Competitive Compensation: Understanding Family Office Salaries

Family office salaries have climbed fast. Median CEO comp now sits at $825K, CIOs near $900K, and the talent war with Wall Street keeps heating up.

Family office salaries have climbed fast over the past five years. Really fast. More offices are opening, Wall Street competition is heating up, and in-house investment teams are getting serious about hiring. Family office compensation covers the full package: base salary, bonuses, and long-term incentives for the professionals who manage wealth, investments, and operations for ultra-high-net-worth families.

Right now, median CEO compensation at an investment-focused single family office sits at $825,000 a year. CIOs earn a median of roughly $900,000, with averages pushing close to $1.8 million.

These aren't outliers. This is the market.

As a retained executive search firm focused exclusively on family offices, Maple Drive sees these dynamics in every engagement we run.

How Much Do Family Office CEOs and CIOs Earn?

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The median CEO at an investment-focused single family office now earns $825,000 a year. At offices managing more than $1 billion in assets, that number jumps past $1.2 million. Five years ago, those figures would've raised eyebrows.

CIOs are keeping pace. According to the 2025 Morgan Stanley and Botoff Consulting Single Family Office Compensation Report, median CIO compensation is about $900,000, with averages near $1.8 million. That gap between median and average? It's top-heavy. A small number of CIOs at the largest offices pull significantly higher packages, and they skew the whole curve.

The C-suite isn't the only place this shows up.

Executive Assistants now earn a median base of roughly $100,000. At offices with $2.5 billion or more in AUM, that figure runs about 35% higher. And in one case Botoff Consulting advised on, a junior analyst asked for $300,000. The family decided to wait a year.

Why Are Family Office Salaries Rising So Fast?

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Three things are driving this:

There are way more family offices now. Roughly 8,030 single-family offices exist globally as of 2024, up from 6,130 in 2019, according to Deloitte. In North America alone, nearly 3,200 offices are operating, a number projected to hit 4,200 by 2030. Every one of them needs a leadership team. Many are building full investment platforms.
They're competing directly with Wall Street for talent. As more offices bring private equity and direct investing in-house, they're going head-to-head with KKR, Blackstone, and Carlyle for mid-career investment professionals. That family office talent war has pushed comp structures to mirror what institutional funds offer.
The whole sector is professionalizing. Trish Botoff, founder and managing principal of Botoff Consulting, has seen it firsthand: "We've seen over the last decade, the professionalization and institutionalization of the family office space. They're building out their investment teams, hiring staff from other investment firms and private equity firms, so that has a huge impact on compensation."

Raises keep outpacing the broader U.S. market. In 2023, over 90% of offices granted raises, with the majority at 5% or more. That momentum carried into 2024, when 57% of offices planned additional hires and nearly half budgeted for raises at the same level or higher.

What Long-Term Incentive Plans Do Family Offices Use?

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Five years ago, long-term incentive plans were a nice-to-have. Now they're table stakes.

In 2023, 59% of all single-family offices reported using at least one LTI vehicle. Among investment-focused offices specifically, the 2025 figure is 62%. 90% of single family offices now offer annual incentive or bonus plan eligibility to employees.

The most common family office long-term incentive structures:

Deferred incentive compensation, payouts tied to continued tenure or performance milestones
Co-investment opportunities, 85% of which are funded by the participants themselves
Carried interest or phantom carry, modeled on private equity fund economics
Profit sharing, tied to overall office or portfolio performance

Here's what's really changed, though. It's the formalization. Compensation used to be set by a principal's gut feel. Sometimes agreed on with a handshake. Now it's benchmarked, measured, and tied to performance.

How Does Family Office Pay Compare to Private Equity?

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Top family offices now compete directly with PE firms on comp. Some offer carried interest, co-investment rights, phantom equity, and deferred compensation structures that look a lot like what a fund would provide.

But the real draw isn't the money.

What pulls the right candidate is proximity to a single decision-maker and the ability to see a deal from origination through exit without six layers of committee approval. That combination of autonomy, breadth, and direct impact is almost impossible to replicate at a large institutional fund. We see it in almost every senior search we run: the candidates who stick are the ones who wanted that kind of seat, not just a bigger check.

As Botoff has noted, "In an ever-competitive market for talent, families increasingly are focused on attracting highly skilled and more specialized professionals to execute their vision, mission, and strategy."

How Should Principals Structure Family Office Compensation?

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Here's the thing most principals get wrong: they think generosity solves the problem. It doesn't. Specificity does.

A family office compensation philosophy should account for three things:

Complexity of the mandate. A CIO running a $3 billion direct investment portfolio has different expectations than a CFO overseeing tax compliance for a $400 million office. Pay should reflect the actual scope of the work.
Geography. Comp benchmarks vary a lot by market, especially between major financial centers and secondary cities.
Competitive set. The relevant comparison might be another family office, a PE fund, or a multi-family office platform. Depends on the role.

Offices building or expanding in-house investment teams will pay a premium. That's just the cost of competing with institutional capital for institutional-caliber talent.

And honestly? Most families still underpay and then wonder why their best people leave after two years. Compensation in this space isn't an administrative exercise. It's a search advantage and a retention strategy. For the families that understand this market, it's the clearest signal they can send about how seriously they take the people managing their wealth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average family office CEO salary?

The median CEO at an investment-focused single family office earns $825,000 per year, according to the 2025 Morgan Stanley and Botoff Consulting Single Family Office Compensation Report. At offices managing more than $1 billion, median CEO compensation exceeds $1.2 million.

How much does a family office CIO make?

Median CIO compensation at a single family office is about $900,000, with averages near $1.8 million. The wide gap reflects the outsized packages at the largest offices.

Do family offices offer carried interest?

Yes. As of 2025, 62% of investment-focused single family offices use at least one long-term incentive vehicle. Common structures include carried interest or phantom carry, co-investment opportunities, deferred incentive compensation, and profit sharing.

Are family office salaries rising faster than the market?

Yes. In 2023, over 90% of single family offices granted raises, with the majority at 5% or more, well above the U.S. national average. In 2024, 57% of offices planned additional hires and nearly half budgeted for raises at the same level or higher.

Why is there a talent war in family offices?

The number of single-family offices globally grew from 6,130 in 2019 to 8,030 in 2024, according to Deloitte. Many are building in-house investment teams, putting them in direct competition with KKR, Blackstone, and Carlyle for the same limited pool of experienced professionals.