Database Administrator Salary

What Is a Database Administrator Salary?

Database administrators keep an organization’s data stored, organized, secure and available. The median salary for that work is $104,620 a year, or $50.30 an hour, according to the OEWS survey, May 2025 release, at bls.gov/oes. The BLS code is 15-1242, Database Administrators.

It is a smaller occupation than most in IT, with about 69,990 workers. Banks, insurers, hospitals, government agencies, software companies and retailers employ most of them, because those are the organizations with large amounts of critical data. A small company often has no database administrator at all and relies on a general systems administrator or a managed service.

Because the group is small and concentrated, the median reflects what those large employers pay. That is part of why database administrator pay is competitive with several occupations that have far more people in them.

Database Administrator Salary Range

The 10th percentile is $60,230, the median is $104,620 and the 90th percentile is $163,320. A spread that large tells you that the job title covers very different levels of responsibility.

Near the bottom you find junior administrators who run scheduled jobs, apply patches and respond to alerts under supervision. Near the top you find senior administrators and architects who design database systems for high-volume applications, plan for disaster recovery, and own the performance of systems where a slow query costs real money every minute.

An administrator who has handled a database failure during a busy period, and who has a tested recovery plan, has the kind of experience that moves into the upper range.

What Moves Database Administrator Pay

The platform and the stakes. Administrators of large relational databases at banks, insurers and hospitals earn more than those who look after a departmental database at a small company. The cost of failure sets the pay.

Performance and recovery skills. Tuning slow queries, designing indexes and building backup and recovery plans are the skills employers value most. They are also the hardest to fake.

Cloud experience. Managed database services now handle much of the routine work. Administrators who understand how to design, secure and tune databases on major cloud platforms stay in demand, because the questions move from running servers to designing data layers.

Security. Data protection requirements for health, financial and personal information have made database security a major part of the job. Administrators who can implement access controls, encryption and auditing add real value, and this overlaps with the information security analyst salary path.

Certifications. Vendor credentials for the main database platforms are common on job postings. They help with the first interview, and they matter most if you want to work with a specific product that your target employers use.

Database Administrator Salary Outlook

BLS projects employment for database administrators to change by -0.1% between 2025 and 2035. That is essentially flat. The occupation is not projected to grow or shrink in any meaningful way, and BLS expects about 3,300 openings a year, mostly from replacement of workers who leave.

The cloud explains much of the flat outlook. Providers run databases as managed services, which reduces the routine work of installing, patching and backing up. At the same time, the amount of data keeps growing and the need to design it well and protect it does not go away. The work moves from operation toward architecture, performance and governance.

For a database administrator, that means the career rewards adaptation. Those who add cloud, automation and security skills keep earning near the top of the range. For full tables, see the BLS Employment Projections.

The Degree Behind a Database Administrator Salary

BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry education for database administrators. The usual majors are information technology, information systems and computer science. Because the job requires a mix of data, systems and security knowledge, an IT or information systems degree is a good fit.

Many database administrators do not start in the role. They begin as developers, systems administrators or analysts, work with databases along the way and move over. If you are planning that route, a bachelor’s in information technology covers the foundations. Compare options in our ranking of the best online IT bachelor’s degrees, and look for programs with database courses and a capstone project.

The cost of a program matters here, since the pay range supports the investment but the occupation is not growing quickly. Choose a program you can pay for without heavy borrowing.

Database Administrator Salary Compared with Related Jobs

Database administrators earn a median of $104,620. Computer systems analysts earn $105,850, a little more, with much faster projected growth. Information security analysts earn $129,180, which is the highest of the three. Network and computer systems administrators earn $99,130, and are projected to shrink.

That puts database administration in a strong pay position with a flat outlook. For someone who likes data work, the sensible long-term plan is to build skills that overlap with growing occupations: security, data architecture and cloud design.

How to Raise Your Database Administrator Salary

Learn the platform your target employers use, and learn it deeply enough to tune it. Build a recovery plan and test it, then write down the result. Take on data security responsibilities, such as access reviews and encryption, because that is where pay and demand are growing.

Learn SQL well beyond the basics, and learn at least one scripting language so you can automate routine work. Then move toward design. Administrators who help decide how data is structured, not only how it is kept running, are the ones who reach the top of the range.

If you want a view of the duties, read the database administrator career guide.

What Database Administrators Do Day to Day

The salary pays for work that is mostly invisible when it goes well. A database administrator watches the health of the databases that applications depend on. That means checking storage, monitoring slow queries, running and verifying backups, applying patches in a maintenance window and granting or revoking access when people change roles.

A good week is quiet. A bad week involves a corrupted table, a runaway query that slows an entire application, or a restore that has to happen before the morning. Administrators carry on-call duty at many employers, and the pay for the role partly reflects that.

The work also includes talking to developers. They write code that uses the database, and they often do not know why a query that works on a test system crawls in production. An administrator who can explain the cause and suggest a fix becomes the person developers seek out. That reputation, more than a certification, is what moves someone from the median toward the $163,320 top of the range.

Reading a Database Administrator Salary Offer

Use the range to read an offer. A figure near $60,230 fits a junior role with close supervision. A figure near the $104,620 median fits an administrator who is trusted to run production databases alone. A figure near $163,320 fits a senior administrator or architect with responsibility for design, performance and recovery of systems that the business depends on.

Ask which database platforms you will run, how large the systems are, whether there is on-call duty, and whether the role includes design or only upkeep. A role that includes cloud database work and security tends to have more room to grow in pay than one limited to routine maintenance of older systems, even if the starting numbers look similar.

Is a Database Administrator Salary Worth the Training?

Weigh the pay against the time and cost of getting there. The median of $104,620 is solid, and the 90th percentile of $163,320 is high. The entry route is a bachelor’s degree plus, for most people, a few years in a related job before database work becomes your main role. That is a long runway, and the occupation is not growing.

The honest case for it is the one many administrators make for themselves. The pay is good, the work is steady, the skills transfer to security, data engineering and cloud architecture, and an administrator who keeps learning is rarely out of work. The honest case against it is that routine administration is the part cloud providers are taking over, so a career built only on maintenance is the riskiest version.

If you like working with data and you are willing to keep moving toward design and security, the numbers support the choice. If you want the fastest growth in the field, the security occupation is a stronger bet on the same set of skills.

Database Administrator Salary by State

Utah pays database administrators the most, with a median of $135,750, 30% above the $104,620 national figure. Puerto Rico is the lowest of the 52 places BLS reports, at $51,880. Utah stays first after adjusting for local prices, at $137,310 in buying power.

The 10 highest of 52. These figures are for database administrators. The adjusted column divides the median by the BEA 2024 regional price parity for the state: an estimate of buying power, not what an employer pays.

Database Administrator Salary in Major Metros

Of the 49 metro areas in our city guides with a published figure, San Jose has the highest median at $138,620, and Buffalo has the lowest at $76,820. A metro median covers the whole area, suburbs included, so it can differ from pay in the city itself.

The 10 highest of 49. These figures are for database administrators, BLS May 2025.

IT Salaries Side by Side

Database Administrators rank 5 of 9 by median pay among the IT occupations we cover. The low and high ends show how much overlap there is: a strong earner in a lower-paid job can out-earn a new hire in a higher-paid one.

Sorted by median pay. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, and Employment Projections, 2025-35.