Database Architects Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Database Architects ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $107,900. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 64,770 people in May 2024, 0.04% of every job BLS counted. Virginia is the largest employer at 7,140 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 29.8% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Virginia, whose location quotient of 4.18 says this work is 4.18 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $209,990, which is 2.6 times the $81,630 at the 10th, a difference of $128,360 annually. Because the mean wage ($142,620) sits above the median ($135,980), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Massachusetts posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $161,160, and Virginia the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Database Architects stands number 341 by employment and number 48 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 31% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.2% of the group's 5,192,870 jobs. In 15 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $135,980, 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

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 6,710 jobs, 10.4% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, St. Louis, MO-IL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $118,470 a year, against $183,530 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $135,980 works out to $11,332 a month before taxes, $5,230 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,615 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($107,900) to the 75th ($169,480) is worth $61,580 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $149,578 would sit between the median ($135,980) and the 75th percentile ($169,480), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $107,900, is $28,080 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: Database Administrators, Computer and Information Research Scientists, Statisticians, Actuaries, Mathematical Science Occupations, All Other, Mathematicians. The full directory is on the Careers hub.