Data Engineer jobs: skills and pay (October 2026)
1,778 open Data Engineer postings (13.5% of data & AI postings) as of October 18, 2026. Median published US pay: $172K (n=516).
Data Engineer pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Intern | — | 4 |
| Entry / junior | — | 6 |
| Mid (II) | $140K | 12 |
| Senior | $178K | 178 |
| Staff / lead | $195K | 80 |
| Principal | $210K | 11 |
| Manager | — | 4 |
| Director+ | — | 4 |
| Level not stated | $155K | 217 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
The weekly Data Skills Index
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Top skills in Data Engineer postings
Share of Data Engineer postings that mention each skill.
| # | Skill | Share of Data Engineer postings | Postings | Companies | Week over week | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python language | 80.8% | 1,437 | 2,580 | needs more history | |
| 2 | SQL language | 74.5% | 1,325 | 1,953 | needs more history | |
| 3 | AWS cloud | 48.9% | 870 | 1,452 | needs more history | |
| 4 | Data quality governance | 47.9% | 852 | 1,200 | needs more history | |
| 5 | ETL / ELT concept | 43.7% | 777 | 823 | needs more history | |
| 6 | Apache Airflow orchestration | 39.8% | 707 | 805 | needs more history | |
| 7 | Data modeling concept | 38.8% | 689 | 925 | needs more history | |
| 8 | CI/CD infra | 38.0% | 675 | 1,178 | needs more history | |
| 9 | Apache Spark processing | 37.3% | 663 | 699 | needs more history | |
| 10 | Data warehousing concept | 35.0% | 622 | 781 | needs more history | |
| 11 | Snowflake platform | 34.5% | 614 | 882 | needs more history | |
| 12 | dbt transformation | 33.5% | 596 | 890 | needs more history | |
| 13 | APIs / REST infra | 32.2% | 572 | 1,554 | needs more history | |
| 14 | Streaming / real-time concept | 31.1% | 553 | 1,077 | needs more history | |
| 15 | Databricks platform | 30.9% | 549 | 601 | needs more history | |
| 16 | Apache Kafka streaming | 28.9% | 513 | 534 | needs more history | |
| 17 | Google Cloud cloud | 28.5% | 507 | 931 | needs more history | |
| 18 | Azure cloud | 27.5% | 489 | 809 | needs more history | |
| 19 | Git infra | 27.1% | 481 | 980 | needs more history | |
| 20 | Terraform / IaC infra | 26.3% | 468 | 732 | needs more history | |
| 21 | Data governance governance | 25.0% | 444 | 599 | needs more history | |
| 22 | Data catalog & lineage governance | 22.9% | 407 | 733 | needs more history | |
| 23 | Kubernetes infra | 20.4% | 362 | 891 | needs more history | |
| 24 | Data mesh / data products concept | 20.4% | 362 | 537 | needs more history | |
| 25 | BigQuery platform | 19.7% | 350 | 576 | needs more history |