Structural Engineer Salary in California 2026,
$122,500 Median | BLS Data by City

The published figure is $122,500 a year, or $58.89 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, on SOC 17-2051 — Civil Engineers, a row broader than structural engineering alone. The band runs from $77,980 at the 10th percentile to $175,940 at the 90th, and the state figure sits 21.5% above the national median of $100,840.

Yes, and it is one of a small number of states that does. The Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists licenses civil engineers as Professional Engineers and separately grants Structural Engineer title authority to those with additional qualifying structural design experience who pass a further examination. California law reserves categories of design, including hospitals and public schools, for SE holders.

The civil PE licence permits an engineer to take responsible charge of civil engineering work generally. The SE authority is an additional credential requiring further qualifying structural experience and examination, and it is legally necessary for certain building categories — notably hospitals and public schools — which are subject to state plan-review regimes. In practice the SE is what opens the upper half of the California band.

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at $130,280, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont $130,160 and Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom $130,150 are effectively level at the top, with Redding $126,000 and Napa $123,440 behind. Sacramento matching the Bay Area is the notable result — state agency plan review, public infrastructure and the schools and hospitals programmes concentrate senior work in the capital region.

The demand is unusually durable. A location quotient of 1.28 on 55,180 jobs, seismic retrofit obligations on existing buildings, a large public infrastructure and water programme, and a legal reservation of hospital and school design to SE holders together create work that does not disappear with the private construction cycle. The offsetting factor is cost of living and the highest state income tax in the country.

Civil engineers of every specialisation — transportation, water resources, geotechnical, construction and structural — pooled onto one row. Structural engineering is a subset, and in California a legally distinct one, but BLS does not separate it. That matters for reading the band: the $77,980 tenth percentile and the $96,590 twenty-fifth are largely engineers in training and early-career staff across all civil specialisations, while the $149,350 seventy-fifth percentile and the $175,940 ninetieth are licensed engineers in responsible charge, including SE holders on hospital and school work. A structural engineer with the SE authority should benchmark against the upper part of this band rather than its midpoint.

Because the buyer of senior structural engineering in California is substantially the state itself. Hospital and public school design is subject to state plan review, transportation and water infrastructure programmes are administered from the capital, and the consulting firms that serve those programmes staff accordingly. Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom at $130,150 therefore sits level with San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara $130,280 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont $130,160 despite a very different private economy and a much lower cost of living — which makes it, in net terms, arguably the best of the three.

Beyond the broad SOC row, the main one is that California's high nominal engineering salaries are attached to the country's highest state income tax and, in the Bay Area, to housing costs with no real national comparison. The peer table — Alaska $114,730, Washington $110,000, Massachusetts $106,730, Louisiana $105,380 and Oregon $105,250 — understates how much of California's 21.5% gross premium survives into disposable income, particularly against Washington, which levies no income tax. The figure also excludes bonus and profit-sharing, which at principal level in consulting practice is a substantial component.