43+ Licensed Vocational Nurse Jobs in San Diego County, CA (Hiring Now in Aug 2026)

San Diego County runs on a large and steady demand for licensed vocational nurses, from retirement communities to VA clinics to dialysis centers, and the openings refresh constantly. As of Aug 2026, this page tracks 43+ open licensed vocational nurse jobs in San Diego County, CA, collected into one list that spans hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, memory care communities, behavioral health programs, and outpatient clinics from downtown San Diego up the coast to Oceanside and inland to Escondido.

The page pairs those live openings with something rarer: actual payroll data for LVNs in county service, so you can ground your pay expectations in public records instead of anonymous estimates. And because each listing is checked against the employer's own career page, you will not waste an evening applying to a posting that quietly closed last month. Use it to compare settings, schedules, and posted rates in one sitting, then put your applications where the fit is real.

Bandana's LVN salary data for San Diego County is built from 2024 payroll records for the 26 licensed vocational nurses employed directly by the county, a small corps that works mostly in behavioral health programs and detention medicine. Their median total pay was $107,556 per year. The middle half earned between $66,251 at the 25th percentile and $121,954 at the 75th percentile, and the highest total on record was $130,826.

Base pay for the county classification was $61,294, and the distance from that base to the $107,556 median is what differentials, overtime, and extra shifts add in settings that run around the clock. The lower end of the range reflects part-time and partial-year schedules more than low hourly rates, so read the 25th percentile as a floor for limited schedules, not as what a full-time LVN should accept in this market.

County service is the benchmark, not the whole market. Most of the jobs on this list are with private and federal employers, from skilled nursing operators to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and they publish their own hourly rates or ranges on each posting. Compare any posted rate against the county distribution and you will know immediately where an offer stands.

Senior care is the deepest vein in the current feed. Silverado hires LVNs for its memory care communities, Casa de las Campanas staffs its large retirement community, LCS operates senior living communities across the region, and Generations Healthcare runs skilled nursing facilities. Recent verified postings include a Full Time Licensed Vocational Nurse on the PM shift, per diem roles, and part-time lines, so you can match the job to your schedule rather than the other way around.

The rest of the feed crosses into clinical and public-sector settings. The Department of Veterans Affairs is hiring, including a Vocational Nurse position at a community based outpatient clinic. University of California San Diego posts LVN roles inside its health system, DAVITA staffs dialysis clinics, HealthRIGHT 360 hires for behavioral health programs, and Sevita and Seaport also have openings in the current list. Federal, academic, and private employers all run separate hiring pipelines, which is exactly why an aggregated page beats watching any single careers site.

Long-term and senior care roles are the most numerous: memory care, skilled nursing, and retirement community positions where LVNs run medication passes, wound care, and treatments, often as the senior clinical presence on a shift. These employers hire year-round and are the most receptive to new license holders. Per diem and part-time versions of the same jobs make this sector the easiest place to control your own hours while you build experience.

Clinic and specialty roles form the second cluster: dialysis positions at DAVITA, outpatient clinic work with the VA, behavioral health nursing at HealthRIGHT 360, and roles inside University of California San Diego's system. Expect the full spread of schedules across both clusters, from full-time PM shifts to weekend per diem, with differentials for evenings, nights, and weekends at most facilities, which is exactly how county LVNs push their totals well past base pay. If you are weighing settings against each other, dialysis and outpatient clinic roles tend to run on predictable daytime schedules, while senior care rewards nurses who want steady weekday evenings or weekend differential pay.

California licenses vocational nurses through the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians (BVNPT): finish an approved vocational nursing program, pass the NCLEX-PN, and keep your California LVN license active. Employers add the standard clinical package on top: background check and fingerprinting, current CPR certification, TB screening, and immunization records. An IV therapy and blood withdrawal certification is a short course that noticeably widens your options in dialysis, clinics, and skilled nursing.

A few setting-specific notes. Federal VA positions follow a federal application process with their own forms and timelines, so start those early and follow the announcement instructions exactly. County jobs run through civil service postings with defined filing windows. Memory care and behavioral health employers weigh patience, observation, and de-escalation skills alongside clinical basics, and they ask about them directly in interviews. New graduates should lead with clinical rotation experience and schedule flexibility, which is the fastest route to a first offer.

The county data shows the ceiling is real: a median of $107,556 and a 75th percentile of $121,954 for county LVNs is what the role can pay locally once differentials and full-time hours stack up. Private long-term care typically posts lower rates than county service, but demand is deep, schedules are flexible, and hiring moves fast. San Diego's cost of living is high, though gentler than the Bay Area, and the region's mix of federal, academic, and private employers gives LVNs an unusual number of directions to grow.

The tradeoffs are the usual ones: the best-paying shifts are evenings, nights, and weekends, the work is physically demanding, and long-term care staffing ratios can be tough on hard days. Many San Diego LVNs use the role either as a stable career base or as a funded runway toward an RN license, and this market supports both plans. For public-sector alternatives while you search, scan Government Jobs in San Diego alongside this list.

Open the live listings below and apply on each employer's own site. Keep your license number, CPR card, TB and immunization records, and references in one place so each application takes minutes instead of an evening. Private senior care employers often respond within days, while VA and county roles take longer but reward complete first-time submissions, so run both tracks at the same time instead of choosing one.

Apply to more than one setting even if you have a favorite, because comparing real offers on rate, differentials, and schedule beats guessing from job descriptions. Every listing on this page is verified and sourced directly from employer career pages, so each one is current and actively hiring.

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