Construction Management and Engineering Compensation: San Francisco

Overview

This profile reports what four core construction management and engineering occupations are paid in the San Francisco metropolitan area, using the most recent federal occupational wage statistics. A geographic note first: BLS publishes occupational wages at the metropolitan-statistical-area level, so "San Francisco" here means the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA MSA — San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo counties — not any single city government's boundaries. All figures are annual wages in US dollars from the OEWS May 2025 reference period. The profile is produced under the Lab's public-source compensation benchmarking method (WIL-CBM-1.0): it is a public-data profile, not a peer survey, and it describes pay positioning only — it makes no claim about labor availability or hiring conditions.

Annual wages, US dollars. Employment is OEWS-estimated occupational employment in the MSA. — Sources: BLS

Percentages computed from OEWS medians as shown; positive = metro median above the benchmark. — Sources: BLS

What the figures show

San Francisco is the highest-paying metro in this series for three of the four occupations: construction managers ($166,030, +24.7% above the California median and +44.4% above the national), first-line supervisors ($120,810, +23.7% vs. state), and cost estimators ($101,630, +18.9% vs. state). Civil engineers ($130,160) sit essentially level with San Jose and Sacramento at the top of the state's civil-engineering pay band. Even the 10th-percentile figures here exceed several metros' medians — a compressed-at-the-top distribution consistent with the region's cost structure. These are observed pay comparisons only; nothing here measures how hard these roles are to fill.

Statewide, all occupations within private NAICS 23 — broader than the four profiled occupations. Year over year (Q3 2024 → Q3 2025): average weekly wage +3.8%; employment −2.4%; establishments +4.8%. Quarterly wage figures are not seasonally adjusted (Q4 typically carries year-end pay). — Sources: BLS

Method and limitations

Prepared under WIL-CBM-1.0 (Public-Source Compensation Benchmarking: A Method Note, WIL-RB-2026.3-COMP-METHOD). Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 estimates for the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA MSA, California, and the United States, read from the Lab's governed warehouse (BLS_OEWS ingest, June 2026); industry context is BLS QCEW, private ownership, NAICS 23, through Q3 2025 (BLS_QCEW ingest, June 2026). Limitations: this is a public-data profile, not a peer survey — no employer-specific comparators were collected, so it does not substitute for a WIL-CBM-1.0 peer study where employer-level matching is required. Coverage is four occupations at the MSA level; city- or employer-level variation within the MSA is not observable in OEWS. OEWS wages are modeled estimates with published relative standard errors (roughly 1–3 percent for these cells); QCEW quarterly wages are not seasonally adjusted. No cell used here was suppressed; any suppressed cell would be shown as missing, never zero. This profile asserts pay positioning only — not workforce availability, not hiring conditions.

@techreport{WILRB20263COMPSF,
  title       = {Construction Management and Engineering Compensation: San Francisco: A public-source wage profile of the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA MSA, May 2025},
  author      = {AlphaHire Workforce Intelligence Lab},
  institution = {AlphaHire Workforce Intelligence Lab},
  type        = {WIL Compensation Profiles},
  number      = {WIL-RB-2026.3-COMP-SF},
  year        = {2026},
  note        = {Version 1.0; methodology WIL-CBM-1.0},
  url         = {https://wilinstitute.org/library/p/compensation-profile-construction-management-san-francisco},
}

TY  - RPRT
AU  - AlphaHire Workforce Intelligence Lab
TI  - Construction Management and Engineering Compensation: San Francisco: A public-source wage profile of the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA MSA, May 2025
PY  - 2026
PB  - AlphaHire Workforce Intelligence Lab
M1  - WIL-RB-2026.3-COMP-SF
ET  - Version 1.0
UR  - https://wilinstitute.org/library/p/compensation-profile-construction-management-san-francisco
AB  - A public-source compensation profile of four construction management and engineering occupations in the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA MSA, using BLS OEWS May 2025 wage percentiles benchmarked against California and national levels, with BLS QCEW private construction (NAICS 23) industry context. The highest-paying metro in the series for three of the four occupations. Prepared under methodology WIL-CBM-1.0; this is a public-data profile, not a peer survey.
ER  -