L.E.K. Salary 2026: What Each Level's Offer Starts At

The base L.E.K. writes into its Americas postings

Every figure here comes from a live posting on the L.E.K. Americas job board, checked 29 September 2026, with the closing date the firm published on each one.

The wording differs by level, and the difference carries information. The Consultant posting reads "The base salary for this position is $185,000 annually", which is a point. The Manager posting reads "The base salary at the Manager level starts at $241,500 annually", which is a floor with no stated top.

Two steps fall out of the table. Associate Consultant to Consultant is $50,000. Consultant to Manager is $56,500. Both of those are jumps on base alone, before any bonus, and both are larger than most annual raises inside a level.

A total compensation ceiling L.E.K. publishes itself

Here is the sentence that makes this firm unusual. The Associate Consultant posting states "The base salary at the Associate Consultant level is $135,000USD" and then adds "The estimated total potential compensation at this level is up to $200,000USD".

Almost no consulting firm publishes a total compensation figure. The postings we have read elsewhere give a base range and then call bonus discretionary without pricing it, which is what our McKinsey salary page documents from that firm's own wording. L.E.K. puts a ceiling on the whole package at its pre-MBA entry level.

Work the gap. The ceiling is $200,000 and the base is $135,000, so everything above base is worth up to $65,000. Against the base that is 48.1 percent, which rounds to roughly 48 percent. Read the words carefully before you plan around it: the sentence says estimated, says potential, and says up to. It is a cap on the firm's own estimate, and a candidate who treats it as an expected figure is reading three hedges out of one sentence.

The same posting adds that L.E.K. promotes Associate Consultants to Consultants "based on demonstrated performance", which is the firm describing its own promotion gate. It names no timetable.

There is one way to use the $200,000 figure well. Any recruiter quoting a total package at this level is quoting against a number the firm has already published, so you can ask where inside that ceiling a typical first year lands. That is a narrower question than asking for the bonus policy, and narrower questions get answered.

Where the filings and the postings land on the same dollar

L.E.K. filed 34 certified Labor Condition Applications in the third quarter disclosure file for fiscal 2026, covering decisions from 1 October 2025 to 30 June 2026. Fifteen of them are Consultant filings. Twelve carry a floor of exactly $185,000, the number in the posting. The other three carry $200,000, all in cities with a live office.

The Associate Consultant row is even tighter. One certified filing, in New York, at $135,000 to $141,750. The floor is the posted figure to the dollar, and the ceiling is that floor plus five percent, since $135,000 multiplied by 1.05 gives $141,750 exactly.

At Manager the pattern holds again. Five Engagement Manager filings and two Manager filings, and five of those seven carry a floor of $241,500. That is the number in the posting, under two different job titles, in three cities.

One boundary of the filed record is worth stating. The Department of Labor record layout defines the field as "Wage paid to nonimmigrant workers at the First Worksite Location". That is salary. No bonus, no signing amount, no profit share.

The life sciences track carries one flat number

L.E.K. publishes thirteen roles on its roles page, and three of them sit on a separate track for candidates with a doctorate: "PhD Analyst", "Life Sciences Specialist" and "Senior Life Sciences Specialist". That track has its own number in the filings, and it does not move.

Seven certified filings carry the title "Life Science Specialist" or "Life Sciences Specialist", all at exactly $152,500, in five cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. One senior filing sits at $168,000 in Boston, a step of $15,500.

That flat figure is striking against the benchmark the government attached to the same rows. The prevailing wage on the Chicago life sciences filings is $66,373. The filed salary of $152,500 is about 2.3 times that, since $152,500 divided by $66,373 gives 2.297. On the Boston row the benchmark is $119,787 and the same $152,500 applies. The track pays one number and the benchmark under it nearly doubles.

No L.E.K. posting priced this track on 29 September 2026. The figures above come from the government file alone, which means they are salaries L.E.K. committed to and not an offer the firm is currently advertising.

Two internships, priced by the week

L.E.K. quotes both of its summer roles weekly, which is honest and slightly awkward to compare. The Summer Consultant posting reads "Summer Consultants will earn a weekly salary of $3,550 during the summer internship". The analytics internship reads "The expected salary for this position is $1,850 weekly during the course of the summer internship".

To turn those into something comparable you need the length, and L.E.K. publishes it on the same roles page: "This internship involves 8-10 weeks of real casework experience". Run both ends.

1. Summer Consultant, eight weeks. $3,550 multiplied by 8 gives $28,400.
2. Summer Consultant, ten weeks. $3,550 multiplied by 10 gives $35,500.
3. Analytics internship, eight weeks. $1,850 multiplied by 8 gives $14,800.
4. Analytics internship, ten weeks. $1,850 multiplied by 10 gives $18,500.

So the MBA summer role pays roughly twice the analytics summer role per week, and the total depends on a length the firm states as a range rather than a fixed number. Ask which it is before you sign, because two weeks is worth $7,100 at the higher rate.

One San Francisco filing at $500,000, and why it is not a level

The L.E.K. filings contain a row that would wreck any average. A San Francisco filing under the title Engagement Manager carries $500,000. A second San Francisco filing, under the title Managing Director, carries the same $500,000.

The honest reading is that one senior hire was filed under two titles, or that a single unusual package was filed twice. Either way, it is one salary and not a band. Anyone who averages the five Engagement Manager filings gets $294,200, which describes nobody at that level.

This is the failure mode of every self-reported salary page on this query. A small sample with one extreme row produces an average that reads like a fact. The fix is to publish the count and the distribution, which is why the Consultant row above says twelve of fifteen rather than an average.

The rest of the senior end is thin in the same way. One Senior Manager filing, in Chicago, at $252,000 to $257,000. One Financial Services Consultant filing in New York at $185,000 to $205,000. Single rows, reported as single rows.

Three L.E.K. levels with no number anywhere

Four of the thirteen roles L.E.K. names carry a figure on this page. The Associate and Senior Associate levels, which are the undergraduate entry path, have no posted figure and no certified filing in fiscal 2026. Principal has neither.

That gap is worth naming precisely. L.E.K. describes the Associate role at length and calls Associates "the core of our case teams". It prices the summer version of that role at $3,550 a week and the full-time version at nothing the public can read. The amount sits with the firm's compensation team and appears in the offer letter.

Business school reports do not close the gap either. 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, Analysis Group and Strategy&, and does not name L.E.K. So the class median is a market reference here and nothing more.

For a broader view across firms, our consulting salary guide collects the published figures side by side, and consulting pay by city handles the location question.

What to check before an L.E.K. recruiter call

Base at entry is the least movable line at any firm that files one floor twelve times. What remains open is everything attached to it, and L.E.K. has published enough that you can ask precise questions.

1. The bonus inside that $200,000. The firm published a ceiling for total compensation and not a split. Ask what the bonus range was last year for Associate Consultants who met expectations.
2. Internship length. Eight weeks or ten, since the difference is $7,100 at the Summer Consultant rate.
3. Start date. The cheapest ask and the one most often granted.
4. Office. The Consultant filings name six cities and one figure, so this is a client and travel decision rather than a pay decision.
5. Track. The generalist and life sciences paths carry different numbers, and a doctorate makes both possible.

Quote a source when you raise money. "Your U.S. Consultant posting states $185,000" is checkable in one click. An aggregator average is not, and a recruiter will say so. Our offer negotiation guide covers the sequence.

Practicing the synthesis that closes an L.E.K. case

The figures above only apply if you clear the interview. Our synthesis drill grades a closing recommendation in seconds against four dimensions, and the weights sit in our code and on our method page: Answer first 35, Evidence 25, Risk 20, Next step 20. We wrote that scale. No firm publishes a marking scheme, and the Risk line carries 20 because candidates deliver a clean answer and then name nothing that could break it.

Two limits, stated up front. The drill teaches no sector content, so it will not prepare you for a life sciences case on its own. And our assessment simulators are not running: the assessments page says 0 of 6 simulators are live, in exactly those words, on the page itself.

Try one before you plan a negotiation. A candidate who cannot land a recommendation first, with a number behind it, inside two minutes is further from an L.E.K. offer than any salary table suggests. Our L.E.K. case interview guide covers what the firm's own cases ask for.

The two sentences this page had to retract

29 September 2026. An earlier version of this page ran to about 330 words and published no figure at all. It stated that L.E.K. does not publish consulting compensation and that no official source does it on the firm's behalf. Both halves were wrong.

L.E.K. prices three consulting levels and two internships in the text of its own postings, and it publishes a total compensation ceiling at the entry level, which is rarer than the base figures. The Labor Department record confirms all three floors. Every one of those documents was public and readable on the day the earlier version was written.

The earlier version also told readers that L.E.K. figures move by office. The filings say otherwise at Consultant level: twelve rows in six cities sit on the same $185,000. What does move is the benchmark the government attaches, from $109,013 in Houston to $149,552 in Boston, a spread of $40,539 that changes nothing about the salary L.E.K. files.

A third line was cut rather than corrected. The earlier version pointed readers to a business school employment report as a checkable market reference for L.E.K. pay. The reports are checkable and they are not about this firm: the Wharton employer list for the Class of 2025 does not name L.E.K. at all. A median that includes a firm is a reference. A median that may not include it is a guess with a footnote.