Trying to figure out how to make ends meet in a city where it feels like everything is crazy expensive? Maybe thinking of going back to school or mixing up our career options? If you’re in a position to change jobs—and your motivation is strictly of the all-about-the-Benjamins variety—we have a list of some of the highest-paying jobs you can apply for right now.
The study by job-search website Glassdoor examined the average compensations around LA for various job titles, as well as how many listings for those titles currently appear on their site.
What they found probably isn’t too surprising—so maybe you should have listened when your parents tried to get you to study engineering in college instead of majoring in interpretive French basket-weaving. Among the top 15 earners, 11 are engineering and computer science related.
An average software engineer in Los Angeles is racking in $95,000 each year, according to their stats. With 1,966 openings on Glassdoor’s site alone, it’s also probably your best chance of snagging a job. The No. 1 spot on the compensation list goes to the position of solutions architect, earning an estimated $130,000—but only 153 jobs with that title are currently vacant.
No particular aptitude for the STEM fields? Then your best shot is probably something you’ve been hearing for years: Consider law school. Even with the glut of attorneys on the market, there’s always more people to sue out there and a lawyer in Los Angeles can anticipate a median base salary of $125,000.
Now, all that said, if you get a call for that cool-looking systems analyst gig and they don’t offer you the $80,000 you were counting on, don’t be too surprised. Glassdoor bases those estimates on medians taken from self-reporting by employees who take the time to proactively go to the site and reveal how much they are making, so the sample set may be limited and might not be representative of the job market at large.