2026 Edition · An annual reference on what work pays

Industrial Engineers

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan area. Estimated employment 5,470.

Data released May 2025 BLS OEWS · SOC 17-2112
Fig. 1 — The wage rule

Where you sit in the distribution

Drag the marker, or type a figure
$132,230 · 50th
$90,24010th
$107,47025th
$132,23050th
$164,61075th
$198,56090th

That is the medianhalf of industrial engineers in San Francisco earn more.

Table 1 — Adjusted

$132,230 in San Francisco buys what $114,400 buys across the country as a whole.

San Francisco's regional price parity is 115.6 — well above the national average — a dollar here buys noticeably less than in the US as a whole. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.

Fig. 2 — The ladder

What comes next

Median offered base pay by seniority for Industrial Engineers in San Francisco, classified from job titles on visa filings.

Entry
$112,320
Mid
$128,815
Senior
$144,584
Lead
$155,750
Table 2 — Nearby metros

The same job, elsewhere in California

Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.

Metro areaMedianAdjustedRPPvs. San Francisco
San Jose$136,950$124,000110.4+8.4%
San Francisco This page$132,230$114,400115.6
Santa Cruz$131,740$119,900109.9+4.8%
Santa Rosa$121,660$112,900107.8−1.3%
Santa Maria$119,790$110,100108.8−3.7%
San Diego$119,050$106,400111.9−7.0%
Vallejo$113,630$104,700108.5−8.4%
Los Angeles$113,040$99,500113.6−13.0%

Price parity and difference against San Francisco are in the full table on wider screens.

Table 3 — Employers

Who pays what

Median offered salary from visa filings, which disclose employer, title and exact figure. Government wage surveys never publish at this level.

EmployerMedian offerRangeFilingsvs. metro
Meta Platforms$189,380$139k – $259k26+43.2%
Zipline International$170,248$115k – $200k6+28.8%
Dako Resources$156,832$129k – $167k8+18.6%
Zoox$156,000$118k – $199k34+18.0%
Gilead Sciences$155,750$156k – $163k5+17.8%
Amazon Data Services$149,900$134k – $169k5+13.4%
Tesla$145,000$90k – $219k171+9.7%

Offer ranges and filing counts are in the full table on wider screens.

Fig. 3 — Five-year trend

Nominal against real

The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.

110k120k130k140k150k 20212022202320242025
Nominal, as published Real, in 2025 dollars US$ thousands

Published pay rose 14.6% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it fell 3.5% — prices rose faster than pay since 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.

Sources

How this page was made

Wage data
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Public domain.
Price parity
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024.
Employer pay
Department of Labor, Labor Condition Application disclosures, FY 2025. The table draws on 255 certified filings across 7 employers.
Career ladder
Seniority classified from job titles on the same visa filings; levels shown only with five or more filings each and a strictly rising progression.
Inflation
Real figures deflate by CPI-U annual averages (BLS, all items, US city average).
Employment
5,470 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
Occupation
SOC 17-2112, Industrial Engineers. Mapped to our taxonomy as industrial-engineers.

Percentiles are reported exactly as released and are never interpolated between published values. Visa filings record offered base salary at time of application, exclude equity and bonus, and skew toward larger employers — treat the employer table as a floor, not an average. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.