150+ Legal & Compliance Jobs in San Jose, CA

Observed local government pay is strongest for the legal major group and much lower for support roles. In May 2025, paralegals and legal assistants had a median annual wage of $99,250 in San Jose, with a $60,030 10th-percentile floor and a $157,450 90th-percentile ceiling, while the legal major occupational group averaged $109.74 an hour. Current directional signals are higher because live postings skew toward counsel and manager roles: posted salary ranges center on about $168k to $238k, California new-opening offers average about $148,064, and recent local examples include NVIDIA at $232,000–$368,000 and Inlighten at an estimated $130,000–$175,000.

Full August 2026 market report

Advertised pay

Across the 167 openings that disclose pay, the advertised range midpoint runs $150,092 at the 25th percentile, $205,425 at the median and $254,000 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 188 openings.

Open all in AI Job Search

What our analysts see this month

Competitive market | next 3-6 months

This is still a real market, but it is a selective one. Metro unemployment was 3.9% in July 2026 versus 5.1% statewide in California, so San Jose is holding up better than the state backdrop. Local hiring is broad enough to matter, with more than 350 postings across more than 200 companies in the last 90 days, but the market is fragmented and the typical active posting stays open around 37 days, which points to slower, choosier hiring cycles rather than easy volume hiring. Statewide signals for this category are mixed: California legal, compliance & risk employment is up 3.1% year over year, while active postings are down 10.2%, so there are fewer fresh openings relative to the employed talent base.

Best positioned: The best odds right now belong to mid-career candidates with in-house tech exposure and a clear specialty in privacy/data governance, trade compliance, government contracts, or commercial contracts and compliance.

Main caution: Do not read the big posted salary bands as typical market pay; local official pay for broader-access roles such as paralegals is much lower than the counsel-heavy live posting sample suggests.

From the August 2026 market report

Who is hiring here

Counted across all 188 openings in this market. 10 of the employers below are hiring for more than one role right now.

1. TikTok Inc.: 13 open roles
2. Intuit, Inc.: 4 open roles
3. Roche: 4 open roles
4. TikTok USDS Joint Venture: 4 open roles
5. Ashurst Perkins Coie Group: 3 open roles
6. Cooley LLP: 3 open roles
7. Coreweave: 3 open roles
8. DLA Piper LLP: 3 open roles
9. El Camino Health: 3 open roles
10. Lam Research Corporation: 3 open roles

Where the openings are

• San Jose: 72
• Palo Alto: 27
• Mountain View: 16
• Santa Clara: 13
• Menlo Park: 11
• Sunnyvale: 10
• Pleasanton: 8
• Fremont: 6

Work arrangement

on-site 104 (57%), hybrid 66 (36%), remote 12 (7%)

Where the demand is

Opportunity is spread across a surprisingly broad employer base rather than one dominant buyer. Over the last 90 days, the metro showed more than 350 postings across more than 200 companies, and employer concentration in the sample was fragmented. The biggest buckets were legal services at about 30%, legal at about 15%, education at about 15%, software development at about 10%, and technology at about 10%. The most consistently active names included Intuit, Ashurst Perkins Coie Group, YO IT Consulting, TikTok, Caminar, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, County of Santa Clara, and Amazon. The most interesting concentration is inside tech-facing in-house work. NVIDIA is hiring in employment litigation/compliance and in data privacy/governance, while Applied Materials has shown multiple Santa Clara openings spanning trade compliance, ethics/compliance analytics, IP, and data protection. That means the market is not just 'law firms plus paralegals'; it is also a governance-heavy corporate market where legal, privacy, compliance, procurement, and security work overlap. It is also not a JD-only market. Among postings that stated an education requirement, bachelor's degrees appeared most often at about 35%, postgraduate degrees at about 25%, master's at about 10%, JD at about 10%, and juris doctor at about 5%. That widens the door for compliance, contracts, privacy-operations, and governance candidates, even though the best-paid jobs still cluster around counsel and leadership titles.

• In-house tech legal and compliance (high): Privacy, data governance, employment compliance, trade compliance, and ethics/risk analytics roles are showing up in Santa Clara tech employers, especially NVIDIA and Applied Materials.
• Law firms and legal services (high): Legal services and legal employers together make up about 45% of the posting mix, so firm-side work remains one of the largest volume pools in the metro.
• Public, education, and research institutions (moderate): Education accounts for about 15% of the local mix, and active employers include County of Santa Clara and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; municipal governance activity also supports attorney and compliance-adjacent roles.
• Government-contracts and defense-adjacent compliance (moderate): Recent Santa Clara demand for government contracts and Controlled Unclassified Information compliance points to a smaller but high-value niche for candidates with federal-regulatory fluency.

Where to focus: If you need results in the next 90 days, focus on in-house tech employers and firm-side teams where privacy, trade, contracts, or governance work is tied to a named regulatory domain rather than applying broadly to generic legal titles.

Roles worth searching next

• Data Governance and Protection Analyst: This role sits next to legal and compliance rather than inside a traditional attorney track, but it uses the same privacy, documentation, and governance instincts that local employers are already hiring for in Santa Clara.
• AI governance or responsible AI program manager: AI-focused product counsel, AI governance, and responsible AI roles are growing near the legal function, especially where privacy and regulatory compliance overlap with product decisions.
• Public policy or municipal regulatory affairs analyst: Ongoing San José City Council governance activity supports a steady need for people who can turn legal and regulatory issues into memos, agendas, compliance support, and stakeholder coordination.
• Government contracts program manager or procurement compliance specialist: Local demand for government contracts and Controlled Unclassified Information compliance creates a bridge into program, vendor, or procurement-side roles that still value legal/regulatory judgment.

What postings ask for

• Regulatory compliance (table_stakes | immediate): Regulatory compliance appears in about 15% of local postings, making it one of the most common hard-skill asks across the category. Who: Everyone in this market, especially candidates trying to move between legal support, compliance, and risk roles.
• Legal research and legal drafting (table_stakes | immediate): Legal research shows up in about 20% of local postings, and legal drafting appears in about 10%, so employers still expect strong written analysis even in hybrid legal-operations roles. Who: Entry-level and career-switching candidates who need proof they can contribute before they own a program.
• Data privacy and data governance (premium | immediate): NVIDIA's Santa Clara Senior Counsel role centers on data privacy and governance, Applied Materials added a Data Governance and Protection Analyst inside Legal & Compliance, and updated CCPA regulations took effect on January 1, 2026. Who: Mid-career counsel, privacy professionals, compliance managers, and strong analysts who want a tech-facing specialty.
• CIPP/US (differentiator | near-term): CIPP/US is the certification most often explicitly required locally, but it appears in less than 5% of postings, which makes it a differentiator rather than a universal gate. Who: Candidates targeting privacy, product counseling, or data-governance roles who already have some practical exposure.
• Export controls and EAR Part 744 (premium | immediate): Applied Materials' Santa Clara trade-compliance hiring specifically highlighted export-controls depth and EAR Part 744 experience, a much narrower signal than generic compliance knowledge. Who: Lawyers and compliance professionals with semiconductor, manufacturing, cross-border, or supply-chain exposure.
• Government contracts and Controlled Unclassified Information compliance (premium | immediate): A Santa Clara Senior Counsel posting in early September sought experience in U.S. government contracts and Controlled Unclassified Information, signaling a real local niche rather than a theoretical one. Who: Candidates with defense, federal procurement, cybersecurity, or public-sector vendor experience.

Questions about this market

What do Legal, Compliance & Risk roles pay in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA?

Observed local government pay is strongest for the legal major group and much lower for support roles. In May 2025, paralegals and legal assistants had a median annual wage of $99,250 in San Jose, with a $60,030 10th-percentile floor and a $157,450 90th-percentile ceiling, while the legal major occupational group averaged $109.74 an hour. Current directional signals are higher because live postings skew toward counsel and manager roles: posted salary ranges center on about $168k to $238k, California new-opening offers average about $148,064, and recent local examples include NVIDIA at $232,000–$368,000 and Inlighten at an estimated $130,000–$175,000. This is a high-pay market, but the upside is uneven. A two-bedroom fair market rent is $3,483 per month in the metro, and SmartAsset's comfortable-living threshold for a single adult in San Jose is $158,080, so support-role pay can feel tight while specialized in-house counsel compensation fits local costs much better.

Where is demand for Legal, Compliance & Risk roles in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA concentrated?

Opportunity is spread across a surprisingly broad employer base rather than one dominant buyer. Over the last 90 days, the metro showed more than 350 postings across more than 200 companies, and employer concentration in the sample was fragmented. The biggest buckets were legal services at about 30%, legal at about 15%, education at about 15%, software development at about 10%, and technology at about 10%. The most consistently active names included Intuit, Ashurst Perkins Coie Group, YO IT Consulting, TikTok, Caminar, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, County of Santa Clara, and Amazon. The most interesting concentration is inside tech-facing in-house work. NVIDIA is hiring in employment litigation/compliance and in data privacy/governance, while Applied Materials has shown multiple Santa Clara openings spanning trade compliance, ethics/compliance analytics, IP, and data protection. That means the market is not just 'law firms plus paralegals'; it is also a governance-heavy corporate market where legal, privacy, compliance, procurement, and security work overlap. It is also not a JD-only market. Among postings that stated an education requirement, bachelor's degrees appeared most often at about 35%, postgraduate degrees at about 25%, master's at about 10%, JD at about 10%, and juris doctor at about 5%. That widens the door for compliance, contracts, privacy-operations, and governance candidates, even though the best-paid jobs still cluster around counsel and leadership titles.

Which employers are hiring the most Legal, Compliance & Risk talent in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA?

Recent postings show the most activity from Intuit, Inc. (15 postings), Ashurst Perkins Coie Group (15 postings), YO IT Consulting (10 postings), TikTok Inc. (5 postings), Caminar, Inc. (5 postings). See the full market report for the complete employer landscape.

Can Legal, Compliance & Risk roles in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA be done remotely?

Of recent postings, 10% are remote and 30% hybrid, with 65% 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

• Software Engineer: 885 open roles statewide
• General Manager: 351 open roles statewide
• Project Manager: 319 open roles statewide
• Product Manager: 293 open roles statewide
• Program Manager: 243 open roles statewide
• Senior Software Engineer: 202 open roles statewide
• Technical Program Manager: 192 open roles statewide
• Staff Software Engineer: 141 open roles statewide
• Engineering Manager: 126 open roles statewide
• Senior Manager: 98 open roles statewide
• Senior Product Manager: 80 open roles statewide
• Associate Director: 75 open roles statewide

Explore related openings

Legal, Compliance & Risk jobs in other metros

• Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC
• Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
• Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
• Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN
• Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA
• Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI
• Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
• Kansas City, MO-KS

Other roles in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA

• Engineering & Scientific
• Software, IT & Cybersecurity
• Media, Journalism & Entertainment
• Finance & Accounting
• Hospitality, Food Service & Travel
• Manufacturing, Construction & Field Services
• Protective Services & Public Safety
• Education & Training

Browse all job openings | Browse jobs by title and state | Browse all job market reports