What is the average Observability Engineer salary?

$213K a year on average and $208K at the median, across 89 open Observability Engineer 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 $175K to $245K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.

Which companies advertise the highest Observability Engineer pay?

Databricks ($228K), Nscale ($225K), Datadog ($216K), by the median of their open postings that state pay (three postings or more).

Is an observability engineer a high-paying job?

The median Observability Engineer posting advertises $208K a year, more than the median of all 55,899 job postings with pay on Jobs Every Hour ($174K). That is 20% above the middle of the market.

How much can you earn as an observability engineer?

A tenth of the postings offer $309K a year or more; the highest open Observability Engineer role advertises up to $485K. Pay rises with level: see the table by level.

What is the Observability Engineer salary per hour and per month?

The median of $208K a year is about $100 an hour (2,080 working hours) and $17,375 a month before tax. The middle half of postings: $84 to $118 an hour.

Which skills pay more for Observability Engineer roles?

Postings that ask for Jaeger (+$50K, 13 postings), Time series (+$39K, 10 postings), ClickHouse (+$24K, 20 postings) advertise more than the $208K median of all Observability Engineer 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.

Observability Engineer Salary: $213K Average, $208K Median

Observability Engineer salary by level

Lead roles advertise a median of $252K, 23% more than senior roles ($205K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.

Level	Median salary	Middle half	Roles
Senior	$205K	$175K–$215K	38
Lead and above	$252K	$221K–$290K	22
No level in the title	$182K	$155K–$238K	29

Observability Engineer salary by location

Name	Median salary	Roles counted
🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area	$212K	29
🇺🇸California	$212K	31
🇺🇸United States	$209K	82

Skills that pay more for Observability Engineer roles

Skill	Median with it	Above the median	Postings
Jaeger	$258K	+$50K	13
Time series	$248K	+$39K	10
ClickHouse	$232K	+$24K	20
Kafka	$223K	+$14K	12
OpenTelemetry	$221K	+$12K	35

Top-paying companies

Name	Median salary	Roles counted
Databricks	$228K	4
Nscale	$225K	3
Datadog	$216K	3
CoreWeave	$212K	3
Grafana Labs	$208K	3
LangChain	$208K	10
Snowflake	$200K	6
SpaceX	$146K	8
Netboxlabs	$140K	4

Highest-paying open Observability Engineer roles

All observability engineer jobs

Staff+ Software Engineer, ObservabilityAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA$320K - $485KLead and aboveLLMBigQueryClickHouse8mo
Software Engineer, ObservabilityOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$266K - $445KKubernetesAWSPrometheus8mo
Staff Product Manager - ObservabilityLambda · Bellevue Office$291K - $430KHybridLead and aboveMachine LearningPyTorchDatadog4w
Principal Software Engineer - ObservabilitySnowflake · 🇺🇸US-CA-Menlo Park$264K - $380KLead and aboveGoJavaC++9d
Director of Product Management, ObservabilityElastic · 🇺🇸United States$200K - $379KLead and abovePrometheusElasticsearchOpenTelemetry3w
Manager, Software Engineering - AI ObservabilityFigma · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA • New York, NY • United States$258K - $376KMachine LearningLLMAI8mo
Director, Observability Architects (Americas) | USA | RemoteGrafana Labs · 🇺🇸United States (Remote)$310K - $370KRemoteLead and aboveObservability3d
Senior Engineering Manager, Observability EngineeringTemporal · 🇺🇸Seattle, Washington$220K - $362KRemoteSeniorGCPAzureLLM3w
Engineering Manager, Observability InfrastructureRoblox · 🇺🇸San Mateo, CA, United States$295K - $345KCI/CDObservabilityJaeger5mo
Senior Product Manager - Data ObservabilitySnowflake · 🇺🇸US-WA-Bellevue$236K - $339KSeniordbt6mo
Facilities Telemetry Platform, Technical LeadFluidstack · 🇺🇸Austin, TX$284K - $334KLead and aboveKafkaClickHouse4mo
Sr. Software Engineer, ObservabilityxAI · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$180K - $330KSeniorRustGoScala15mo
Software Engineer - ObservabilityBaseten · 🇺🇸San Francisco$165K - $330KHybridRustPythonMachine Learning3mo
Software Engineer, Security ObservabilityOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$293K - $325KGoPythonTerraform7mo
Sr. Staff Software Engineer — Observability, Insights & GovernanceDatabricks · 🇺🇸Mountain View, California; San Francisco, California$229K - $314KLead and aboveSQLLLMData governance5mo
Research Manager - Post-Training for Observability Native ModelsDatadog · 🇺🇸New York, New York, USA$244K - $305KMachine Learning4w
Staff Software Engineer , ObservabilityReddit · 🇺🇸Remote - United States$217K - $304KRemoteLead and aboveKubernetesPrometheusGrafana3mo
Senior Engineering Manager, ObservabilityCloudflare · Hybrid$220K - $303KHybridSeniorGrafanaElasticsearchClickHouse2mo
Staff Product Manager - Agent & Systems ObservabilityRender · 🇺🇸Remote: United States$218K - $300KRemoteLead and aboveLLMOpenTelemetryAI agents3mo
Principal Observability Platform EngineerNscale · 🇺🇸US$190K - $300KLead and aboveGoPythonTerraform5w

Questions about Observability Engineer pay

What is the average Observability Engineer salary?: $213K a year on average and $208K at the median, across 89 open Observability Engineer 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 $175K to $245K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
Which companies advertise the highest Observability Engineer pay?: Databricks ($228K), Nscale ($225K), Datadog ($216K), by the median of their open postings that state pay (three postings or more).
Is an observability engineer a high-paying job?: The median Observability Engineer posting advertises $208K a year, more than the median of all 55,899 job postings with pay on Jobs Every Hour ($174K). That is 20% above the middle of the market.
How much can you earn as an observability engineer?: A tenth of the postings offer $309K a year or more; the highest open Observability Engineer role advertises up to $485K. Pay rises with level: see the table by level.
What is the Observability Engineer salary per hour and per month?: The median of $208K a year is about $100 an hour (2,080 working hours) and $17,375 a month before tax. The middle half of postings: $84 to $118 an hour.
Which skills pay more for Observability Engineer roles?: Postings that ask for Jaeger (+$50K, 13 postings), Time series (+$39K, 10 postings), ClickHouse (+$24K, 20 postings) advertise more than the $208K median of all Observability Engineer 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.

Observability Engineer salary: $208K median