DNS salary: $194K median
The median advertised DNS salary is $194K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $148K to $245K: counted from 449 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range: about $94 an hour or $16,208 a month. A tenth of the postings offer $314K or more. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
Check an offer against these figuresAll DNS jobs
$194Kmedian advertised salary
$148K – $245Kmiddle half of roles
$204Kaverage advertised salary
449roles counted
DNS salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $232K, 10% more than senior roles ($211K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $211K | $170K–$262K | 196 |
| Lead and above | $232K | $195K–$290K | 83 |
| No level in the title | $161K | $128K–$194K | 166 |
DNS salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $206K | 73 |
| 🇺🇸California | $194K | 117 |
| 🇺🇸Seattle, WA | $178K | 21 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $172K | 269 |
| 🇺🇸New York, NY | $170K | 41 |
| 🇺🇸Los Angeles, CA | $151K | 18 |
| 🇺🇸Texas | $146K | 16 |
Skills that pay more for DNS roles
| Skill | Median with it | Above the median | Postings |
|---|---|---|---|
| TypeScript | $230K | +$36K | 45 |
| Rust | $230K | +$36K | 56 |
| LLM | $230K | +$36K | 49 |
| Zero trust | $221K | +$26K | 44 |
| Networking protocols | $219K | +$24K | 50 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | $356K | 5 |
| Twenty | $324K | 3 |
| Roblox | $294K | 5 |
| Lambda | $285K | 5 |
| Render | $260K | 3 |
| True Anomaly | $231K | 6 |
| Cloudflare | $230K | 161 |
| Censys | $216K | 3 |
| CoreWeave | $212K | 6 |
| Okta | $208K | 4 |
| Muon Space | $206K | 4 |
| Box | $198K | 4 |
| MongoDB | $187K | 5 |
| SpaceX | $185K | 21 |
| Tailscale | $179K | 6 |
| SambaNova | $175K | 3 |
| Crusoe | $172K | 3 |
| Anduril Industries | $168K | 19 |
| Applied | $142K | 3 |
| Charles River Associates | $140K | 3 |
| CCC Intelligent Solutions | $138K | 3 |
| DomainTools | $138K | 3 |
| Hermeus | $128K | 3 |
| ExtraHop | $128K | 3 |
| Rocket Lab | $115K | 5 |
Highest-paying open DNS roles
All DNS jobs- Sr. Director, Developer GTMCloudflare · Hybrid$434K - $597KHybridLead and aboveSQLDNSWorkforce planning
- Named Sales Director, East (Northern VA/DC Metro)Cloudflare · Hybrid$415K - $571KHybridLead and aboveDNSCloud securityPipeline management
- Software Engineer, Compute FoundationsOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$255K - $490KLinuxKubernetesDNS
- Senior/Staff DevOps EngineerTwenty · 🇺🇸New York, NY$192K - $455KLead and abovePythonPostgreSQLTerraform
- Senior/Staff DevOps EngineerTwenty · 🇺🇸Arlington, VA$192K - $455KLead and abovePythonPostgreSQLTerraform
- Product Engineer, CyberOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$255K - $445KHybridGoGCPAzure
- Hardware Lab ManagerAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY$320K - $405KLinuxNetwork engineeringDNS
- Member of Technical Staff (Site Reliability Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$220K - $405KRustGoPython
- Senior Software Engineer, Cloud InfrastructureDecagon · 🇺🇸San Francisco$200K - $400KSeniorTerraformGCPAzure
- Senior Software Engineer - Fleet EngineeringLambda · 🇺🇸San Francisco Office (Fremont St)$230K - $395KHybridSeniorGoPythonMachine Learning
- Deployed Infrastructure EngineerSierra · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA$230K - $390KGoTerraformLLM
- Principal Network Security EngineerRoblox · 🇺🇸San Mateo, CA, United States$326K - $385KLead and aboveGoC++Load balancing
- Senior Software Development EngineerLambda · Bellevue Office$284K - $378KHybridSeniorTerraformMachine LearningLinux
- Infrastructure LeadIntelligence Security Laboratories · 🇺🇸Washington, D.C.$205K - $375KHybridLead and aboveDockerLinuxCI/CD
- Staff Software Engineer, EdgePinterest · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA, US; Remote, US$177K - $365KRemoteLead and aboveGoPythonC++
- Principal Software Engineer, CDN (Starlink)SpaceX · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$270K - $355KLead and aboveRustC++Load balancing
- Staff Software Engineer, Enterprise PlatformReplit · 🇺🇸Foster City, CA$240K - $350KHybridLead and aboveGoPythonTypeScript
- Principal Network EngineerRoblox · 🇺🇸San Mateo, CA, United States$295K - $345KLead and aboveGoPythonC++
- Principal Software Engineer, CDN (Starlink)SpaceX · 🇺🇸Redmond, WA$260K - $345KLead and aboveRustC++Load balancing
- Principal Mission Cloud EngineerTrue Anomaly · 🇺🇸Denver, CO; Long Beach, CA$230K - $340KLead and aboveAzureCI/CDAWS
Questions about DNS pay
- What is the average DNS salary?
- $204K a year on average and $194K at the median, across 449 open DNS postings at 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 $148K to $245K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest DNS pay?
- OpenAI ($356K), Twenty ($324K), Roblox ($294K), by the median of their open postings that state pay (three postings or more).
- Is a dns a high-paying job?
- The median DNS posting advertises $194K a year, more than the median of all 55,899 job postings with pay on Jobs Every Hour ($174K). That is 12% above the middle of the market.
- How much can you earn as a dns?
- A tenth of the postings offer $314K a year or more; the highest open DNS role advertises up to $597K. Pay rises with level: see the table by level.
- What is the DNS salary per hour and per month?
- The median of $194K a year is about $94 an hour (2,080 working hours) and $16,208 a month before tax. The middle half of postings: $71 to $118 an hour.
- Which skills pay more for DNS roles?
- Postings that ask for TypeScript (+$36K, 45 postings), Rust (+$36K, 56 postings), LLM (+$36K, 49 postings) advertise more than the $194K median of all DNS postings with pay.
- 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 DNS roles at companies is $194K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $148K to $245K. Counted from 449 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Jobs Every Hour, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/dns/
Free to use with the link.