Cloud Engineer salary: $230K median
From 645 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
$230Kmedian advertised salary
$195K – $275Kmiddle half of roles
$241Kaverage advertised salary
645roles counted
Cloud Engineer salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $252K, 19% more than senior roles ($212K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $212K | $190K–$232K | 185 |
| Lead and above | $252K | $228K–$288K | 173 |
| No level in title | $228K | $178K–$308K | 284 |
Cloud Engineer salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $250K | 367 |
| 🇺🇸California | $246K | 415 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $230K | 623 |
| 🇺🇸Denver | $218K | 16 |
| 🇺🇸Boston | $216K | 16 |
| 🇺🇸New York | $215K | 105 |
| 🇺🇸Washington, DC | $215K | 22 |
| 🇺🇸Seattle | $210K | 85 |
| 🇺🇸Texas | $187K | 15 |
| 🇺🇸Los Angeles | $157K | 16 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $362K | 26 |
| OpenAI | $356K | 52 |
| Mercor | $330K | 4 |
| Perplexity | $312K | 5 |
| Sierra | $310K | 5 |
| Sentry | $310K | 3 |
| Lambda | $303K | 11 |
| Replit | $303K | 4 |
| Suno | $296K | 3 |
| Harvey | $286K | 14 |
| $279K | 8 | |
| Roblox | $279K | 18 |
| Figma | $264K | 5 |
| Render | $260K | 3 |
| Waymo | $257K | 11 |
| xAI | $255K | 7 |
| EarnIn | $254K | 3 |
| Cohere | $250K | 6 |
| True Anomaly | $250K | 10 |
| Hex | $250K | 3 |
| Amplitude | $248K | 3 |
| Baseten | $248K | 5 |
| OKX | $246K | 6 |
| Together AI | $245K | 9 |
| SambaNova | $241K | 6 |
Highest-paying open Cloud Engineer roles
All cloud engineer jobs- Pre-training Data Infrastructure EngineerAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA$500K - $850KRustPythonMachine Learning
- Engineering Manager, Inference InfrastructureAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA$405K - $625KMachine LearningLLMKubernetes
- Principal Security Engineer, Infrastructure SecurityOpenAI · 🇺🇸US - Remote$401K - $510KRemoteLeadAzureCI/CDKubernetes
- Principal Software Engineer, Infrastructure SecurityOpenAI · 🇺🇸US - Remote$401K - $510KRemoteLeadGCPAzureCI/CD
- Infrastructure Software EngineerMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$160K - $500KGoPythonPostgreSQL
- Software Engineer - Data InfrastructureMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$160K - $500KPythonSQLKafka
- Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, GPU Cluster Infrastructure)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$250K - $485KRustGoC++
- Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure StorageLambda · 🇺🇸San Francisco Office (Fremont St)$314K - $465KLeadRustC++Machine Learning
- Staff Software Engineer - Managed KubernetesLambda · 🇺🇸San Francisco Office (Fremont St)$314K - $465KLeadPythonMachine LearningLinux
- Research Engineer, InfrastructureHarvey · 🇺🇸New York$230K - $450KPythonPyTorch
- Research Engineer, InfrastructureHarvey · 🇺🇸San Francisco$230K - $450KPythonPyTorch
- Principal Engineer, Indexing & Retrieval InfrastructurePinterest · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA, US; Palo Alto, CA, US; Seattle, WA,US$285K - $450KLead
- Software Engineer, Evaluation InfrastructurexAI · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$180K - $440KRustPythonC++
- Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Product ML InfrastructurePinterest · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA, US; San Francisco, CA, US$245K - $429KLeadPythonJavaC++
- Director of Engineering, Cloud PlatformAttentive · 🇺🇸New York, NY (Hybrid)$286K - $428KLeadSnowflakeAWS
- Director of Platform EngineeringPatreon · 🇺🇸San Francisco$340K - $425KLeadGCPAWS
- Security Lead, Product and Infrastructure (InfoSec)River AI Inc. · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$200K - $420KLead
- Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Training Infrastructure)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$220K - $405KRustGoPython
- Principal Software Engineer, InfrastructureReddit · 🇺🇸Remote - United States$287K - $401KRemoteLeadRustGoPython
- Infrastructure Engineer, Applied AIParadigm · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA$250K - $400KKubernetesAI
Questions about Cloud Engineer pay
- What is the average Cloud Engineer salary?
- $241K a year on average and $230K at the median, across 645 open Cloud Engineer postings at tech companies that state pay (November 2026). The median is the better guide: a few very high offers pull the average up.
- What is the typical range?
- The middle half of the postings offer $195K to $275K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest Cloud Engineer pay?
- Anthropic ($362K), OpenAI ($356K), Mercor ($330K), by the median of their open postings that state pay (three postings or more).
- Where do these figures come from?
- From the pay ranges employers print in their own job postings, read from their careers pages every hour. The midpoint of each range is counted. These are advertised ranges for open roles, mostly in the United States and in US dollars, not what people are actually paid.
Writing about this? A sentence you can quote
The median advertised salary for Cloud Engineer roles at tech companies is $230K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $195K to $275K. Counted from 645 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Hiring Right Now, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/cloud-engineer/
Free to use with the link.