Systems Administrator Salary

What Is a Systems Administrator Salary?

A systems administrator keeps servers, user accounts, storage, backups and the software running on them in working order. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports pay for that work together with network administration: $99,130 a year at the median, or $47.66 an hour.

One caution on where the number comes from. BLS does not publish a separate figure for systems administrators. It reports them together with network administrators as one occupation, 15-1244, Network and Computer Systems Administrators, so the figures here are shared with the network administrator salary page. That is one set of data, not two surveys that happen to agree. This page spends its time on the part the data cannot show: what systems administrators do and which skills decide where they land in the range.

The figures are from the OEWS survey, May 2025 release, at bls.gov/oes.

Systems Administrator Salary Range

The 10th percentile is $62,640. The median is $99,130. The 90th percentile is $155,050. Across about 314,340 workers, that spread is the biggest fact about the job, because it means two people with the same title can have very different careers.

The low end tends to be a one-person IT shop where you do everything, a school district, or a managed service provider that bills your hours cheaply. The high end tends to be a company where the systems are the product or where an outage stops revenue, such as a bank, a hospital system, a software company or a logistics operator. In those places a systems administrator is paid for what a failure would cost, not for the hours worked.

What a Systems Administrator Does for the Pay

If you have never worked as a sysadmin, the range makes more sense once you see the work. A typical week includes creating and removing accounts, applying patches, watching monitoring dashboards, restoring a file someone deleted, tuning a slow database server and answering the questions that other IT staff cannot. Once or twice a year there is a bad night: a failed disk array, a bad update, a ransomware scare.

The job pays for judgment under pressure. Anyone can follow a runbook when things are fine. The people near the top of the range are the ones who know what to do when the runbook stops helping, and who built the backups that made the bad night survivable.

The Skills That Move Systems Administrator Pay

Experience raises pay, but it raises pay faster when it is in the right skills. These are the ones that separate administrators near the median from those near the 90th percentile.

Automation. An administrator who writes scripts or uses configuration management tools can run hundreds of machines that a manual administrator would handle in dozens. Employers pay for that multiplier. PowerShell for Windows shops and shell scripting or Python for Linux are the common starting points.

Cloud platforms. More servers now live in a provider’s data center than in your closet. Administrators who can build and run systems in a major cloud, and who understand its identity, networking and cost controls, are replacing those who only know physical servers.

Identity and security. Controlling who can reach what, through directory services, single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, sits at the center of most breaches and most audits. Sysadmins who own identity are paid like it. This overlaps with the information security analyst salary path, which pays more still.

Backup and recovery. The skill nobody notices until the day it matters. Being able to show that a restore works, and how long it takes, is worth real money to a manager who has to answer to an auditor.

Certifications. A Linux, Microsoft or cloud certification gives you proof of skills early in your career. After that, your track record does the work. Entry credentials such as CompTIA A+ help at the start, but they do not move pay at the senior end.

Systems Administrator Salary by Industry and Employer

Industry changes pay for the same job. Financial firms, insurance companies, technology employers and large health systems generally pay more because downtime costs them more and they compete for the same staff. Schools, small nonprofits and local governments pay less in salary, and often make some of the gap up in benefits and stable hours.

The size of the employer matters in a different way. In a small company you do everything and learn fast but pay is capped. In a large company you may specialize in one platform, such as storage or email, and the specialization is what earns the higher pay. Contract and consulting work usually pays more per hour than salaried positions in exchange for less stability.

The Systems Administrator Salary Outlook

BLS projects employment for this occupation to change by -4.1% from 2025 to 2035. In plain terms, the number of systems administrator jobs is not expected to grow, and cloud services and automation are the reason. A company that once needed five administrators for its own servers may need two to manage the same workload in the cloud.

Even so, BLS expects about 13,400 openings a year, mostly from people leaving the occupation or retiring. That is a steady flow of jobs for people with current skills. The data points to a career where being average is risky and being adaptable pays. Check the BLS Employment Projections for the full tables.

The Degree Behind a Systems Administrator Salary

BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry education for this occupation. Plenty of working sysadmins got there by another route, and a sysadmin who can prove skill gets hired without one. But a degree makes the door wider, and it matters most later, when you want to move into engineering, architecture or management where employers more often require it.

An information technology bachelor’s covers operating systems, networking, security and scripting, which maps closely to the daily work. Compare options in our ranking of the best online IT bachelor’s degrees, and weigh what each program costs against the pay range above.

Systems Administrator Salary Compared with Neighboring Jobs

Most sysadmins start in support. Computer user support specialists, the BLS group that includes help desk technicians, earn a median of $61,860, so the step from support to administration is worth a real raise. Computer systems analysts, who study how a business uses its systems and recommend changes, earn a median of $105,850, and information security analysts earn $129,180.

Those numbers show where sysadmins tend to go when they want more pay. Some move toward security, where the median is higher and the occupation is projected to grow. Some move toward analysis and architecture, where the work is more about design and less about being paged. Others stay on the administration track and become the senior person everyone calls.

None of those moves is forced. A senior administrator at the 90th percentile, earning $155,050, can out-earn a median analyst. The choice is about what kind of work you want to spend your days on.

How to Move Up the Systems Administrator Salary Range

Take ownership of something measurable, such as the backup system, the patching process or the move of a service to the cloud, and be able to say what improved. Pick one automation tool and use it on real work. Get comfortable with the cloud platform your employer uses or the one that the best-paying employers in your area use.

And watch the market. Sysadmins who stay in one job for years sometimes find that new hires are paid more than they are. Looking at offers every couple of years keeps you honest about what your skills are worth.

For a view of the work itself, read the network administrator career guide, which covers the overlapping duties.

Systems Administrator Salary by State

Maryland pays systems administrators the most, with a median of $118,290, 19% above the $99,130 national figure. Puerto Rico is the lowest of the 52 places BLS reports, at $54,200. Maryland stays first after adjusting for local prices, at $112,701 in buying power.

The 10 highest of 52. These figures are for network and computer systems 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.

Systems Administrator Salary in Major Metros

Of the 50 metro areas in our city guides with a published figure, San Jose has the highest median at $133,360, and Pittsburgh has the lowest at $80,440. A metro median covers the whole area, suburbs included, so it can differ from pay in the city itself.

The 10 highest of 50. These figures are for network and computer systems administrators, BLS May 2025.

IT Salaries Side by Side

Network and Computer Systems Administrators rank 6 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.