One of the business centers of the world is New York City. If you want to be in the center of the action, we’ve identified 10 of the top consulting firms in New York. So, if you want to work for a consulting firm in NYC, start your journey here.
Beware though – New Yorkers are a different breed. How do we know that they think the universe revolves around them? Well, for one, when we set our calendar on West Coast time, they show up on East Coast time. Because, who (that matters) lives outside the Big Apple?
Jokes aside, we love the great city of NYC. If you are a New Yorker, just moved there with hope and zeal to conquer the consulting world, or are just looking for some world-class information on the top consulting firms in NYC, you’re in the right place!
Firms are ranked according to 7 factors: Prestige, Culture, Compensation, Work/Life Balance, Type of Project Work, Investment in Local Community, and Future Business Outlook.
Questions about getting your firm considered for the ranking or want guidance on how to land a role at one of these firms? Reach out via email!
What about the Top Boutique Consulting Firms in New York?
Interested in some of the top boutiques that call New York home? Skip down to our Boutique listing. Now for the main event – drum roll please…
1. McKinsey & Company
Yes, the great McKinsey has its headquarters in New York, located at 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street. Founded in 1926, McKinsey now has its largest global office in New York (more than 900 consultants call it home). In addition, more than 3000 alumni – many of whom are business founders and CEOs – remain in the area. The office is incredibly diverse, with some incredible talent from 35+ countries and folks that speak 29 languages.
Primarily, McKinsey New York caters to the financial services, healthcare, advanced electronics, aerospace and defense, and TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) industries. McKinsey’s New York office recently received a perfect score for the 16th year in a row on the Human Rights Campaign 2022 corporate equality index. The index identifies the best places to work in regards to LGBTQ+ equality and gender equity for women.
McKinsey’s presence in the Big Apple outweighs the other Big 3, which is why the firm wins our #1 spot in NYC. Some of the “best” long-term McKinseyites have found themselves in NYC, which says something about the available opportunities and office culture. Furthermore, McKinsey boasts significant support staff in the office as well.
Compensation and benefits are near the top of the market, and so are not adjusted for NYC living. When it comes to your take-home pay, you’ll be better off in Atlanta or Dallas as a young consultant. However, we understand if the magnetic draw to the Big Apple is just too much.
Getting into McKinsey is always difficult, but it’s even tougher in NYC. With many target recruiting schools nearby and hundreds of aspirants swarming around, it’s a highly competitive office.
2. The Boston Consulting Group
BCG has a strong presence in the New York, Boston and New Jersey regions – almost as strong as McKinsey. BCG NYC is located in the colossal state-of-the-art Hudson Yards development. BCG’s home, 10 Hudson Yards, is like a city within a city and is considered the largest real estate deal in U.S. history (jaw drop!). A second, 90-story office tower, 30 Hudson Yards, serves as the new corporate headquarters for Time Warner and KKR. All of the 500+ BCGers in New York are located in this spacious office. A birdie told us that the consultants at the New York office helped design the office space because their current Managing Partner said “People should be the author of their own space”. Classic BCG creativity at work!
Some of the major projects that the NYC office works on are related to corporate development, corporate finance, digital economy, globalization, growth, information technology, marketing & sales operations, people and organization, post-merger integration, risk management, strategy, sustainability, and transformation. In addition, the New Jersey office focuses much more on pharmaceutical / life sciences projects compared to NYC.
Compensation is on-par with Bain, BCG, and some of the other top market players. Yet, hours are long and hard (isn’t that why you signed up in the first place though?). Overall though, BCG NY is an amazing place to work.
3. Deloitte Consulting
The global behemoth, Deloitte Consulting, is headquartered in New York with offices located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Deloitte’s offices in New York claim over 5,000 professionals in Audit, Advisory, Financial Advisory Services, Tax, and Consulting – while they’re not all in consulting, the firm’s presence here is huge. Because of its size, the office in New York is very transient and has a hoteling system (so you don’t have an assigned desk) – so if you land an offer at Deloitte NYC, be prepared to travel a lot.
The Manhattan office was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification at the Gold level for commercial interiors. Deloitte has designed its U.S. flagship office as a state-of-the-art and next-generation workplace. Fun fact: 30 Rock is where you get to see NBC anchors and other TV stars on their way to work! (That’s pretty cool, but the cool factor may wear off after many long days and nights in a row).
The New York office boasts great diversity, and it’s a heavy-hitting office; most of Deloitte’s top leaders work out of here. Deloitte is big on community service, and in NYC they have a famous IMPACT day where all their 5000 employees spread out across New York on community service projects. Deloitte is also involved with New York Cares Day, Big Brother Big Sister of New York City, Race for the Cure, the New York City Marathon, and the NYC Multiple Sclerosis Bike Tour.
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4. PwC
PwC, another shining star in NYC, is headquartered in New York at 300 Madison Avenue. PwC’s mothership manages a network of member firms with 83 offices across the U.S.
The New York office focuses primarily on projects that touch cybersecurity, financial services, fashion & retail, and more. Compared to the Top 3, employees have a decent work-life balance and get to rub shoulders with some of the crème de la crème of PwC – like Deloitte, the big brass hang out in the NYC offices.
The office environment can be quiet on weekdays, and even Fridays – working remotely is permitted as long as the work gets done. PwC does offer great flexibility – their vacation and holiday policies are very good. The NYC office skews young – staff members are heavily junior.
5. Bain & Company
Bain, one of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms, was founded in 1973. In New York, Bain is located at 1114 Avenue of the Americas on the 43rd Floor. To support the office’s growing employee base, Bain moved in 2015 to a new location in the fashionable Grace Building, which is located directly across the street from historic Bryant Park. The office has a very hi-tech conference room that is used to connect with global Bainies at all levels.
What does the New York office specialize in? Although Bain is a big revenue generating firm, this office also has a huge pro bono case practice area. They provide free consulting services for not-for-profit organizations every year. In 2015, New York office staff worked for NYC DOE design, a project which was received very favorably by the city’s mayor, who even visited the office. Previously, the New York office also worked for the Alliance for Downtown New York. After 9/11, they were left rudderless, lacked vision, and lost their luster – so they reached out to Bain. The Alliance implemented Bain’s recommendations and has become a successful advocate for transportation issues, enlisting the help of many large businesses in the downtown area (e.g., Bank of New York, AIG, Depository Trust, Standard & Poor’s, etc.)
Bainies in NYC work to support their clients on nearly every industry and across all ranges. The teams are comprised of enthusiastic, intelligent, outgoing and dynamic people from all walks of life. In the NYC office, they are open to hiring into Associate Consultant and Consultant full-time positions from top tier universities and leading business schools but focus specifically on Northeast Ivies as their core recruiting base. Their summer internship programs are open to both first year MBA students as well as undergraduate students, and the office has recently begun focusing extensively on APD recruiting as well.
6. EY Consulting
As with Deloitte and PwC, EY Consulting is headquartered in New York and is located at 1 Battery Place.
EY is the world’s 2nd largest accounting firm, and is coming on strong in consulting as well after its acquisition of Parthenon. Before the acquisition of Parthenon, consulting at EY was really synonymous to Advisory (not strategy). Some of the major Advisory practice areas this office is involved in include: Performance Improvement, Risk, and IT. Parthenon brings in a new flavor, and the firm’s New York office now also works on strategy projects across industries.
We’ve heard that the atmosphere at EY is far better than Deloitte – more collegial and focused on personal development, although skills training is not usually as strong. Recently, new things are happening in the SAP consulting side – if you are big on that, then it’s the right place to be now and also likely for at least the next couple of years.
Ernst & Young recently announced the completion of a lighting retrofit project in its U.S. headquarters in New York City. Fun fact: the project’s installation of energy-efficient lighting was one of New York City’s largest lighting retrofits ever.
7. Accenture
While the firm is technically headquartered in Chicago, the New York office is considered somewhat of another HQ; with an employee count of close to 2000, it’s one of the largest consulting offices in all of New York. This New York Office is located at 155 Avenue of the Americas. The office is not as fancy as many of the top firms, however, which dinged it in our book – for a large global firm to have an office that requires a facelift, with the global image team of Accenture sitting there, is ironic.
The main industries served out of New York include Public Services, Products, and not surprisingly, the Financial Industry. Accenture has a nearly-secret, much smaller, unofficial office on 11 Broadway. A few dozen consultants working in technology for the financial service industry are based at the Broadway office.
Their functional areas are analytics, high-end information technology, BPO, healthcare, marketing & sales, media & communication, finance & risk, cyber security & financial services. The office at NYC has grown quite a bit the past ~7 years. The employees have never-ending career opportunities, a great atmosphere in which to work with colleagues (including many tech geniuses), great benefits and the compensation is competitive. However, the New York office is not for those who do not want to work – this is a place where tons of work is distributed across teams, and work-life balance is a challenge – so go young, work hard, and move on!
8. KPMG
Located at 345 Park Avenue, KPMG’s newly renovated New York office located in the heart of Manhattan is the U.S. HQ for the audit, tax, and advisory firm. This office is home to over 5000 employees in the Audit and Risk, Advisory Services, and Tax practices, including 152 Audit and Risk Advisory Services partners and 61 Tax partners.
Like EY, KPMG has called practice areas consulting that aren’t really pure consulting in the way the rest of the strategy and management industry thinks about it. Heck – you could call tax advice “consulting” if you really wanted to. Therefore, they got demoted on our overall list.
The functional areas focused on in the NYC office include tax, regulatory, audit, advisory, financial services, and technology. The NYC office offers a great place to start a career; there is a great training system and great working environment. However, the pay is not great compared to other offices and the number of managers available to invest in your career are limited.
9. Booz Allen Hamilton
For a firm that is over 100 years old, it’s not surprising that this one has a prominent presence in New York. Located at 1133 6th Ave, BAH’s New York office offers a dynamic number of services but focuses specifically on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Modeling & Simulation, Organization & Strategy, and Systems Engineering & Integration.
In short, it’s a pretty back-end focused office with a lot of technical people working there. The office sponsors typically lively extracurricular entertainment and has food and beverages galore at its events, but is known for high utilization, lots of work, and relatively low pay for NYC compared to its peers. There is a ton of government-centric consulting work at Booz Allen, if you’re not interested in that area, then it will be mundane and is clearly not a good fit for you. However, it is on the Federal holiday schedule (yippee) but you do have few opportunities for commercial work.
10. IBM Global Business Services
Welcome to old school IBM: IBM Global Business Services. This corporate office is located at 1 New Orchard Road, and automatically gets the ding for most consultants because the office is not in Manhattan, so either your commute is gnarly or you’re resigned to suburban living.
Should you apply for this office? It is focused on the key practice areas of IT infrastructure, analytics, mobile, customer service, cloud computing, and security. It’s a highly technical office, and strategy work you do will largely be diagnostic – pre-sales to IBM’s implementation services.
Honorable Mention: Top Boutique Consulting Firms in New York
These are the top boutique consulting firms in New York (don’t fit the criteria to make our top firms list, but still amazing places to work and great places to start or advance careers):
- The Brattle Group is an economic anti-trust consulting firm with an office in New York and HQ in Cambridge, MA.
- Cornerstone Research provides attorneys with consulting for many facets of the litigation process – they have an office located in New York, but HQ in San Francisco, CA.
- The Chartis Group provides strategic planning in clinical transformation and information technology consulting services with an office located in New York.
- Marakon (now a part of Charles River Associates) is a corporate strategy consulting NY firm with the experience and track record of helping CEOs and their leadership teams achieve winning performance and build stronger organizations.
- Novantas has HQ in New York and is an analytic advisory services and technology solutions for financial institutions around the world.
Each of these top consulting firms in NYC is a great place to begin or continue a consulting career. Know what you’re looking for, and get ready to rumble in the Big Apple! Work with our expert team to get your resume ready for the competitive NYC applications, and then pivot your focus to case prep with an MBB coach.