California is the epicenter of AI governance hiring. The state pairs the world’s leading AI labs and platform companies with a deep bench of banks, insurers, health systems, and entertainment giants, all of which now need governance, risk, and compliance leaders who understand machine learning. From San Francisco and Silicon Valley to Los Angeles and San Diego, demand spans responsible AI, model risk, privacy under CCPA and CPRA, and traditional GRC. If a role is defining how AI gets governed, odds are it was written in California.
From our sister site ExecSearches: for the broader nonprofit and public-sector leadership market in California, see the California Nonprofit Executive Salary Guide, with salary benchmarks, top employers, and the local hiring picture.
California GRC at a glance
Key sectors: technology, financial services, healthcare, entertainment, and the AI labs defining the field. On the board now: 74 local and 0 remote-eligible jobs.
Compliance Officer paystats as of Q2 2026
BLS put the 2024 median at $78,420. In 2026, market trackers show averages from roughly $99,000 to $120,000, with the top quartile above $160,000. Financial centers and senior governance roles sit at the top of that range.
California GRC jobs: what the market looks like right now
A snapshot built from the 74 California GRC roles currently on this page.
What these roles pay by level
Median advertised midpoint, by seniority band. Bars are to scale.
Median advertised salary midpoint by seniority level
Level
Median midpoint
Postings
Mid-level
$142k
15
Senior / lead / manager
$214k
26
How these figures were calculated, and sources
Primary source: our own board. Every figure above is the median midpoint of the salary ranges published in the live postings on this page. Nothing is estimated, modelled, or carried over from a previous month. It is recalculated each time the board refreshes.
What is included. Only postings that publish a salary range. Hourly, weekly and monthly rates are annualised (2,080 hours, 52 weeks, 12 months). Ranges below $20,000 a year are excluded as data-entry placeholders. A seniority band is shown only when at least five postings support it; director and executive / c-suite are present on this page but below that threshold, so no median is published for those bands.
What this is not. These are advertised ranges, not accepted offers. Advertised ranges tend to run wider than what is actually paid, and roles that do not publish a range are missing from the calculation entirely, which can bias the result upward.
For an independent benchmark, compare against the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for SOC 13-1041 — Compliance Officers, published annually at bls.gov/oes. BLS reports actual wages across all employers rather than advertised ranges, so its medians normally sit below job-board figures.
Where the work is
Work mode: 10 remote, 4 hybrid, 60 on-site or unstated.
Seniority mix: senior (39), mid (29), director (4), executive (2)
Employers hiring more than one: Anthropic (12), Mercury (8), Plaid (4), OpenAI (4), Stripe (3), Anduril Industries (3)
Skills these postings ask for
board and committee reporting
policy lifecycle ownership
risk appetite and tolerance setting
three-lines-of-defence operating models
ISO/IEC 42001 and NIST AI RMF fluency
How to get a governance job — the full career guide for this field: entry routes, transferable backgrounds, certifications and salary by level.
Certifications that come up most
None of these are universally required, but they appear often enough in California GRC postings to be worth knowing: CGEIT, CRISC, AIGP, CISA. The certification academy covers what each one actually tests and who it is for.
Hiring for California GRC?
We have 74 open California GRC roles on the board right now. Reach candidates who are already searching for this role, not a general audience. Your posting appears on this page, in the job alerts, and across the GRC Careers network.
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