Data Engineer Salary: Pay by Percentile and State From BLS Data

BLS does not list data engineer as an occupation, so it counts the job with database architects. For that group the May 2025 median wage is $139,500 a year, or $67.07 an hour, and the mean is $144,440. Half of workers earn between $109,370 and $169,290. Your state, employer and experience move the number.

Why Is There No Official Data Engineer Salary?

Federal wage surveys count jobs by standard occupation codes, and those codes change slowly. Data engineer is a title employers use. It is not a category the government has created.

BLS counts data engineers with database architects (15-1243), and O*NET lists data engineer as an alternate title for that occupation. So these figures cover that wider group. They are not data engineer pay in particular.

Be careful with pages that quote one clean data engineer number. Those usually come from job boards or self-reported surveys, which can run high and are hard to compare year to year. We use only the federal survey.

If you want the job described before the pay, our data engineer career guide covers the day-to-day work and how to get hired.

What Is the Median Data Engineer Salary?

The national median for this group is $139,500 a year. The mean is $144,440. The mean sits above the median because a group of high earners pulls the average up.

BLS counted 67,140 workers in this occupation in May 2025. Here is the full spread.

• 10th percentile: $86,240.
• 25th percentile: $109,370.
• Median: $139,500.
• Mean: $144,440.
• 75th percentile: $169,290.
• 90th percentile: $204,000.

Hourly, the median is $67.07 and the mean is $69.44. If you are leaving an hourly or contract job, those numbers are easier to hold against what you earn now.

How Do Percentiles Show Experience?

BLS does not report pay by years of experience, and we will not invent year bands. The percentiles are the honest substitute.

The 10th percentile of $86,240 is the nearest thing to a floor. It mixes new workers with experienced people in low-paying states, so do not read it as a starting salary.

The 25th percentile is $109,370. A quarter of workers earn that much or less. The 75th percentile is $169,290, and a quarter earn that or more. The 90th percentile of $204,000 is where the strongest earners sit.

Workers with more experience, bigger systems and higher-paying employers tend to land in the upper half. The survey does not tell us how much each factor adds, so use the percentiles as a range for planning, then check real postings.

Which States Pay Data Engineers the Most?

Where you work matters about as much as what you know. Here are the states with the highest median wages for this group, with the number of workers BLS counted.

• California: $170,160, with 6,210 workers.
• Massachusetts: $161,650, with 2,690 workers.
• Virginia: $160,360, with 5,260 workers.
• Arizona: $156,100, with 1,200 workers.
• Colorado: $154,560, with 1,950 workers.
• Texas: $151,370, with 8,270 workers.
• District of Columbia: $150,010, with 790 workers.
• Connecticut: $144,460, with 1,140 workers.
• Illinois: $142,500, with 1,590 workers.

By annual mean wage, the order is California at $175,330, Massachusetts at $163,290, Virginia at $154,550, Connecticut at $154,520 and the District of Columbia at $149,300.

California’s middle half earns between $132,880 and $203,130. That range alone is wider than the gap between some states’ medians.

Where Are the Most Data Engineer Jobs?

The biggest job markets are Texas with 8,270 workers, California with 6,210, Virginia with 5,260, North Carolina with 4,070 and New York with 3,850.

Those states differ in pay. North Carolina’s median is $134,630 and New York’s is $141,350. Washington has 2,990 workers and a median of $128,760. New Jersey has 3,090 and a median of $120,790.

Texas is the notable one. It has the most jobs and a median of $151,370, so it combines volume with strong pay. California pays more, but you are competing in a larger and pricier market.

Which States Pay the Least?

At the low end, the median is $98,420 in Mississippi, $104,070 in Arkansas, $105,450 in Alabama and $109,430 in North Dakota.

Treat those with care. Mississippi has about 100 workers in this group and North Dakota about 60, and a few people can move a small state’s numbers. Living costs are also lower in many of these states, which BLS wage data does not adjust for.

Many online AI degrees can be completed from anywhere, but pay follows the job’s location, and remote pay policies vary by employer. Ask any employer whether pay is set by your location or by the company’s.

What Moves Data Engineer Pay?

The data supports a few levers.

State. The gap between California’s median of $170,160 and Mississippi’s $98,420 is bigger than most raises you will negotiate.

Where you land in the range. The 25th percentile is $109,370 and the 75th is $169,290. We cannot say which factors explain it, but employer size, system complexity and years on the job are the likely ones.

Industry. Pay differs by employer type, but our data does not split this occupation by industry, so we do not quote industry figures. Compare postings in the sectors you want.

Education. BLS lists a bachelor’s as the typical entry education for this group and says graduate school is not required. The survey does not report pay by degree. A master’s is better treated as a way into AI work than as a guaranteed raise.

Does Outlook Affect Pay?

Demand shapes bargaining power, though we cannot measure it directly. BLS projects 9 percent growth for database architects from 2025 to 2035, which it calls much faster than average. It counted 69,500 of those jobs in 2025.

For database administrators and architects combined, BLS expects about 7,300 openings a year. Those include people leaving the field as well as new roles. Projections are estimates, and BLS revises them each cycle.

What Does an Online AI Degree Cost Next to This Pay?

A degree is a one-time cost, and pay is a yearly number, so set them side by side. These online AI programs from our data show how wide the price range runs. Each total is the tuition the school publishes.

• The University of Texas at Austin online MS in Artificial Intelligence: $9,990 for 30 credits, with no GRE required.
• Brandeis University applied machine learning and engineering certificate: $14,640 for 12 credits, and its course list includes Data Engineering and Cloud Pipelines.
• The University of Illinois Chicago online MEng with an AI and machine learning concentration: $32,256 for 36 credit hours, before fees.
• Penn State World Campus Master of Artificial Intelligence, AI Engineering option: $32,670 for 30 credits at $1,089 per credit.
• Oregon State University business analytics and applied AI master’s: $43,425 for 45 credits at $965 per credit.
• Duke University online master’s in AI for Product Innovation: $76,650 for 30 credits, with two campus residencies.
• Columbia University online MS in AI: $81,000 for 30 credits.

Our list of the cheapest online AI degrees sorts programs by price at every level. The online AI master’s ranking shows master’s programs side by side.

Is the Degree Worth It at These Prices?

It depends on where you start. The cheapest master’s on our list, at $9,990, is well under a tenth of one year of median pay. Duke’s total is a little over half of one year of median pay. The spread is about eight to one.

BLS does not report pay by school, so we cannot say expensive programs lead to higher pay, and we do not claim it.

If you already work as a developer or analyst, a certificate may be all you need to move toward data engineering. If you are switching from a lower-paying field, compare the total with what the move could add to your pay, and remember nothing guarantees it. Our guide on whether an AI degree is worth it walks through the comparison with your own numbers.

Also count the full cost. Tuition is only part of it, and some programs add technology fees or campus visits. Each program page lists what the school publishes. The online AI engineering degrees list is a good place to look for programs built around the work.

How Can You Use the Percentiles in a Negotiation?

Percentiles give you a defensible range to bring to an offer conversation. If a posting offers less than the 25th percentile of $109,370 for a role with real responsibility, ask what the employer is basing that on. If it offers near the median of $139,500, you are in the middle of the national picture.

Adjust for your state first. A national median of $139,500 means little in Mississippi, where the state median is $98,420, or in California, where it is $170,160. Use your own state’s figure as the anchor and the national spread as the sanity check.

Then weigh the whole package. Pay is one part of an offer, and the survey cannot see the rest.

How Far Can You Trust These Numbers?

They are solid for setting a range, and weaker for predicting your own offer. Four cautions apply.

The survey groups jobs by occupation code, not by title. One company may file a data engineer under database architects, and another may file the same person under software developers or data scientists. For those neighbors, see our pages on AI engineer pay and machine learning engineer pay.

Each wage figure blends everyone in the group, from a new hire to a veteran architect.

BLS leaves out numbers it cannot publish reliably. Delaware has a wage for this group but no worker count.

The survey measures wages only. Bonuses, stock and benefits are outside it, and we do not guess at them.

Even with those limits, the figures are useful. Build a range from them, then test it against a handful of current postings in your area.

How Does Data Engineer Pay Compare With Nearby Jobs?

Employers often file similar work under different occupation codes, so look at the neighbors before you decide what to aim for.

Our AI engineer salary page covers computer and information research scientists and software developers, the groups BLS uses for AI building work. The software developer median there is $135,980, a little under the $139,500 median here.

The machine learning engineer salary page covers data scientists, who sit closer to modeling than to pipelines. Reading the three pages together shows a fairly tight band, so title and location may matter more than the choice between neighboring jobs.

If you are choosing among them, ask which work you want to do all day. Pay differences between these jobs are smaller than the difference between living in a high-paying state and a low-paying one.

What Should You Do With These Numbers?

Find your state in the lists above and note the median. Then look at five postings for data engineers near you and see how their pay ranges compare.

Talk to people in the job if you can. Ask what they were hired as, what degree they hold and how their pay compares with the figures here. A federal survey cannot tell you what a title pays at one company, but those conversations can.