DBA Salaries: What Do You Earn?
According to a recent survey by Enterprise Systems, DBA salaries are among the highest in IT. The survey cites an average DBA salary for the year 2005 of $70,500. This is the highest of the IT staff positions surveyed (second highest was systems analyst at $67,900).
But all was not rosy for DBAs in this survey. The average DBA salary for 2005 actually decreased 1.3% from 2004 (when it was $71,400). Systems programmers and systems analysts also experienced year over year salary decreases. Why is this happening? Well, it could just be the composition of the survey respondents. If different people responded to the survey in different years the salary difference could cause the disparity. Of course, it could also be a real trend.
DBA is a strange position in that there are so many different types of DBAs. Salary disparity could arise given the difference in pay between an application DBA and a data architect - both of whom could reasonably call themself a DBA. Additionally, there is the platform coverage that needs to be factored in. According to the Enterprise Systems survey, IMS DBAs outearned all others (on average) at $75,100 per year. The platforms followed in this order: DB2 ($73,500), Sybase ($72,900), Oracle ($72,500), SQL Server ($69,100), and finally MySQL ($67,800). What does this mean? As far as I can tell, it means that mainframe DBAs out-earn distributed systems DBAs. It also seems to imply that there is a premium on DBAs for lesser-used DBMS platforms (e.g. Sybase). So, if you are an IMS DBA or a Sybase DBA who has been told for years that your expertise is going out of style - don't worry so much. You are probably out-earning those naysayers!
You may not want to pay heed to a single survey though. OK, I can see your point. Check out the IT Salary Survey conducted by Certification Magazine, then. The average DBA salary in this survey is listed as $78,640. That sounds better if you're a DBA (not so much if you're a DBA manager charged with keeping salary growth in check).
Of course, if you really want to get depressed about your salary, click over to Enterprise System's Executive Pay Survey and look at some of those stratospheric salaries.
Now what do you think: are DBAs under-paid or over-paid? Are you paid what you think you deserve? Let's get some comments posted here (unless you don't care what you're paid)!
New Information: added October 15, 2005
I just received the latest edition of Software Development magazine (November 2005 issue) and it contains their 2005 Salary Survey results. Although this magazine is mostly for programmers and developers, there is a nugget of data on DBA salaries in there. In the section that details average staff salary by title, Database Administrator is listed at $79K. This salary comes in above the salary of titles such as Systems Analyst, Webmaster, and Network Engineer... but below titles such as Software Developer, Software Engineer, and Project Leader.
New Information: added October 21, 2005
Other interesting statistics can be gleaned from this High Tech Employment report published by the Monthly Labor Review in July 2005. It reports that the median salary for DBAs is $60,650. That means 50 per cent earn more than that and 50 per cent earn less. So where do you fall along that spectrum?
