Kearney Consultant Salary 2026: Every Band the Firm Posts

The Kearney salary posted for four consulting ranks

Every figure below is quoted from a live Kearney posting on the firm's global jobs board, checked 29 September 2026. The right column says which posting carries it.

The wording is the firm's, and what Kearney sells explains which of its three networks these ranks sit in. A manager posting reads "Manager base compensation - $212,000 - $235,000". A principal posting reads "Principal base salary" followed by "$245,000-$270,000". Kearney then adds a caution on the same page: "it is not typical for an individual to be hired at the top of the range for their role."

Two of those figures are not annual. The summer associate posting states "The Summer Associate base salary will be $16,000.00 USD per month", with C$7,653.85 paid every two weeks in Canada and 265,700.00 Mexican pesos a month in Mexico. Three currencies, three pay periods, one role.

The sentence that prices an MBA at $31,000

This is the part no salary page carries, and Kearney publishes it in plain English. The Associate posting reads: "Associate Base Salary (post MBA) - $188,000 - $194,000 : Candidates without an MBA will also be considered for the role. Such candidates will be eligible for a base salary of $157,000. Under exceptional circumstances, candidates without an MBA may be considered for a base salary of $188,000."

Work the gap. The MBA floor is $188,000 and the alternative floor is $157,000, so the difference is $31,000. Against the $188,000 figure that is 16.5 percent, which rounds to roughly 16 percent. The third sentence then reopens it: an exception can pay a candidate without an MBA the full $188,000.

The Labor Department record backs this up in a way the posting cannot. Of 20 certified Kearney Associate filings in fiscal 2026, nineteen carry $188,000 to $194,000. The twentieth carries $157,000 to $194,000, filed in Chicago. That single row is the non-MBA floor showing up in a government file, with a worksite attached.

One Manager band across nineteen filings and eleven cities

Kearney filed 46 certified Labor Condition Applications in the third quarter disclosure file for fiscal 2026, covering decisions from 1 October 2025 to 30 June 2026. Nineteen of them are Manager filings. All nineteen carry $212,000 to $235,000, and they name eleven distinct worksite cities, from Glastonbury in Connecticut to Fremont in California.

That matters because a filing is bounded by internal pay. The Department of Labor rule states that "the required wage rate must be the higher of the actual wage rate (the rate the employer pays to all other individuals with similar experience and qualifications who are performing the same job), or the prevailing wage". A band repeated nineteen times across eleven cities is a structure, and a structure is harder to bend for one hire.

The Associate filings behave the same way. Nineteen identical rows, twelve cities, one pair of numbers. Whoever told you a Kearney office pays a premium on base was describing something the record does not show.

The Principal filings are the exception, and they are thin. Four certified rows: two at $245,000 to $270,000 in Boston and New York, and two at a flat $265,000 in Chicago and Seattle. Four filings cannot settle a band, and the posted $245,000 to $270,000 is the better figure to hold, because Kearney wrote it for candidates rather than for a form.

The prevailing wage the Kearney salary ignores

Every filing also carries the prevailing wage the government attached to it. That number does move by city, and by the experience level the filing claims. Here is the spread under the 20 Associate filings.

Boston sits $63,648 above the lowest Chicago row, and the same city appears three times at three different numbers. Read the level column before the city column: a level III filing in Austin clears a level II filing in New York. Kearney's own band ignores all of it and pays $188,000 either way.

The Manager filings spread the same way and higher up. They run from $135,117 in Glastonbury to $180,378 in Boston, a gap of $45,261, and every one of the nineteen sits at level IV. Against the Glastonbury figure that gap is about 34 percent. None of it touches the $212,000 floor Kearney posts.

Ranks Kearney never prices, and two tracks off the ladder

Kearney publishes its consulting ladder in seven steps: business analyst, senior business analyst, associate, manager, principal, associate partner, partner. Four of those seven carry a posted figure. Three do not, and neither does the entry rank at the bottom.

No live posting priced the consulting business analyst rank on 29 September 2026, and the certified filings hold no business analyst row on that ladder either. Associate partner and partner are described on the ladder page with no number anywhere. Those amounts sit with Kearney's compensation team and reach a candidate in the offer letter, which is the only document that states them.

Equity is a live question at the senior end, and two Kearney postings answer it differently. One principal posting lists "Non-partner equity-based awards (for consulting managers and above)". Another principal posting lists "Non-partner equity-based awards (for Principals and above)". Same firm, same rank, two thresholds. We publish both rather than picking one.

Two other Kearney tracks run on their own scale, which is worth knowing before you compare offers. A Kearney Activate delivery role states "Base Salary: $130,000-$190,000". A research role in Pennsylvania states "Compensation range: $106k to $108k". Neither of those sits on the general consulting ladder above, and a candidate who reads a Kearney figure without reading which track it came from can be out by more than $80,000.

The Wharton class median lands inside Kearney's salary band

School reports give an outside reading of the same rank. Wharton's 2025 Career Report, created 19 December 2025, puts the Class of 2025 consulting median base at $190,000. Its list of employers that hired two or more members of that class names Kearney.

Line the two up. The Kearney Associate floor of $188,000 sits $2,000 below that median, and the ceiling of $194,000 sits $4,000 above it. The class median lands inside the band Kearney posts. For a post-MBA candidate weighing Kearney against a broad market figure, that is the whole answer, and it took two public documents to get there.

One caution on the Wharton number. The same report gives $190,000 under the industry heading and $183,976 under the function heading, for one class in one document. Its own footnote reads "Median base salary for one year only. Does not include discretionary bonuses, options and carried interest in partnerships." A median is a market reference and never a quote for your role.

What a Kearney offer conversation can actually move

Base at entry is close to fixed, and the filings show why. A firm that repeats one band nineteen times will not carve out an exception that every other Associate can point to. Here is what moves, in descending order of how often it does.

1. Start date. The cheapest request and the one most often granted. A later start buys a rested first month, which is worth more than most candidates think.
2. Signing bonus. Kearney's postings call the annual bonus discretionary and say nothing about a signing amount. This is the usual place a competing offer lands.
3. Relocation. Policy driven, and the terms change by office.
4. Office and practice. No money attached, and more consequential than money. Both decide your clients, your travel and who staffs you.
5. Rank. Rare, and it moves only on documented prior experience. The exception clause in the Associate posting is the written proof that such moves exist.

Bring a source to that conversation. "Your own posting states $188,000 to $194,000 for a post-MBA Associate" is a sentence a recruiter can verify in thirty seconds. Our offer negotiation guide covers the rest of the sequence, and the consulting salary guide sets these figures beside other firms.

Practicing the arithmetic a Kearney case turns on

None of this moves unless you get the offer, and the offer runs through a case interview. Our math drill grades a calculation in seconds against four dimensions whose weights are published on our method page: Answer 40, Working 25, Units 15, Interpretation 20. Those weights are ours. We wrote them, no firm publishes a rubric, and the Interpretation line exists because candidates reach a correct number and then say nothing about what it means.

Two limits, stated plainly. The drill teaches no industry content, so it will not tell you anything about automotive margins or procurement. And our assessment simulators are not running: the assessments page says 0 of 6 simulators are live, in that wording, on the page itself.

A drill is also a cheap reality check on the band table above. Someone who cannot hold units straight under a three minute clock is not close to a Kearney offer, and no salary figure changes that. Someone who can is in the population these 46 filings describe, and the useful question becomes which practice, since that choice moves more than base ever will. Our Kearney case interview guide covers the interview itself.

What this page claimed in an earlier version

29 September 2026. An earlier version of this page ran to about 330 words and published no figure at all. Its central claim was that Kearney does not publish compensation and that every circulating number is a third-party estimate. The first half was wrong.

Kearney prices four consulting ranks in the text of its own postings, states a separate floor for candidates without an MBA, and quotes its summer pay to the cent in three currencies. All of that was public and readable on the day the earlier version was written. Declining to publish a band was presented as rigor. It was an absence of research.

That version also said Kearney's figures move by office and by country. Nineteen Manager filings across eleven cities carry one band, and nineteen Associate filings across twelve cities carry another, so the office half does not survive the record. The country half holds, and the summer associate posting is the proof: Kearney states three different amounts for the same role in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

One more line went out. The earlier version told readers to compare offers on total first-year cash. No source read for this page states a Kearney bonus or signing amount, so that advice pointed at a number the reader could not get. What replaces it is narrower and usable: compare base against the posted band, and ask the recruiter for the bonus range in writing.