Goldman Sachs salaries: where they're high and where they're not

Although Goldman Sachs is a bank known for paying its front office staff high salaries, not all salaries there are equal. 

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Goldman recently disclosed salary breakdowns for its analysts and associates in New York, Jersey City, California, and Washington. Guess who earns the most?

Goldman Sachs salaries are highest for New Yorkers in the front office

Unsurprisingly, salaries are highest in revenue-generating, or front-office, roles. These cover jobs in investment banking (M&A and capital markets) as well as salespeople and traders in fixed income, commodities, currencies, and equities. They also include wealth and asset management jobs, among others.

Goldman's front-office New Yorkers can earn salaries of between $80k and $110k as analysts and $130k and $175k as associates. A huge extra chunk of front office compensation at Goldman Sachs comes in the form of bonuses (see our salary and bonus report for more information). 

Goldman Sachs salaries are moderate for front office Californians 

New York is Goldman's head office, but the firm also has offices on the West Coast: in Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. There is a price to pay for that if you have Dr. Dre-tier coastal patriotism, however: whereas Goldman's front office analysts earn at least $80k in New York, their salaries start at just $65k in California. Luckily, the salary ceiling is the same - as are the pay bands for associates, who earn between $130k and $175k in both locales.

By comparison, summer analysts, as well as “other interns” (a category which likely includes off-cycle interns) in California are paid salaries only slightly below their East Coast colleagues.

Goldman Sachs salaries in the back office

Unsurprisingly, it's people in non-revenue-generating roles at Goldman Sachs who have the lowest salaries.

Non-revenue-generating, or middle- and back-office, roles include those in functions such as compliance, risk, operations, tax, and legal roles.

Goldman Sachs salaries for analyst engineers

There was one exception to the poorly-paid-non-revenue generating roles pattern: engineers. 

Engineers at analyst level were paid better not only than their back-office peers, but also better than revenue-generating analysts across summer internships, new starter roles, and “other” internships. They were paid less than revenue-generating front-office roles, however.

Again, it’s important to note bonuses. Technology bonuses in an investment bank are well behind peers working in revenue-generating roles, regardless of seniority. However, bonuses in technology were higher than other middle- and back-office functions, however, according to our 2024 salary and bonus report.

Goldman Sachs salaries: Vice Presidents

As Vice President (VP) isn’t an entry-level position (anywhere), Goldman pays a much wider, and less standardized, range of salaries at this level.

Goldman’s lowest paid VPs are, generally speaking, in Dallas and Salt Lake City. According to the H1b database, the median salaries at each location were $159k and $132k, respectively, in 2023. Dallas’ lowest paid VPs were in risk, audit, and even a stray quant; Salt Lake City’s lowest paid VPs were in risk, business intelligence, and included a “mathematician”.

Generally speaking, VPs with the highest salaries are at Goldman in New York, although the median VP salary in the city is “only” $190k, somewhat behind San Francisco’s median of $275. In salary terms, the best paid VPs in New York are financial “managers” and “investment analysts”. The worst paid are in "finance" [accounting].

Goldman Sachs salaries: Managing Directors 

Goldman’s Managing Directors (MDs) have little variety in their salaries: all bar two in the H1b database earned $400k, and this has been the case for years now. 

The majority of Goldman’s MDs, including the two outliers who earned $300k and $500k, were listed as being “financial managers” in New York by the H1b database. That’s pretty vague.

Goldman Sachs salaries: Partners 

Partners at Goldman are hard to pin down. They’re an elite bunch – a group that admits around 60 to 80 new members every other year, and usually financiers very senior in their career – the average Goldman tenure for the class of 2022 was 16 years.

The H1B database suggest that Goldman Sachs partners are paid $950k in salary alone. They also get bonuses and various other perks in the job, such as the right to invest in special funds. 

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