Data Engineer Salary Guide (2026)
Data engineering remains one of the tightest technical hiring markets in 2026, driven by the volume of infrastructure work required to support AI and analytics products at scale. Companies are competing hard for engineers who can operate modern data stacks -- streaming pipelines, lakehouse architectures, and orchestration tooling -- rather than legacy batch-ETL specialists.
Pay has grown fastest for data engineers who can also support machine learning infrastructure, since many companies are stretching data engineering teams to cover feature stores and model-serving pipelines that would previously have sat with a separate ML platform team. Generalist ETL experience alone is no longer enough to clear senior-level bars at well-funded companies.
| Level | National | San Francisco | New York | Austin | Remote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry level | $80,000 – $100,000 | $97,500 – $122,000 | $94,500 – $118,000 | $76,000 – $95,000 | $80,000 – $100,000 |
| Mid level | $105,000 – $135,000 | $128,000 – $164,500 | $124,000 – $159,500 | $100,000 – $128,000 | $105,000 – $135,000 |
| Senior | $140,000 – $175,000 | $171,000 – $213,500 | $165,000 – $206,500 | $133,000 – $166,000 | $140,000 – $175,000 |
| Lead / Staff | $170,000 – $215,000 | $207,500 – $262,500 | $200,500 – $253,500 | $161,500 – $204,000 | $170,000 – $215,000 |
| Director | $205,000 – $260,000 | $250,000 – $317,000 | $242,000 – $307,000 | $195,000 – $247,000 | $205,000 – $260,000 |
What moves the number
- Modern stack experience -- fluency in streaming pipelines, lakehouse architectures, and orchestration tools (Airflow, dbt, Kafka) commands a clear premium over legacy batch-ETL experience.
- ML infrastructure overlap -- data engineers who can support feature stores and model-serving pipelines are increasingly paid closer to ML platform engineers.
- Scale of systems owned -- engineers responsible for pipelines processing terabyte-plus daily volumes earn more than those on smaller-scale internal reporting systems.
- Company data maturity -- companies building a data platform from scratch pay a premium for engineers who've done greenfield builds before, versus those maintaining existing systems.
Ready to test the market? Browse open Data Engineer roles — salary is shown on every posting that discloses it.