Hiring Guide
Order Management Specialist: Job Description, Salary, and Duties
An order management specialist is accountable for the health of the entire order book: every order, every channel, every status. Where order entry is about a single order's accuracy, order management is about the system: SLAs, exceptions, escalations, and the reporting that tells leadership whether fulfillment is on track.
Order Management Specialist Salary
| Source | Figure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| BLS OES (Order Clerks, SOC 43-4151) | $46,170/year median | May 2025, 75,200 employed in the US |
| Fully loaded employer cost | ~$66,000/year | BLS median x 1.43 (benefits are 31.4% of total compensation per BLS ECEC) |
Order Management Specialist Salary by State
Median annual wage for order clerks (SOC 43-4151) by state. Source: BLS OES May 2025, fetched 2026-06-09 via BLS API. States with suppressed BLS estimates are omitted.
| State | Median wage | Employment |
|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $55,040/yr | 1,350 |
| Oregon | $50,260/yr | 790 |
| Vermont | $49,950/yr | n/a |
| Colorado | $49,530/yr | 1,970 |
| Rhode Island | $49,410/yr | 170 |
| District of Columbia | $49,150/yr | 170 |
| Alabama | $48,840/yr | 80 |
| Arizona | $48,590/yr | 760 |
| New Hampshire | $48,540/yr | 390 |
| Minnesota | $48,400/yr | 1,150 |
| New York | $48,320/yr | 3,530 |
| South Dakota | $48,010/yr | 330 |
| Washington | $47,990/yr | 4,300 |
| Maine | $47,750/yr | 300 |
| Wisconsin | $47,750/yr | 1,540 |
| Maryland | $47,700/yr | 850 |
| Illinois | $47,670/yr | 3,540 |
| Connecticut | $47,500/yr | 710 |
| California | $47,290/yr | 12,390 |
| Pennsylvania | $46,840/yr | 2,570 |
| Hawaii | $46,760/yr | 210 |
| New Jersey | $46,270/yr | 2,640 |
| Ohio | $46,120/yr | 3,810 |
| North Carolina | $46,060/yr | 2,990 |
| Oklahoma | $45,850/yr | 2,210 |
| West Virginia | $45,320/yr | 100 |
| Kansas | $45,200/yr | 310 |
| Iowa | $44,980/yr | 680 |
| Florida | $44,380/yr | 3,270 |
| Indiana | $44,340/yr | 1,800 |
| Texas | $44,280/yr | 5,180 |
| Michigan | $44,240/yr | 2,290 |
| Nebraska | $44,060/yr | 440 |
| Mississippi | $43,040/yr | 470 |
| Virginia | $42,580/yr | 1,690 |
| Montana | $42,000/yr | 60 |
| Arkansas | $41,760/yr | 290 |
| South Carolina | $41,740/yr | 740 |
| Georgia | $41,720/yr | 1,750 |
| Delaware | $41,430/yr | 170 |
| New Mexico | $41,020/yr | 310 |
| Kentucky | $40,620/yr | 930 |
| Nevada | $40,560/yr | 740 |
| Utah | $40,260/yr | 880 |
| Idaho | $40,110/yr | 90 |
| Tennessee | $39,160/yr | 2,260 |
| Alaska | $37,590/yr | 70 |
| Louisiana | $37,520/yr | 660 |
Order Management Specialist Job Description (Copy-Paste Template)
Responsibilities
- Monitor the full open-order book across all intake channels
- Own order SLAs: entry time, acknowledgment time, on-time ship rate
- Manage exceptions end to end: shortages, pricing disputes, EDI failures, address issues
- Coordinate between sales, warehouse, purchasing, and customers on at-risk orders
- Maintain order management system configuration: rules, alerts, customer profiles
- Produce weekly order health reporting for operations leadership
- Lead root-cause follow-up on recurring order failures
- Train CSRs and clerks on order handling procedures
Requirements
- 3+ years in order operations, fulfillment, or supply chain coordination
- Strong ERP and order management system skills, including configuration
- Excel or BI reporting proficiency
- Demonstrated cross-functional coordination
Nice to Have
- EDI working knowledge (850/855/856/810 flows and common failure modes)
- Experience selecting or implementing an OMS
- Continuous improvement training (lean, six sigma)
Want this tailored to your order channels and ERP? Use the free job description generator.
Interview Questions That Actually Screen
What does a healthy order book look like, and what is the first metric that tells you it is not?
What to listen for: Names leading indicators (unacknowledged orders, aging holds) rather than lagging ones.
Describe a recurring order failure you eliminated. What was the root cause?
What to listen for: A real root cause (data, process, or system), a fix, and a measured result.
An EDI 850 failed validation overnight and the customer expects shipment today. Walk me through it.
What to listen for: Knows the recovery path: identify the failed segment, manual entry as a stopgap, fix the mapping, communicate proactively.
How would you decide whether the team needs another person or better tooling?
What to listen for: Reaches for volume and time data, not headcount instinct. This question doubles as a values check.
Job Outlook
BLS Employment Projections show order clerks employment falling from 89,500 to 74,100 over 2024 to 2034, a 17.2% decline. The driver is order and document capture automation. Plan the role accordingly: the durable version of this job handles exceptions and customers, not keystrokes.
Before You Post the Req
This is the role that benefits most from automating order capture rather than being replaced by it. Every hour the team does not spend keying is an hour the specialist spends on exceptions and SLAs. If your order management specialist spends half their week entering orders, the job is mistitled and the math favors fixing capture first.
- Manual order entry costs and error rates (BLS-verified per-order math)
- Manual order entry cost calculator (your volume, your wages)
- Free PO extractor (upload one of your real order PDFs and watch the capture step disappear)
FAQ
What does an order management specialist do?
They manage the entire open-order book: SLAs, exceptions, cross-functional escalations, system rules, and order health reporting, across every intake channel.
How much does an order management specialist make?
BLS groups the role with order clerks, median $46,170 (May 2025), but posted salaries for true order management roles typically run above the clerk median because of the systems and reporting scope.
Order management vs order entry: which should I hire first?
If orders are being keyed accurately but nobody owns exceptions and SLAs, hire order management. If the team is drowning in keying, fix capture with automation first; an order management hire cannot out-manage a capture bottleneck.