Data Architect jobs: skills and pay (October 2026)
397 open Data Architect postings (3.0% of data & AI postings) as of October 18, 2026. Median published US pay: $199K (n=134).
Data Architect pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Senior | $192K | 10 |
| Staff / lead | — | 8 |
| Principal | $227K | 25 |
| Manager | — | 2 |
| Director+ | — | 2 |
| Level not stated | $186K | 87 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
The weekly Data Skills Index
What moved this week: rising and falling skills, pay by skill and level, new vs closed data & AI roles. Free, one email a week.
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Top skills in Data Architect postings
Share of Data Architect postings that mention each skill.
| # | Skill | Share of Data Architect postings | Postings | Companies | Week over week | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python language | 54.4% | 216 | 2,580 | needs more history | |
| 2 | APIs / REST infra | 48.4% | 192 | 1,554 | needs more history | |
| 3 | AI agents genai | 45.3% | 180 | 1,583 | needs more history | |
| 4 | LLMs genai | 42.1% | 167 | 1,791 | needs more history | |
| 5 | AWS cloud | 42.1% | 167 | 1,452 | needs more history | |
| 6 | Azure cloud | 41.1% | 163 | 809 | needs more history | |
| 7 | SQL language | 35.5% | 141 | 1,953 | needs more history | |
| 8 | Data modeling concept | 32.2% | 128 | 925 | needs more history | |
| 9 | Google Cloud cloud | 30.2% | 120 | 931 | needs more history | |
| 10 | Data security governance | 30.0% | 119 | 587 | needs more history | |
| 11 | Data governance governance | 30.0% | 119 | 599 | needs more history | |
| 12 | Data catalog & lineage governance | 27.0% | 107 | 733 | needs more history | |
| 13 | Snowflake platform | 26.7% | 106 | 882 | needs more history | |
| 14 | RAG genai | 26.4% | 105 | 898 | needs more history | |
| 15 | Databricks platform | 26.2% | 104 | 601 | needs more history | |
| 16 | ETL / ELT concept | 23.7% | 94 | 823 | needs more history | |
| 17 | Data quality governance | 23.7% | 94 | 1,200 | needs more history | |
| 18 | Data warehousing concept | 22.9% | 91 | 781 | needs more history | |
| 19 | Generative AI genai | 22.9% | 91 | 720 | needs more history | |
| 20 | Lakehouse concept | 22.4% | 89 | 363 | needs more history | |
| 21 | CI/CD infra | 21.4% | 85 | 1,178 | needs more history | |
| 22 | Streaming / real-time concept | 20.2% | 80 | 1,077 | needs more history | |
| 23 | MLOps mlops | 17.9% | 71 | 851 | needs more history | |
| 24 | Apache Spark processing | 17.1% | 68 | 699 | needs more history | |
| 25 | Vector databases genai | 16.6% | 66 | 586 | needs more history |