Computer Network Architects Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Computer Network Architects worker at that point in the distribution, so $164,440 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 177,010 Computer Network Architects jobs in May 2024, which is 0.11% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Colorado, where the location quotient is 3.83, meaning the occupation holds 3.83 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 19,800 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 27.5% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $198,030, which is 2.5 times the $79,520 at the 10th, a difference of $118,510 annually. Because the mean wage ($135,890) sits above the median ($130,390), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Washington posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $155,890, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Computer Network Architects stands number 177 by employment and number 54 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, the group median wage is $103,790 across 21 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 26% more than its group median, and it supplies 3.4% of the group's 5,192,870 jobs. In 16 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $130,390, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 10,600 jobs, 6.0% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Oklahoma City, OK posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $113,980 a year, against $186,390 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $130,390 a year is $10,866 a month gross, $5,015 every two weeks, $2,508 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($102,120) to the 75th ($164,440) is worth $62,320 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $10,866 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $143,429 would sit between the median ($130,390) and the 75th percentile ($164,440), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $102,120, is $28,270 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Computer and Mathematical Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Information Security Analysts, Computer Network Support Specialists, Web and Digital Interface Designers, Computer Programmers, Operations Research Analysts, Web Developers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.