Requirements for business improvement professionals depend on different job characteristics. By focussing on lean management, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a comprehensive conceptualisation of competencies relevant for lean professionals by comparing them to an existing project management competency framework; and second, to identify their similarities and differences in three different analysed countries. This paper investigates 2,701 online published job advertisements in the USA, UK and Germany by means of a content analysis to compare and contrast the respective job profiles.