Data engineer salary in the US
Employers across the US offered data engineers a median of $123,974 a year on approved H-1B applications. That is 14.5% below offers to all software engineers.
Median offer
$123,974
All software engineer offers: $144,928
The middle half
$102,211 – $150,758
25th to 75th percentile
H-1B applications
8,762
From 3,267 employers
Open data engineer jobs
1,020
In the US, from over 600 companies
Pay range
The top 10% of data engineer offers across the US were above $181,175 a year. The bottom 10% were below $90,000.
10th percentile $90,000, 25th $102,211, 75th $150,758, 90th $181,175.
10th percentile $82,460, 25th $105,210, 75th $171,980, 90th $214,670.
Line: 10th to 90th percentile. Box: the middle half (25th to 75th). Dark mark: the median. Data engineers: salaries offered on H-1B applications. All software engineers: salaries paid, from the BLS.
Data engineer offers by city
Median salary offered to data engineers on approved H-1B applications in each metro area with at least 30 of them.
| City | Applications | Median offer |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | 461 | $187,574 |
| San Jose, CA | 341 | $174,304 |
| Seattle, WA | 630 | $156,451 |
| New York, NY | 649 | $135,000 |
| Los Angeles, CA | 138 | $135,000 |
| Salt Lake City, UT | 44 | $134,301 |
| Boston, MA | 209 | $131,868 |
| San Diego, CA | 54 | $130,915 |
| Austin, TX | 349 | $130,200 |
| Washington, DC | 248 | $126,090 |
| Charlotte, NC | 287 | $125,694 |
| Chicago, IL | 337 | $120,000 |
| Miami, FL | 53 | $120,000 |
| Baltimore, MD | 50 | $119,507 |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 45 | $117,810 |
| Denver, CO | 55 | $115,357 |
| Atlanta, GA | 354 | $114,754 |
| Raleigh, NC | 121 | $114,000 |
| Dallas, TX | 1,503 | $112,923 |
| Houston, TX | 177 | $111,218 |
| St. Louis, MO | 85 | $111,072 |
| Philadelphia, PA | 208 | $109,845 |
Data engineers and other engineering jobs in the US
Median salary offered on approved H-1B applications across the US, for every engineering job type with at least 30 applications.
| Job | Applications | Median offer |
|---|---|---|
| Machine learning engineers | 2,801 | $178,350 |
| Engineering managers | 9,838 | $162,951 |
| Forward deployed engineers | 280 | $160,000 |
| Infrastructure engineers | 895 | $159,594 |
| Site reliability engineers | 1,122 | $146,758 |
| All software engineers | 118,728 | $144,928 |
| AI engineers | 1,688 | $141,866 |
| Platform engineers | 411 | $140,046 |
| Android engineers | 411 | $135,699 |
| iOS engineers | 351 | $134,550 |
| Frontend engineers | 945 | $130,000 |
| Cloud engineers | 1,357 | $129,055 |
| Data engineers | 8,762 | $123,974 |
| Support engineers | 1,577 | $117,749 |
| DevOps engineers | 2,192 | $115,731 |
All software engineers: every application filed under the BLS software developer job code, whatever its title. Backend and full-stack engineers: left out, since a plain "Software Engineer" title counts as both.
Experience level of these offers
From October 2025 to June 2026, the Department of Labor approved 8,762 H-1B applications for data engineers across the US, from 3,267 employers. Level II offers were the most common.
Applications
8,762
Employers
3,267
Most experienced (Level IV)
15.4%
Applications by wage level
- Level I (entry): 1,180
- Level II: 3,928
- Level III: 1,684
- Level IV (most experienced): 1,350
- Not stated: 620
These are salaries offered on approved applications, not salaries paid. Each application lists only its main work site.
1,020 open data engineer jobs in the US right now
From over 600 companies. 96 were posted in the past week.
Data engineer salaries by city: San Francisco, New York, San Jose, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago
What counts as a data engineer
The BLS has no data engineer category, so these figures come from job titles. An H-1B application or a job on hiredaemon counts as a data engineer job when its title names data engineering, such as "Data Engineer", "Analytics Engineer" or "ETL Developer". Data scientists and data analysts are not counted.
Sources and notes
- Data engineer offers: US Department of Labor, H-1B application data, October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. Approved H-1B applications whose job title names data engineering and whose work site is in the US.
- Software engineer pay: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (published May 15, 2026), whole US.
- Open jobs: counted on hiredaemon as this page loads.