency: Advanced command of pre- and post-contract cost-management mechanics, contract administration (including traditional and design-build models), measurement software (Bluebeam, CostX or equivalent) and cost-forecasting tools.
• Consultancy mindset: Exceptional client-facing delivery, strong verbal presentation skills, and the commercial authority to guide non-technical stakeholders through complex financial decisions.
• Site and travel: Comfortable spending up to 50% of working time on active project sites, programme locations or regional client meetings across national delivery programmes, within a 4-day in-office / site-based hybrid pattern.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $125,000 – $165,000 base + comprehensive benefits, commensurate with experience.
• Culture: A partner-led environment that prioritises long-term professional development, meritocratic advancement and career stability free from external shareholder pressure.
• Progression: Clear upward pathways to Associate Director leadership roles, on high-profile commercial, institutional and technical projects across major US metropolitan markets.

Next Step

Interviews are being arranged now.

Why candidates choose HDi

We start with you, not with a requisition to fill. The people we place today are often the clients who hire us tomorrow. That only works if we treat the first conversation with care.

We know what a Quantity Surveyor is. We work in verticals — cost, project advisory, claims and dispute, built-environment leadership, and data center and mission-critical programmes — not as a generalist shop that learns your job from a Wikipedia page.

We are honest about salary and fit, even when the answer is no. We do not mailshot your curriculum vitae. We do not share it without your consent. That promise is written in full on our Candidate Charter.

We stay with you from the first call through interview, offer, resignation and start.

A major statewide consultancy in the United States, headquartered in New York, has hired us on a retainer.

We are working with a major international consultancy and have placed nearly forty people with them this year.

Our Candidate Charter: You are a person, not a placement. We are honest on salary and fit. Your curriculum vitae is never shared without your consent. We reply, even when there is no update. We stay with you through the whole move.

To book a call, click here

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New York, NY · Photo: Jakub Hałun, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons