The biggest companies in San Diego: the top 25 headquarters by revenue

This ranking is for readers who want San Diego's big headquarters in order: job seekers, suppliers chasing corporate buyers, investors and sellers planning named accounts. For the whole market of 93,407 business establishments, the county's major employers and how to look up a business, see companies in San Diego.

The 25 biggest companies headquartered in San Diego

Each row comes from the company's latest annual report on Form 10-K: the principal executive office on its cover, revenue as reported (total revenues or net sales) and the headcount in its human capital section. "San Diego" means San Diego County, which is the whole San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad metro area.

Notes on the figures. Qualcomm's count covers full-time, part-time and temporary workers. Sempra's 15,938 excludes employees of its equity-method investees, including Oncor in Texas. Callaway Golf's revenue excludes Topgolf and Jack Wolfskin, which it sold and reports as discontinued operations; it had about 28,000 people at the end of 2025 and about 4,000 as of 1 January 2026, after selling 60% of Topgolf to funds managed by Leonard Green. PriceSmart, ResMed and WD-40 have already filed their 2026 annual reports. Next in line, below $490 million, are MaxLinear (Carlsbad), Cohu and American Assets Trust.

Who's missing, and why

Some of San Diego's largest private-sector employers aren't on the list because they're units of companies based elsewhere. The state's list of the county's major employers includes Solar Turbines, a Caterpillar brand; General Dynamics NASSCO, part of General Dynamics' Marine Systems group; and Collins Aerospace, an RTX segment. Their parents' 10-Ks give Irving, Texas, Reston, Virginia and Arlington, Virginia as headquarters. Private companies are also missing, because they don't publish revenue.

Fortune 500 companies in San Diego

Fortune ranks US companies by revenue, so its list overlaps with this one at the top, but it applies its own revenue definitions and fiscal-year cutoffs and publishes its ranks on its own site. Use Fortune for its ranks, and this table when you need a figure you can trace to a filing. On filed revenue, Qualcomm, LPL Financial and Sempra are the only San Diego companies above $10 billion, and the next largest, Petco, is under $6 billion.

What the top 25 look like

Revenue per employee, our calculation from the table, shows how differently these businesses run. Realty Income takes in about $10.6 million per employee because it owns buildings that tenants operate. Halozyme earns about $3.3 million per employee, and 62% of its revenue is royalties on partners' drugs that use its drug-delivery technology. Petco, with store staff in every pet care center, is near $206,000, and Jack in the Box, which franchises 93% of its Jack in the Box restaurants, near $290,000. Headcount, not revenue, is the better guide to how much a company buys for its people: benefits, training, uniforms, devices and workplace services scale with staff.

Selling to San Diego's biggest companies

At this size, buying runs through procurement. Expect a supplier portal, security and privacy questionnaires, insurance certificates and the buyer's payment terms. The life sciences companies add a layer: anything that touches manufacturing, clinical data or product quality falls under FDA rules, so their quality and regulatory teams have a say alongside the budget holder. The 10-K helps you aim. Its segments name the business units with separate budgets, and its fiscal year tells you when next year's plan is set (Qualcomm's year ends in September, ResMed's in June, most others in December).

Illustrative example. The seller and its figures are fictional; the company figures are from the table.

Mesa Validation (mesavalidation.example) runs software validation for FDA-regulated device makers and wants the device companies in the top 25.

• It picks five: ResMed, DexCom, Tandem Diabetes Care, Alphatec and QuidelOrtho.
• Their combined headcount is about 32,400, and all five sell devices or diagnostics that run software.
• It prices a validation program at $90,000 a year and estimates two of the five will buy within 18 months: $180,000 a year in new revenue.
• Because validation is owned by quality, not IT, it starts with each company's head of quality systems or software quality, then the product engineering leads named in its job postings.

Bebop can find the quality and regulatory leaders at each of the five and draft outreach that refers to what each company says about its products in its 10-K.

Subject: Validation for [Company]'s next software release

Hi [first name],

Your 10-K describes [product line] and the software updates that come with it. Each release means another round of validation evidence for your quality system.

We validate software for FDA-regulated device makers, with test protocols your auditors already recognize. Would a sample validation plan for one release be useful before your next submission?

[Your name], Mesa Validation

Next step: prepare for accounts like these with enterprise account research.