Throughline

Business and finance

Financial Manager in San Diego

24 postings read · sampled 2026-10-01 · source ats · 17 employers · largest 17% of it

What employers actually ask for

Credentials named in the 24 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.

What it costs

Exam and application fees plus typical self-study hours. Almost nobody needs every credential on this list — start with the top line.

Most-asked-for, on its own
$1,500CPA · ~400 hrs
asked for in 3 of 24 postings — 13%
If you earned all 2 of them
$2,790
fees checked 2026-08
700 hrs
700 hours — over a year at 10 hrs/wk

Not in the total: Master's Degree — cost varies by institution; Bachelor's Degree — cost varies by institution.

What the official taxonomy says

O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.

Education reported by people doing this job
56%reported bachelor’s degree
  • Bachelor’s degree56%
  • Post-baccalaureate certificate21%
  • High school diploma or equivalent14%

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

O*NET 11-3031.00 · pulled 2026-10-01 · percentages are of surveyed workers, each rounded separately, so they need not total 100

This sample is small enough that one posting moves any percentage by more than a couple of points, so we are not calling anything low-signal here. Read the numbers above as a direction, not a measurement.

What it pays

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.

$100,950
10th percentile
$174,210
median
$326,930
90th percentile

Every credential above costs $2,790 — about 4 days' pay at the median.

Who was hiring

Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.

Anthropic · Harbinger Motors · Scale AI · SpaceX · Verkada · Antora Energy · Faire · Intuitive Surgical · Kodiak Robotics · Lucid Motors · Murgado Automotive Group · Pearce Services · Robinhood · Samsara · SBT Global · Sierra · Zoox

The same role elsewhere

Next

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