Financial and Investment Analysts salary in San Francisco, California

The median Financial and Investment Analyst in San Francisco earned $128,470 in 2024. That is 16% above the California median of $111,100 and about 27% above the national figure of $101,220. Few metros post that kind of gap at both levels simultaneously.

The spread here is worth noting. The bottom 10% of analysts in the metro earned around $82,940. The top 10% earned $221,640. Top earners make about 2.7 times what those at the entry end make, which is a wide range even by California standards. Part of that reflects how differently this occupation pays depending on whether someone is doing equity research at a large asset manager versus portfolio support at a regional firm.

The average wage of $152,390 sits well above the median of $128,470. That gap tells us a smaller group of senior analysts pulls the mean up considerably. In practical terms, most of the roughly 9,580 analysts working in the San Francisco metro earn somewhere in the $100,000 to $168,000 range, with the upper end dominated by specialized roles in venture, private equity, and institutional investment management.

California as a whole is already one of the higher-paying states for this occupation. San Francisco adds another layer on top of that. The 16-point premium over the state median is consistent with what we see in a handful of other high-concentration finance metros, where competition for experienced talent and the density of capital firms both push wages above what the broader state labor pool reflects.