Side-by-side distribution
Cloud Engineer
$166,800
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 35.7%
- Live roles
- 925
Platform Engineer
$198,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 44.7%
- Live roles
- 4,102
Highest-paying jobs
Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Staff + Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud Inference
Staff + Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud Inference Launch Engineering
Software Engineer, Cloud Agents
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure)
Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Security Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Staff Software Engineer, Replit Cloud
Principal Software Engineer - Performance Engineering (Cloud Infrastructure)
Highest-paying jobs
Data Infrastructure Engineer, Pre-training
Staff+ Research Engineer, RL Data Platform
Platform Engineer
Staff Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
Staff Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Senior Security Platform Engineer I
Staff Software Engineer, Environments Infrastructure
Staff+ Software Engineer, Safeguards Infrastructure
Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure (Distributed Systems)
Principal Security Engineer, Infrastructure Security
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Accenture Federal Services
|
$151,800 | 29 |
Crusoe
|
$166,500 | 12 |
TP-Link Systems Inc.
|
$170,000 | 8 |
Anduril Industries
|
$193,000 | 7 |
Illumio
|
$183,000 | 7 |
Oscar Health
|
$208,708 | 5 |
MetroStar
|
$197,000 | 5 |
SMX
|
$112,500 | 5 |
Speechify
Palantir
Nuro
Elastic
Coinbase
Cloud Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | $231,750 | 4 |
| Toronto | $213,000 | 5 |
| San Francisco | $212,000 | 45 |
| Boston | $195,000 | 11 |
| Austin | $187,500 | 7 |
| Denver | $178,000 | 8 |
| New York | $177,500 | 39 |
| Seattle | $176,900 | 9 |
| Chicago | $175,500 | 6 |
| Los Angeles | $174,000 | 15 |
Platform Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $232,250 | 422 |
| New York | $215,000 | 357 |
| Seattle | $215,000 | 125 |
| Boston | $203,000 | 52 |
| Los Angeles | $196,250 | 46 |
| Austin | $194,750 | 36 |
| Toronto | $188,000 | 59 |
| Atlanta | $183,975 | 7 |
| Denver | $183,500 | 31 |
| London | $182,500 | 52 |
Cloud Engineer vs Platform Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Cloud Engineer is $166,800 per year (typically $137,563–$199,597), versus $198,000 for Platform Engineer ($166,888–$234,375). That puts Platform Engineer about 19% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Cloud Engineer and Platform Engineer are compared on equal terms regardless of the currency each role was originally posted in. Only roles that publish a salary range feed the medians; numbers refresh every few hours as new roles post and older ones close, so this comparison reflects the market right now rather than a fixed survey. Use it as a directional benchmark when weighing one path against the other.