By location
Sales Engineer Salary in Los Angeles, CA
The short answer
We do not yet publish a sourced median for Los Angeles, CA — our local sample is too small to stand behind, so the figure below reads as an em-dash rather than an estimate. The sourced US benchmark is $145,000 median base and $205,000 median OTE.
Against the $124,900 national median annual wage for sales engineers reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2025), our national median base of $145,000 sits $20,100 higher, because the BLS series covers all sales engineers rather than software and infrastructure pre-sales.
Los Angeles pre-sales demand spans media technology, adtech, gaming, aerospace and a growing security and SaaS base across Santa Monica and El Segundo. That mix normally pulls a metro toward the national band rather than away from it, but we will not put a number on it until the sample supports one.
The metros we do publish bracket the range: New York at $185,000, the SF Bay Area at $195,000, Boston at $180,000 (small sample (n = 29 of a national dataset of 1,749)), Austin at $165,000 and remote (US) at $168,000.
Key figures, citable
A proprietary median for Los Angeles Sales Engineer compensation is not yet published; this page shows national context and the neutral state until the sample is large enough to release.
| Median base salary (observed, excluding commission) | Our own data for this cut is not yet published. |
|---|---|
| Median target total pay / OTE (observed, base plus variable at 100% of quota) | Our own data for this cut is not yet published. |
| Observed 25th to 75th percentile, base | not yet published for this cut |
| Observed 25th to 75th percentile, OTE | not yet published for this cut |
| Population measured | Enterprise technology pre-sales professionals in offers we negotiated or verified |
| Geography | Greater Los Angeles metro |
| Verified data points | not published for this cut |
| Collection window | not yet published |
Source: salesengineersalary.com proprietary dataset — verified compensation data points self-reported by pre-sales professionals and confirmed against offers. Methodology · Last updated: · https://salesengineersalary.com/by-location/sales-engineer-salary-los-angeles
How to read every figure on this page
| Base salary | Not yet published for this cut: base salary, excluding commission. Guaranteed cash, before any commission or bonus. |
|---|---|
| Target total pay (OTE) | Not yet published for this cut: target total pay (OTE), base plus variable at 100% of quota. It is a target, not an average payout — actual earnings depend on quota attainment. |
| Who is in the sample | Enterprise technology pre-sales professionals in offers we negotiated or verified |
| Geography | Greater Los Angeles metro |
| Not in the sample | Support engineers, inside-sales engineers, post-sales architects and non-enterprise vendors. Official statistics such as the BLS figure quoted on this page cover all sales engineers in all industries, which is a wider population and a lower median. |
| Collection window | not yet published |
| Sample | not published for this cut |
| Median, not mean | Every figure is a median (50th percentile). We publish no means, because a handful of very large pre-sales packages distorts them. |
Reported salary figures, by source
Every third-party figure links to the source that published it. Our own row is last. Sources differ in population, geography, date and whether commission is included, so the “What it measures” column matters as much as the figure.
| Source | Reported figure | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| This site | Our own data for this cut is not yet published. | Median base for Los Angeles pre-sales offers (not yet published) from offers we negotiated. sample size not published for this cut. Methodology |
Why Los Angeles salary figures elsewhere disagree
Search for a Los Angeles sales engineer salary and you will get a wide spread of numbers. The spread is mostly measurement, not market.
- Base versus total compensation. In pre-sales the two differ by roughly a third. A page quoting base and a page quoting OTE will disagree by tens of thousands and both can be right.
- Self-reported, unfiltered samples. Crowdsourced sites mix interns, adjacent titles and stale entries into one median, and rarely publish a sample size or a collection window.
- Thin local samples. Los Angeles produces far fewer pre-sales data points than New York or the Bay Area. A published local median is often a handful of packages — which is exactly why ours stays unpublished until it isn't.
- Remote pay pulls local bands. Companies hiring remotely into a metro often pay a national band, so any local median is a blend of two pay policies rather than one local market rate.
Los Angeles sales engineer salary by seniority
There is no published Los Angeles cut yet, so the ladder below is our SOURCED NATIONAL data, not a local band. It is the correct starting point for a Los Angeles offer, and it will be joined by a local column once the metro sample is large enough to publish.
| Level | US median base | US median OTE |
|---|---|---|
| Sales Engineer | $145,000 | $205,000 |
| Mid-level SE | $155,000 | $187,879 |
| Sr. Sales Engineer | $185,000 | $238,710 |
| Principal/Staff SE | $220,000 | $293,333 |
| SE Manager | $200,000 | $258,065 |
Base and target total pay are both observed in the offers themselves, not derived from one another. Population: enterprise technology pre-sales professionals in offers we negotiated or verified. Geography: United States, all metros. Collected January 2026 to August 2026. n = 1,749. Counts for individual levels are drawn from the same sample and are not published separately.
How to price a Los Angeles sales engineer today
Use the sourced national band as the anchor: $145,000 median base, $205,000 median OTE, an implied 71/29 base-to-variable split at 100% attainment.
Then adjust with the metros we publish rather than with a guess: New York runs 48.1% over the BLS national median, the SF Bay Area 56.1%, Austin 32.1%, and remote (US) 34.5%.
Level matters more than metro in pre-sales: the gap between a mid-level and a senior sales engineer nationally is $30,000 on base, which is larger than the gap between most US metros.
Cost of living and take-home in Los Angeles
California income tax reaches 9.3% at pre-sales salary levels, so a Los Angeles package loses more to tax than the same number in Texas or Washington.
Los Angeles housing costs sit below the Bay Area but above every non-coastal metro, and commuting costs are a real part of the package.
Because we publish no local median yet, treat this section as context for negotiating against the national band — not as a Los Angeles figure.
Los Angeles sales engineer jobs
We recruit pre-sales roles across the US, including Los Angeles. Every search on our jobs page is live, and each closed search adds verified offer data — which is how this page eventually gets its own median.
The metros where we publish a sourced median
Delta and premium are computed from each metro's median base against the US median annual wage for sales engineers reported by the BLS (May 2025). Metros absent from this table have no published median of ours yet.
| Metro | Median base | Delta vs US median | Premium vs US median |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco Bay Area | $195,000 | $70,100 | 56.1% |
| New York, NY | $185,000 | $60,100 | 48.1% |
| Boston, MA | $180,000 (small sample (n = 29 of a national dataset of 1,749)) | Our own data for this cut is not yet published. | Our own data for this cut is not yet published. |
| Austin, TX | $165,000 | $40,100 | 32.1% |
| Remote (US) | $168,000 | $43,100 | 34.5% |
Metro base figures are ours; both comparison columns are derived from them, so they appear together or not at all.
Related benchmarks
- Sales engineer salary (US)
The national benchmark this page cuts from
- Sales engineer salary in Boston
A metro where we publish a sourced median base
- Sales engineer salary in Denver
Same structure, local median still unpublished
- Remote sales engineer salary
The national band local employers actually compete with
Read this alongside the national US sales engineer pay data, which is the benchmark every cut on this page is measured against.
The other markets we track: the Dallas metroplex, Washington DC and cleared roles and Houston industrial tech pay. Each is cut from the same dataset, so the gaps between them are comparable.
If the title on your job ad is "solutions engineer" rather than "sales engineer", the solutions engineer salary page is the closer comparison.
For employers
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For candidates
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a sales engineer make in Los Angeles?
We do not yet publish a Los Angeles median: our local sample is below the threshold we will stand behind, and we do not print estimates as data. The sourced US benchmark is $145,000 median base and $205,000 median OTE, against the $124,900 national median annual wage reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Use the national band as your starting point for Los Angeles.
Why is there no Los Angeles salary figure on this page?
Because inventing one would make the rest of the site unusable. Every figure we publish carries a sample size and a collection window; the Los Angeles cut has neither yet. The em-dash on this page marks a genuinely unpublished figure rather than a placeholder, and it is replaced the moment the local sample is large enough.
How should employers set a Los Angeles sales engineer band today?
Start from the sourced national median base of $145,000 and OTE of $205,000, then adjust for the metros we do publish: New York at $185,000, the SF Bay Area at $195,000 and remote (US) at $168,000 bracket almost every US market. Los Angeles housing costs sit below the Bay Area but above every non-coastal metro, and commuting costs are a real part of the package.
Is a remote offer competitive in Los Angeles?
Usually, yes. Our remote (US) median base is $168,000 against a national median of $145,000, so candidates in Los Angeles can access close to national money without relocating. Local employers are therefore competing with the remote band, whatever the local cost of living.
Pre-sales job titles, and which ones mean the same thing
Sales engineer, solutions consultant and solutions engineer are usually the same job under different names; solutions architect and technical account manager are genuinely different roles.
| Role | What they do | Owns quota? | Stage | Median base (US national) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Engineer | Technical validation during the sale | Supports | Pre-sales | $145,000 |
| Solutions Consultant | Same function; common in enterprise software and services | Supports | Pre-sales | $148,000 |
| Solutions Engineer | Same function; common in SaaS and infrastructure | Supports | Pre-sales | $155,000 |
| Solutions Architect | Designs the technical solution; deeper, less deal-facing | No | Pre/post | $170,000 |
| Technical Account Manager | Owns the technical relationship after the sale | Usually not | Post-sales | $135,000 |
The three synonym pages carry the same underlying occupation, so read them together: sales engineer salary, solutions engineer salary and solutions consultant salary. The two genuinely different roles are solutions architect and technical account manager.
Median base figures in this table are US national medians across all metros, so they will be lower than the headline figure on a metro-specific page such as New York.
Cite this data
“Los Angeles Sales Engineer Salary Report 2026”, salesengineersalary.com.
Median base Our own data for this cut is not yet published., median OTE Our own data for this cut is not yet published..
Updated . https://salesengineersalary.com/by-location/sales-engineer-salary-los-angeles
† A figure marked with a dagger is either modelled from our national dataset or published from a sample below our n = 30 threshold; it is never a sourced median for that cut.