Security Engineer Salary in Los Angeles — 2026 BLS Data
Salary distribution
Percentile breakdown of Security Engineer base salaries in Los Angeles.
The $131,280 median base for a Security Engineer in Los Angeles comes from BLS OEWS May 2024 data for SOC code 15-1212 (Information Security Analysts), which is the primary government occupational code covering security engineering roles. That number is real, but it compresses a market with striking variation: a junior analyst at a mid-size entertainment company might see $90K, while a senior cloud security engineer at a defense prime or a high-growth fintech can clear $175K–$200K in base alone. The BLS figure also excludes equity entirely, which at LA’s fast-growing tech companies adds a meaningful layer on top.
Los Angeles is not a single security job market. It’s four or five overlapping markets — entertainment and media, aerospace and defense, financial services, healthcare, and an emerging tech/startup corridor running from Santa Monica through Culver City to El Segundo — each with distinct pay norms, clearance requirements, and specialization demands.
What the median hides: the LA security market is segmented
The P25-to-P90 range runs from $97,800 to $193,700 — a near-2x spread within one city. That breadth exists because “security engineer” in LA covers genuinely different jobs:
Entertainment and media. Disney, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros., and Sony Pictures all run large information security programs protecting IP worth billions. Roles here lean toward application security, DRM, and third-party vendor risk management. Compensation is mid-market — solid but rarely top-of-range. A mid-level security analyst at a major studio typically lands $115K–$140K base. These employers emphasize stability and benefits over aggressive cash comp.
Aerospace and defense. Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, SpaceX, and a cluster of defense primes anchored near El Segundo and Long Beach pay well — especially for cleared roles. An active Top Secret/SCI clearance adds $15,000–$30,000 to your effective market rate. NIST frameworks, DoD STIGs, and ICS/OT security are valued credentials here. Cleared senior engineers can push past $175K base; cleared staff-level roles at SpaceX or Northrop approach $190K–$210K.
Healthcare and life sciences. UCLA Health, Cedars-Sinai, and the cluster of biotech firms in the San Gabriel Valley have substantially increased security hiring since the Change Healthcare disruption in 2024. HIPAA compliance, medical device security, and cloud security for EHR platforms dominate. Pay lags behind aerospace and tech but trails by less than it did three years ago — a strong healthcare security architect now clears $155K–$175K.
Tech and startups. The Beach Cities corridor (Santa Monica, Venice, Culver City) has a real tech scene: Snap, TikTok US, Hulu, SpaceX’s software org, and a growing roster of AI and fintech startups. These employers pay closest to San Francisco norms for senior roles, though typically 10–20% below SF at equivalent levels.
Hub comparison: how LA stacks up against other security markets
LA’s $131,280 median is meaningful in context. San Francisco metro lands around $165,000–$175,000 median for the same SOC code — a roughly 25–30% premium. Seattle runs $150,000–$160,000. Washington DC, the other major government contractor hub, sits close to LA at $130,000–$140,000, but the equity culture is weaker and clearance-premium roles skew totals.
New York’s median is $145,000–$155,000, driven by financial services — banks, hedge funds, and payment processors pay market-leading rates for AppSec and red team engineers. Austin sits around $115,000–$125,000. Dallas is slightly lower.
The practical takeaway: if you’re a security engineer evaluating a move to LA, the headline salary is 20–25% below SF but the COL penalty is nearly as large (more on that below). Within California, LA consistently pays less than the Bay Area but more than Sacramento or San Diego for equivalent security roles.
What drives the spread: company tier, level, and specialty
Three variables explain almost all of the P25-to-P90 variation:
Company tier. A FAANG-adjacent offer (Google, Meta, Apple all have LA offices; TikTok and Snap run large security orgs here) at the L4/E4 equivalent will outpay a comparable role at a traditional aerospace or media employer by $30,000–$60,000 in base, and the equity gap is larger still. Mid-size tech companies and well-funded startups land in the middle. Defense primes and healthcare systems sit below mid-market on cash but compensate with better job security, pension access for some, and cleared-role premiums.
Level. The level compression inside BLS data is significant. A security analyst in year one (entry-level, no certifications) starts at $75,000–$95,000. A mid-level engineer with 4–7 years of experience and a CISSP lands $125,000–$155,000. A senior engineer or tech lead with cloud security depth (AWS Security Specialty, Azure Security Engineer) and incident response experience reaches $165,000–$185,000. A staff or principal security architect sets architecture standards and advises the CISO — that role starts at $190,000 and can exceed $230,000 at a well-funded tech company. The BLS occupation code bundles all of them together.
Specialty premium. Not all security disciplines pay the same in LA:
- Cloud security (AWS/GCP/Azure, IAM, CSPM tooling): 10–20% above median
- Application security / product security (code review, SAST/DAST, threat modeling): 10–15% above median
- Red team / offensive security (penetration testing, adversary simulation): 15–25% above median at tech employers, narrower at traditional enterprises
- GRC and compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP): at or slightly below median — demand is steady but supply is larger
- OT/ICS security (industrial control systems, SCADA): 15–25% above median, concentrated in aerospace and energy; certified GICSP holders are scarce
The BLS data captures the blend. If you work in cloud security or red team at a tech company, you should anchor your expectations well above the median.
Total compensation breakdown
For a mid-level security engineer in LA at a public tech company or well-funded scale-up, total comp typically looks like:
Base salary: $131,000–$150,000. This is the BLS-tracked number. Expect recruiter bandwidth of roughly ±5–8% before they need manager approval to move further.
Annual cash bonus: $10,000–$18,000. Most LA tech and defense employers target 8–12% of base for individual contributors. Healthcare and media employers tend toward 6–10%. Defense contractors with government cost-plus contracts sometimes structure annual awards differently — look at the total package language carefully.
Equity (RSUs or options): $15,000–$40,000 annualized. Public company grants for a mid-level IC in LA typically run $60,000–$150,000 over four years, vesting quarterly or annually. Pre-IPO startup equity is a separate conversation — a $200K grant may be worth a great deal or nothing, depending on liquidation preferences and exit scenarios. Defense primes and traditional media companies often offer no meaningful equity, which is a compensation component worth explicitly pricing when comparing offers.
That stacks to roughly $156,000–$208,000 total comp for a solid mid-level security engineer at a competitive employer — a meaningfully different picture than the $131K base headline.
At the senior level ($165,000–$185,000 base), add $20,000–$30,000 in bonus and $40,000–$80,000 annualized equity at public tech employers, and total comp approaches $225,000–$295,000 at the high end.
Cost-of-living adjusted reality
LA’s cost-of-living index of approximately 149 means everyday expenses run about 49% above the US national average. Housing is the primary driver: median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in LA proper runs $2,200–$2,800/month, versus roughly $1,200–$1,400 in mid-tier Sunbelt metros. Property taxes and homeownership costs are similarly elevated.
Running the adjustment: a $131,000 LA base salary has the purchasing power of approximately $87,900 in a market at US average cost of living, or around $110,000 in Austin (COL index ~119). Put another way, a security engineer who moves from LA to Austin for a $110,000 offer is getting a genuine pay cut in absolute terms but breaking even or improving slightly in real purchasing power — before accounting for California’s state income tax rate, which tops out at 13.3%.
California’s top marginal income tax rate is the highest in the country. A security engineer earning $155,000 in LA pays California income tax at 9.3%–10.3% on dollars above $104,910 (2024 bracket). A comparable Texas-based engineer pays zero state income tax. This dynamic is real and material — a $130,000 LA offer and a $115,000 Austin offer are closer in after-tax purchasing power than the nominal gap suggests.
Where the COL adjustment is least relevant: total comp packages dominated by RSU income, which is taxed at ordinary income rates in California regardless of when you receive it. High-equity offers in LA carry an additional tax drag compared to the same equity package in a no-income-tax state.
Three-lever negotiation playbook
Lever 1: Use the percentile spread aggressively, not just “I want more.” The P75 for this role in LA is $164,130 — roughly 25% above the median. If you have 5+ years of experience, a relevant certification (CISSP, OSCP, AWS Security Specialty), and you’re coming from a competing offer or internal promotion context, $164K is a defensible target, not an aggressive ask. Cite the BLS OEWS data directly: “My understanding from BLS OEWS is that the 75th percentile for this role in LA is approximately $164,000 — given [your specific experience], I’d like to target that range.” Framing around data shifts the conversation from “what do you want” to “what does the market say.”
Lever 2: Negotiate total comp components separately. Most recruiters present a package as a single number. Decompose it. If base is at ceiling, ask for a larger signing bonus — recruiters have more discretion there than on base bands. If equity is below market, ask specifically: “What’s the refresh grant cadence, and what’s a typical grant size at this level after a strong first year?” At companies with annual equity refreshes, your year-2 and year-3 comp often depends more on your first refresh than on the original grant. Getting clarity on that cycle is as important as negotiating the initial package.
Lever 3: Price your clearance and your specialization explicitly. If you hold an active TS/SCI clearance and the role involves work on classified programs — common at Northrop, Raytheon, SpaceX, L3Harris, or Booz Allen’s LA office — the clearance premium is real and should be named. Personnel with active clearances are genuinely scarce: the average time to obtain a Top Secret clearance runs 12–18 months, and many candidates don’t pass. If your investigation is current, you’ve eliminated that lead time and risk for the employer. Asking for $15,000–$25,000 above a base offer that doesn’t reflect your clearance status is reasonable and well-supported by market data. Similarly, if you’re a credentialed cloud security or offensive security specialist and the role was posted with generic “security engineer” language, asking for a specialty premium on top of the standard band is appropriate — the employer almost certainly knows the specialization is worth more.
Caveats with this data
BLS OEWS provides the most rigorous public wage data available — mandatory survey coverage across hundreds of thousands of employers — but three limitations apply directly to this market:
Equity is not captured. BLS measures wages and salaries as reported for payroll and tax purposes. RSU vesting events appear in W-2 income but are not broken out by BLS occupation, which means the reported percentiles understate total comp at equity-heavy employers. For any role at a public tech company in LA, add $20,000–$80,000 to BLS figures to approximate true total comp.
The data lags the market. May 2024 survey data reflects wages paid in May 2024. Security engineering salaries have risen faster than overall wage growth — BLS projects 33% job growth for this occupation through 2033, one of the fastest rates in the economy — and current offers in 2026 at competitive employers likely run 8–15% above the published figures at the median and higher.
The occupation code combines disparate levels. SOC 15-1212 covers everything from an entry-level security operations center analyst on overnight shifts to a CISO-adjacent staff architect. The P25–P90 spread reflects that reality. When benchmarking your specific role, filter aggressively: compare yourself to postings at companies of similar size and sector, not to the overall distribution.
For a fuller picture, triangulate BLS base data with California’s salary range disclosure law (effective 2023, employers with 15+ employees must post ranges — meaningful for current LA job listings), Levels.fyi for equity-heavy tech roles, and ISACA/ISC2 salary surveys for credentialed security professionals specifically. The combination gets you within 10–15% of what any specific offer at a named employer should look like.
The BLS data is your anchor. The specialization premium, clearance value, and equity component are where the real negotiation happens — and where LA security engineers consistently leave money on the table by not knowing their number before they sit down.