Consulting firms in Boston: 3,652 offices in the metro where Bain and BCG began

This report is for people looking for consulting jobs in Boston (including students at the area's universities), organizations hiring a consultant, and companies that sell to consulting firms. It covers the Census count, the kinds of consulting, the big firms' offices, federal work, pay and the checks to run before you hire.

Boston's consulting market in numbers

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023 counts 3,652 establishments in NAICS 5416, Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services, in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro area: 50,068 employees, $7.33 billion in annual payroll and 13.7 employees per office. By size, 2,671 have one to four employees, 343 have five to nine, 248 have 10 to 19, 204 have 20 to 49, 90 have 50 to 99, 63 have 100 to 249, 19 have 250 to 499, 10 have 500 to 999 and 4 have 1,000 or more.

The split is the market in one line: Boston proper (Suffolk) holds the large firm offices, while Cambridge and the Route 128 suburbs in Middlesex hold twice as many offices, mostly small. Remember that CBP is a count of business locations with payroll, so a multi-office firm appears more than once and owner-only practices don't appear.

Where Bain and BCG started

Each row is from the firm's own site or 10-K, checked 30 October 2026:

We couldn't confirm McKinsey, EY or PwC from their own sites (no response, no addresses in the page, and a block on automated access), so look them up yourself. BCG is the one big strategy firm that publishes revenue; see the largest consulting firms, and for the audit firms' consulting arms, the Big Four accounting firms.

No listed consulting firm of size is headquartered in the metro. The one exchange-listed company SEC EDGAR files under management consulting here, The RMR Group of Newton, describes itself in its 10-K as a real estate manager with nearly 900 real estate professionals; $506.9 million of its $700.3 million revenue for the year to September 2025 was reimbursable costs.

The kinds of consulting

General management offices paid $165,859 per employee (our calculation from CBP payroll). Environmental consultancies are larger than the Boston average at 18 employees per office. IT consulting is counted under computer systems design (541512): 892 offices and 17,508 employees. The NAICS code for consulting explains each code.

Federal consulting done in the Boston area

Federal agencies obligated $221.2 million on consulting contracts (NAICS 5416) performed in the metro's counties in fiscal 2025, according to USAspending.gov, down from $294.4 million a year earlier. General management (541611) took $113.1 million and environmental (541620) $69.8 million. The EPA obligated $69.5 million, the Air Force $47.6 million and the IRS $22.7 million. The largest recipients were Eastern Research Group ($52.1 million), Accenture Federal Services ($36.5 million), The Cadmus Group ($18.1 million), IDEMIA Identity & Security USA ($15.5 million), MITRE ($13.5 million) and The Brattle Group ($8.8 million). If you sell to environmental or economics consultancies, these award records show which ones carry federal programs.

Pay and careers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 26,450 management analysts (occupation 13-1111) in the Boston metro in May 2025, with a mean wage of $149,600 and a median of $135,640; the 10th percentile earned $83,380 and the 90th $218,830. Both the mean and the 10th percentile are the highest of the six big-city consulting markets we cover (Chicago, New York, Washington, Dallas, Atlanta). The occupation spans every industry, not just consulting firms.

How to choose and vet a Boston consultant

1. Pick the code before the brand. A strategy question, an HR redesign and a contaminated-site assessment need different firms; the table above shows how many of each the metro has.
2. For environmental cleanup, ask for the Licensed Site Professional. Massachusetts created the LSP program in 1993 to privatize hazardous waste site cleanup, and LSPs are authorized by the Commonwealth to oversee assessment and cleanup for property owners. The LSP Association explains the role; confirm the individual's license with MassDEP's LSP board.
3. Confirm the firm is registered. The Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth's corporations search blocked our automated check, so search it directly.
4. Check for conflicts. Ask which competitors the team has advised in the last two years, and, if a Big Four firm audits you, whether audit independence rules limit what it can do.
5. Meet the team, take references from clients your size and agree a fixed fee for a defined scope.

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and ACG Boston, the Association for Corporate Growth chapter listed on ACG's chapter directory, are two of the local business networks to start from.

Selling to Boston consultancies

General guidance: at the 3,262 offices under 20 staff the founder buys; at the 294 with 20 to 99 a director of operations or practice leader; at the 96 of 100 or more, expect procurement and a security review, often run from another city.

Illustrative example. The company, prices and results are fictional.

FieldLog (fieldlog.example) sells field-sampling data software to environmental consultancies at $9,000 a year per office. Of the metro's 196 environmental consulting offices, 55 have ten or more employees (our calculation from the published cells). Winning 12 of them would bring 12 x $9,000 = $108,000 a year. FieldLog's opener names a reporting deadline its customers face and offers to load one past project for free. Finding the 55, and the LSP or project manager who runs fieldwork at each, is the account research Bebop does.

Next step: see how the federal market shapes consulting firms in Washington, DC, or the wider business base in companies in Boston.