SOC classification of account executives, managers and sales engineers

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) behind the figures of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics was not written around the titles of a modern sales team. It names sales engineers, and we found no occupation in it called sales development representative, account executive or account manager. This post shows which SOC 2018 codes each title lands in and why, gives a test for coding your own team, and works through what one coding decision does to an official wage figure.

SOC classification of a sales development representative, account executive, account manager and sales engineer

Of these four titles, we found one named as an occupation in SOC 2018: 41-9031 Sales Engineers. Sales development representatives, account executives and account managers are coded by the work they do: 41-3091 for selling services outside advertising, insurance, financial services and travel, and 41-4011 or 41-4012 for selling a manufacturer's or wholesaler's goods.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the rule in its answers on finding a SOC code: a worker's occupation follows from the duties of the job, and the job title does not decide it. The classification rests on the work performed and, in some cases, on the skills, education or training the work calls for. A job that could be coded to more than one occupation goes to the one that requires the highest level of skill or, where the skill does not measurably differ, to the one that takes the most time. Workers whose activities no distinct detailed occupation describes are placed in an All Other occupation.

The Bureau also publishes a Direct Match Title File of job titles that each match a single detailed occupation. Its own illustration is that criminal law professor matches one occupation, while painter could belong to several. Look your titles up in that file first. A title that is listed has its code, and a title that is absent needs the duties test below.

In the Bureau's wage survey, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), employers report each worker's actual job title and job duties, and the survey's own staff do all the classifying, as the OEWS questions and answers set out. A code is therefore a judgement on a description of duties, and one title can land in different codes at two employers.

A test for coding a sales job

The definitions are the Bureau's and the order of the questions is our suggestion. Stop at the first question that the main duties of the job answer with yes.

1. Does the job plan, direct or coordinate how a product or service reaches the customer, by setting sales territories, quotas and goals? That is 11-2022 Sales Managers.
2. Does it directly supervise and coordinate sales workers outside retail for 80 percent or more of its time, the threshold in the Bureau's coding guidelines? That is 41-1012 First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers. A supervisor below that threshold is coded with the workers supervised.
3. Does the selling require a technical background equivalent to a bachelor's degree in engineering? That is 41-9031 Sales Engineers.
4. Does the job sell goods for a wholesaler or a manufacturer? Where the selling calls for technical or scientific knowledge, normally from at least two years of postsecondary education, it is 41-4011. Otherwise it is 41-4012, which asks for substantial knowledge of the items sold.
5. Does the job sell services to individuals or businesses? That is 41-3091, whose definition sets aside advertising sales agents, insurance sales agents, financial services sales agents, travel agents and telemarketers.
6. Does the job mainly answer routine inquiries with basic or scripted information? That is 43-4051 Customer Service Representatives, which leaves out anyone whose duties are primarily sales.

BLS sales occupations in the SOC: sales representatives, sales engineers, first-line supervisors, and where SDRs and account managers fit

The BLS sales occupations that matter to a business-to-business team are three kinds of sales representative (41-3091, 41-4011, 41-4012), Sales Engineers (41-9031) and First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers (41-1012), with Sales Managers (11-2022) in the management group. SDRs and account managers fit under the representative codes.

The first two columns of the table are the Bureau's. The third is our reading of the definitions.

Software is the hard case, because none of the definitions above names it. The May 2023 OEWS profiles, an earlier edition than the wage figures below, show where such jobs have been placed in practice. Software publishers are among the five largest employing industries of both 41-4011 and 41-9031. Computer systems design and related services is the largest employing industry of 41-3091 and of 41-9031, and is among the five largest for 41-4011. Sellers at technology employers are therefore recorded in at least three occupations, and the duties reported for each job decide which.

Titles with no code of their own

O*NET OnLine searches occupations by keyword, and its results show how far a sales title spreads. We ran three searches on 7 October 2026.

A keyword search ranks matches and assigns nothing, so read each row as a list of candidates.

• Sales development representative. The three sales representative occupations lead. The title names a stage of the sale, and the SOC divides sellers by what is sold; we found no code for the stage.
• Account executive. The title is at home in advertising, insurance and financial services as well as in business sales, and each of those has an occupation of its own. Only the duties tell them apart.
• Account manager. The word manager draws management occupations. An account manager who manages customer accounts answers no to the first two questions of the test and lands with the sales representatives.

What the classification does to official wage figures

OEWS produces employment and wage estimates each year for approximately 830 occupations, and an estimate covers everyone coded to the occupation, in every industry. The table takes four occupations from the May 2025 estimates, the current edition, published in the May 2025 occupation profiles and the OEWS tables. Use it to see the spread between codes.

The estimates count part-time and full-time workers who are paid a wage or salary in nonfarm industries, and leave out the self-employed. The wage takes in the base rate, commissions, incentive pay and production bonuses, leaves out overtime and year-end bonuses, and the annual figure assumes a full-time year of 2,080 hours.

Three effects follow when you read an official figure against a sales role.

• One figure holds several titles. An SDR, an account executive and an account manager at one employer can share a code. The published median then describes the mix of the three and matches none of them.
• One title sits in several figures. The same account executive reads against $69,990 under 41-3091 or $104,920 under 41-4011, a figure about 50% higher, and a sales engineer against $124,900. The gap is one of classification before it is one of pay.
• Every industry is in the national figure. Computer systems design holds 116,400 of the 1,256,010 jobs in 41-3091, about 9%. OEWS also publishes national estimates by industry, so read the occupation within your own industry and print the code and the edition beside any figure you quote.

Worked example: coding the sales team of Acme Robotics

This example is illustrative. Acme Robotics is an invented company, and every figure in the example is invented to show the method.

Assumptions:

• Acme manufactures warehouse robots and sells them to businesses, so its sellers sell goods for a manufacturer.
• The team has 24 people: 6 sales development representatives, 8 account executives, 4 account managers, 3 sales engineers, 2 team leads and 1 vice president of sales.
• Account executives and account managers need technical knowledge of robotics of the kind two years of postsecondary study gives. Sales engineers hold engineering degrees and the selling needs them. Team leads spend their time supervising. The vice president sets territories, quotas and goals.
• Yearly pay, with commission paid, is the same for everyone in a role: 60,000 US dollars for a sales development representative, 100,000 for an account manager and 130,000 for an account executive.

The mapping below is this page's suggestion for Acme, made with the test above. The first column gives the closest role among the sales role labels of Fokals Job Postings.

Six titles land in four or five codes. At least two titles share one code, and one role label is split over two codes, so the mapping runs many to many in both directions.

Now the wage figure for the 18 sellers who are SDRs, account executives and account managers.

1. Coding A: the six SDRs go to 41-4012. 41-4011 then holds 4 account managers at 100,000 and 8 account executives at 130,000. Of the 12 values in order, the sixth and the seventh are both 130,000, so the median is 130,000. The mean is (400,000 + 1,040,000) / 12 = 120,000.
2. Coding B: the six SDRs are judged to need the technical knowledge and go to 41-4011. The code holds 18 people: 6 at 60,000, 4 at 100,000 and 8 at 130,000. In order, the ninth and the tenth values are both 100,000, so the median is 100,000. The mean is (360,000 + 400,000 + 1,040,000) / 18 = 100,000.

One judgement about six people moves the median of the occupation from 130,000 to 100,000 while nobody's pay changes. Under coding B the figure equals the pay of the account managers, sits 40,000 above every SDR and 30,000 below every account executive.

How a role label built for sales postings differs

The SOC groups jobs by what is sold and the knowledge the selling takes. A sales team is organised by the part of the sale each role owns, and that is the line a role label on a posting follows. In Fokals Job Postings, every posting carries a job function and a seniority level, and a posting in a sales function carries a further set of sales labels.

• Role: SDR or BDR, account executive, account manager or customer success, sales engineer, sales leadership, sales operations, partnerships or channel, or other.
• Segment: SMB, mid-market, enterprise or unspecified.
• Flags: quota carrying, inbound leads, outbound prospecting, new business and founding sales hire.

Account-management titles filed under customer success and sales leaders filed under executives carry the same labels. The data dictionary lists every label and what it means.

The two answer different questions. The role label leads to what employers advertise for a role: Sales Pay Benchmarks hold those quartiles, and benchmarking sales compensation shows how to place a plan against them. The occupation code leads to what people coded to an occupation were paid. To read them side by side, keep a crosswalk of your own with one row for each role label and these columns:

• the role label and the version on its row
• the SOC edition and the code you chose
• the question of the test that decided it
• the date of the decision and who made it

Review the crosswalk when either version changes, and print it with any comparison that rests on it.

Frequently asked questions

What this page says about the products it names was checked against their public documentation on 7 October 2026. Product and company names are trademarks of their owners. Fokals is not affiliated with them or endorsed by them.