Battalion Chief

Across all employers in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area, the median wage for First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers — about 210 people — is $171,740. Fire pays a median base salary of $245,937 for this role, 43% above that figure — above the 90th percentile of local pay for the occupation.

Computed over the 25 of 26 people in this role paid at least $25,000in base salary. The rest are part-year or part-time records, whose actual pay isn’t comparable to a full-time annual wage.

Median total compensation for this role at Fire is $422,208, which includes overtime and employer-paid benefits. The benchmark above excludes both, so total compensation is deliberately not compared against it.

Benchmark: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025). BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) covers all employers in the area — private, non-profit, and government alike — so this is a comparison against the whole local labor market for the occupation, not against private-sector pay. OEWS wages are straight-time pay and exclude overtime, shift differentials, and employer-paid benefits, so the government figure shown here is base pay on the same basis. Total compensation is not comparable to it. Job titles are matched to the closest standard occupation, so the comparison is between similar work rather than an identical job classification.

This role is reported in 7 jurisdictions. In City of San Jose, the median of $422,208 ranks #1 of 7. See Battalion Chief across all of City of San Jose →