200+ Legal & Compliance Jobs in San Diego, CA

Observed government data is the anchor: in May 2025, San Diego legal occupations averaged $74.24 per hour, lawyers had a median annual wage of $178,220, and paralegals and legal assistants had a median annual wage of $76,300. More current posting-based signals are directional rather than official benchmarks: local posted salary ranges center on about $125k to $180k overall, hourly-paid roles center on about $30 to $36 / hour, and a senior Neurocrine Biosciences compliance-counsel posting advertised $258,000-$352,000.

Full August 2026 market report

Advertised pay

Across the 178 openings that disclose pay, the advertised range midpoint runs $107,860 at the 25th percentile, $157,500 at the median and $202,875 at the 75th. These are advertised ranges, not earned pay.

Active openings as of September 25, 2026

Senior roles | Entry level | Remote | Posted this week

Live from the Callings.ai index of over 13 million postings, refreshed hourly and re-checked here nightly. Roles that close are dropped at the next refresh.

Showing 30 of 205 openings.

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What our analysts see this month

Competitive market | next 3-6 months

San Diego is still a viable market for Legal, Compliance & Risk, but it is not an easy one. The metro unemployment rate was 4.7% in July 2026, total nonfarm employment was up 0.5076% year over year, and professional and business services was essentially flat at -0.0379% year over year, which points to stability without broad white-collar acceleration. There is real activity locally, with more than 300 postings across more than 175 companies over the last 90 days, but California-wide Legal, Compliance & Risk postings were down 10.2% year over year in August 2026 even as category employment was up 3.1%, a pattern that usually means employers are still hiring but with tighter screening and fewer open seats per candidate. Pay remains attractive, especially for attorneys and senior in-house compliance counsel, but the strongest openings skew toward experienced counsel, corporate paralegal, contracts, investigations, and litigation support profiles.

Best positioned: Candidates with a California bar license or proven corporate, investigations, ethics, contracts, or litigation support experience have the clearest edge right now.

Main caution: Do not mistake a high-pay market for a broad-access market: most openings are mid-level, most are on-site or hybrid, and the headline top-end salaries come from a small set of senior counsel and executive roles.

From the August 2026 market report

Who is hiring here

Counted across all 205 openings in this market. 10 of the employers below are hiring for more than one role right now.

1. Tyson & Mendes LLP: 9 open roles
2. Klinedinst Pc: 7 open roles
3. San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, Inc.: 5 open roles
4. Higgs Fletcher & Mack: 4 open roles
5. Manning Kass: 4 open roles
6. Northrop Grumman Corp.: 4 open roles
7. WSGR: 4 open roles
8. Ashurst Perkins Coie Group: 3 open roles
9. Axiom: 3 open roles
10. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co: 3 open roles

Where the openings are

• San Diego: 187
• Redondo Beach: 3
• Princeton: 2
• Los Angeles: 2
• Solana Beach: 2
• Encinitas: 2
• San Francisco: 1
• Palo Alto: 1

Work arrangement

hybrid 97 (48%), on-site 92 (46%), remote 13 (6%)

Where the demand is

Most real opportunity is still concentrated in law firms and legal-service employers. In the local sample, legal services account for about 70% of postings and another about 10% sit in legal-labeled employers, with a fragmented employer base rather than one dominant hirer. The most consistently active names over the last 90 days include Ashurst Perkins Coie Group, Antonyan Miranda, LLP, Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP, Morrison & Foerster LLP, San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, Inc., SDCBA Resource Hub, Jkz Llp, and Tyson & Mendes LLP. The second pocket is smaller but often better paid: in-house legal, compliance, and governance work inside biotech, healthcare, public-sector, and public-company settings. Recent openings from Neurocrine Biosciences, Quantum-Si, Tandem Diabetes Care, and the County of San Diego Sheriff's Department point to demand in investigations, ethics, public-company legal, contract administration, legal operations, and standards compliance. For many candidates, that means the best odds come from choosing one lane—litigation support, corporate/contracts, or in-house compliance—rather than applying across the whole category.

• Law firms and litigation support (high): This is the deepest local pool, driven by legal-services employers and active firms hiring for attorneys, paralegals, trial support, discovery, and civil litigation work.
• Corporate legal ops, contracts, and in-house counsel (moderate): Openings exist in corporate and regulated employers for corporate paralegal, contracts, and senior legal leadership work, but the seat count is lower and employers expect clearer specialization.
• Ethics, investigations, and public-sector compliance (moderate): This niche is smaller but distinctive, with local evidence from a municipal standards-compliance leadership search and a biotech investigations-and-ethics counsel role.

Where to focus: Pick one sub-market and brand yourself for it: litigation support if you have casework depth, corporate/contracts if you have transactional process depth, or investigations/ethics if you already have regulated-program experience.

Roles worth searching next

• Senior Data Governance & Responsible AI Lead: Local hiring already includes this role, so governance-minded legal and compliance professionals can pivot toward data and AI oversight without staying in a traditional legal seat.
• SAP AI & Agent Governance Manager: A current San Diego governance roundup included this title, showing a bridge from compliance and policy work into enterprise technology governance.
• Privacy or Data Governance Program Manager: Data privacy and protection remain priority hiring themes in employer research, and they sit close to compliance work while often living in broader trust, security, or operations teams.
• Legal Operations Systems Analyst: Employers are paying more for legal technology integration, contract management, and hybrid legal-tech skill sets, which creates a realistic off-ramp from traditional legal support roles.
• Cybersecurity GRC Analyst: Cybersecurity is a premium risk and compliance skill, so legal and policy professionals who understand controls and governance can move toward security-governance work.

What postings ask for

• California bar admission (differentiator | immediate): It is the clearest gatekeeper for counsel-track roles, and it is the most commonly cited specific credential in local postings that list certifications. Who: Attorneys, in-house counsel candidates, and senior compliance professionals with legal training.
• Legal research and legal writing (table_stakes | immediate): These are among the most-requested hard skills in local postings, making them baseline proof that you can contribute without long ramp time. Who: Entry-level candidates, paralegals, junior attorneys, and career switchers coming from adjacent policy work.
• Case management, discovery, and deposition support (differentiator | immediate): Local demand still leans heavily toward litigation workflows, and sampled postings repeatedly call for case management, discovery, depositions, litigation, and civil litigation skills. Who: Paralegals, litigation support specialists, and associates trying to break into firm-based work.
• Contract administration and legal operations (differentiator | immediate): A current San Diego corporate paralegal posting asked for contract administration, contract lifecycle management, corporate compliance, and legal operations, showing a practical path into in-house work. Who: Paralegals, operations-minded legal staff, and career switchers from procurement or vendor management.
• Investigations and ethics-program management (premium | immediate): Neurocrine Biosciences' local compliance-counsel opening emphasized ethics hotline oversight, high-risk investigations, and turning investigation trends into organizational improvements. Who: Mid-career attorneys, HR investigators moving toward compliance, and internal-policy professionals with regulated-environment experience.
• AI governance and data governance (premium | near-term): Recent San Diego governance hiring included a Manager, SAP AI & Agent Governance role and a Senior Data Governance & Responsible AI Lead role, indicating that oversight work is expanding toward AI and data controls. Who: Compliance managers, privacy professionals, counsel working with tech products, and switchers from governance or policy teams.

Questions about this market

What do Legal, Compliance & Risk roles pay in San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA?

Observed government data is the anchor: in May 2025, San Diego legal occupations averaged $74.24 per hour, lawyers had a median annual wage of $178,220, and paralegals and legal assistants had a median annual wage of $76,300. More current posting-based signals are directional rather than official benchmarks: local posted salary ranges center on about $125k to $180k overall, hourly-paid roles center on about $30 to $36 / hour, and a senior Neurocrine Biosciences compliance-counsel posting advertised $258,000-$352,000. This is a premium-pay market, especially for licensed attorneys and specialized in-house legal/compliance talent. BLS notes that legal occupations in San Diego are among the higher-paying major groups in the metro and exceed the U.S. legal average, while statewide new-opening salaries for the category averaged about $148,064 versus about $90,597 across all California occupations.

Where is demand for Legal, Compliance & Risk roles in San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA concentrated?

Most real opportunity is still concentrated in law firms and legal-service employers. In the local sample, legal services account for about 70% of postings and another about 10% sit in legal-labeled employers, with a fragmented employer base rather than one dominant hirer. The most consistently active names over the last 90 days include Ashurst Perkins Coie Group, Antonyan Miranda, LLP, Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP, Morrison & Foerster LLP, San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, Inc., SDCBA Resource Hub, Jkz Llp, and Tyson & Mendes LLP. The second pocket is smaller but often better paid: in-house legal, compliance, and governance work inside biotech, healthcare, public-sector, and public-company settings. Recent openings from Neurocrine Biosciences, Quantum-Si, Tandem Diabetes Care, and the County of San Diego Sheriff's Department point to demand in investigations, ethics, public-company legal, contract administration, legal operations, and standards compliance. For many candidates, that means the best odds come from choosing one lane—litigation support, corporate/contracts, or in-house compliance—rather than applying across the whole category.

Which employers are hiring the most Legal, Compliance & Risk talent in San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA?

Recent postings show the most activity from Ashurst Perkins Coie Group (10 postings), Antonyan Miranda, LLP (10 postings), Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP (10 postings), Morrison & Foerster LLP (5 postings), San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, Inc. (5 postings). See the full market report for the complete employer landscape.

Can Legal, Compliance & Risk roles in San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA be done remotely?

Of recent postings, 10% are remote and 40% hybrid, with 55% on-site. Use the Remote filter above to see only remote openings.

How current are these listings?

Openings come from the Callings.ai live index of over 13 million jobs, refreshed hourly. This page searches postings from the last 30 days; run the search yourself to filter by anything else in plain language.

Browse California openings by job title

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• Senior Manager: 98 open roles statewide
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• Associate Director: 75 open roles statewide

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