Data Engineering Salary: Your 2026 Guide

Key takeaways

Data engineers in the United States earn above-average compensation. Below are some important facts to know: 

• The median total pay for a data engineer is $131,000 per year [1].

• A bachelor’s degree is typically the minimum qualification for most data engineering roles.

• You can earn significantly more by pursuing specialized data engineering certifications such as Google Professional Data Engineer and SAS Certified Big Data Professional.

Learn what data engineers do, what can affect data engineer salaries, and how you can get started on this exciting career path. Afterward, enroll in Data Engineering Foundations Specialization to develop working knowledge of the data engineering ecosystem and lifecycle.

What does a data engineer do?

Data engineers are responsible for the engineering behind the systems that store, extract, and process data. They build and maintain applications' databases and manage the infrastructure that allows them to run. As a data engineer, you might be responsible for a structured query language (SQL) data store and a MongoDB NoSQL data warehouse, where you’ll take care of all the activities that have to do with ensuring that data is accessible.

Data engineers are also part of a team that includes software engineers and developers, data analysts, and designers. Together, these professionals have the expertise to collect and manipulate data that others use to achieve critical business objectives.

Data engineer responsibilities vary widely by organization. As a data engineer, you may do some or all of the following:

• Design indexes on data stores (where queries will be fast) 

• Choose the best storage technology (SQL or NoSQL) 

• Ensure that the datastore is up-to-date and replicate it across multiple machines 

• Tune data warehouses 

• Create query plans and validate results

• Identify patterns in historical data 

• Analyze and optimize database performance

In a career as a data engineer, you’ll combine cutting-edge technical skills with creativity and often do so in business-critical applications.

How much do data engineers make?

According to Glassdoor, the total median data engineer salary is $131,000 per year, including base salary and additional pay such as bonuses and profit sharing [1]. The median total pay for a senior data engineer, meanwhile, is $171,000 a year [2]. Generally, you can expect to earn a salary that is higher than average as a data engineer.

Note: Total pay is the combined amount of Glassdoor users’ reported average salary and additional pay, which could include profit sharing, commissions, cash bonuses, or tips.

Factors affecting data engineering salary

How much you’ll earn as a data engineer depends on your level of education, certifications, years of experience, company size, industry, and location. Here's what you need to know:

Education

Bachelor's degrees are often the minimum requirement for data engineering positions. Companies often require a master's degree or professional doctorate and are typically looking to hire senior-level data engineers with proven leadership skills and industry experience. Advanced degrees can increase your earning potential by elevating you more rapidly to senior roles.

Is becoming a data engineer hard?

Data engineering can be challenging because it is a complex field with many different components. You’ll need to understand the flow of data and properly deliver that data to data scientists for further data mining or training in a machine learning (ML) algorithm. You must also have an understanding of big data and know how to integrate it into business intelligence applications. Data engineers also need to know programming languages such as Python, R, and SQL.

Read more: 5 Types of Programming Languages

Certifications

Specialized certifications, such as Cloudera Certified Data Engineer, demonstrate specific skills employers seek. Certifications from IBM, Amazon, Google, Oracle, and Microsoft can also help you earn more and get jobs in specialist roles. Here are some data engineer certifications to consider:

• Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Certification

• Microsoft Certified Fabric Data Engineer Associate

• SAS Certified Big Data Professional

• Google Professional Data Engineer

• Data Science Council of America (DASCA) Associate Big Data Engineer

• Data Science Council of America (DASCA) Senior Big Data Engineer

• AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate

• Cloudera Data Engineer Certification

Level of experience 

As you gain more experience as a data engineer, your salary will likely increase. According to data from Payscale, data engineers with one to four years of experience make an average annual salary of $93,397 [3]. 

The average annual salary for professionals with 10 to 19 years of experience increases to $127,578 [3]. The average yearly salary for professionals with over 20 years of experience is $134,082. With experience, you can usually expect to move into more senior roles [3].

Location

How much you'll earn differs by location. At least a part of the reason for salary disparity between regions is that it costs less to live in some areas based on a metric that measures the difference in cost of living in the US, called the real personal consumption expenditure (PCE). Here's the median annual data engineer pay in several cities around the US, according to Glassdoor:

*All salary information represents the median total pay from Glassdoor as of October 2025. These figures include base salary and additional pay, which may represent profit-sharing, commissions, bonuses, or other compensation.

• Austin, TX: $129,000

• Boston, MA:$129,000 

• Charlotte, NC: $122,000 

• Chicago, IL: $129,000 

• Columbus, OH: $117,000 

• Dallas, TX: $129,000

• Denver, CO: $126,000

• Detroit, MI: $119,000 

• El Paso, TX: $111,000

• Houston, TX: $173,000

• Indianapolis, IN: $113,000 

• Los Angeles, CA: $140,000

• Las Vegas, NV: $124,000

• Nashville, TN: $125,000 

• New York, NY: $144,000

• Philadelphia, PA: $125,000 

• Phoenix, AZ: $122,000

• San Antonio, TX: $127,000 

• San Diego, CA: $133,000

• San Francisco, CA: $220,000

• San Jose, CA: $172,000

• Seattle, WA: $146,000 

• Salt Lake City, UT: $118,000

Company size

Company size often impacts data engineer salaries. Companies offering higher salaries tend to be more significant employers, such as IBM, Amazon, Meta, and Google, and often have larger, more experienced data science teams.

Job title variations impacting data engineer pay

Data engineer job titles vary by company, tasks, and skills required. Here are some common titles that data engineers can have:

*All salary information represents the median total pay from Glassdoor as of October 2025. These figures include base salary and additional pay, which may represent profit-sharing, commissions, bonuses, or other compensation.

• Cloud data engineer: $161,000

• Artificial intelligence (AI) engineer: $138,000 

• Big data engineer: $142,000 

• Data science engineer: $147,000 

• Database architect: $166,000

• Enterprise data architect: $231,000

• Hadoop engineer: $156,000 

• Information systems engineer: $138,000

How to become a data engineer

To become a data engineer, you should work to build and demonstrate a solid competency base across database technologies and coding. Typically, data engineers need at least a bachelor’s degree, some certifications, and professional experience.

Explore our free resources for data engineers

Subscribe to Career Chat on LinkedIn to get weekly updates on popular skills, tools, and certifications in data engineering. Check out our other helpful digital learning resources: 

• Bookmark for quick access: SQL Glossary: Your Ultimate Guide to SQL Terms

• Get expert tips: Reimagining Work and Learning with AI: Expert Insights from Dr. Jules White

• Watch on YouTube: 10 Beginner Python Projects to BOOST Your Programming Skills

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