Side-by-side distribution
Cloud Engineer
$154,625
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 33.6%
- Live roles
- 2,368
Platform Engineer
$185,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 41.7%
- Live roles
- 6,291
Highest-paying jobs
AWS Cloud Engineer (Infrastructure and Application)
Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Staff + Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud Inference
Staff + Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud Inference Launch Engineering
Software Engineer, Cloud Agents
Software Engineer, Cloud Computer
Senior Principal Presales Systems Engineer, Cloud and AI Networking
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure)
Security Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure
Highest-paying jobs
AWS Cloud Engineer (Infrastructure and Application)
Platform Engineer
Staff+ Research Engineer, RL Data Platform
Pre-training Data Infrastructure Engineer
Staff Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Staff Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
Staff Software Engineer, Environments Infrastructure
Staff+ Software Engineer, Safeguards Infrastructure
Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure (Distributed Systems)
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Identity Infrastructure Engineering
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$142,400 | 59 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$152,425 | 48 |
CACI
|
$168,100 | 30 |
GDIT
|
$148,000 | 21 |
Crusoe
|
$158,750 | 16 |
Leidos
|
$151,475 | 16 |
Northrop Grumman
|
$126,900 | 13 |
BMO
|
$141,450 | 10 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$193,000 | 50 |
SpaceX
|
$145,000 | 41 |
|
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$126,750 | 40 |
|
OpenAI
|
$357,750 | 38 |
Palantir
|
$167,500 | 38 |
Nuro
|
$200,450 | 32 |
|
Anthropic
|
$445,000 | 30 |
Elastic
|
$105,820 | 29 |
Cloud Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $212,000 | 49 |
| Seattle | $202,000 | 21 |
| Los Angeles | $175,000 | 21 |
| New York | $170,000 | 55 |
| Chicago | $167,500 | 22 |
| Boston | $165,000 | 25 |
| Austin | $162,050 | 20 |
| Berlin | $161,920 | 3 |
| Denver | $160,000 | 15 |
| London | $151,307 | 3 |
Platform Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $234,500 | 485 |
| New York | $210,000 | 427 |
| Seattle | $207,500 | 200 |
| Los Angeles | $195,000 | 51 |
| Boston | $190,000 | 75 |
| London | $185,000 | 43 |
| Austin | $182,300 | 91 |
| Singapore | $166,616 | 4 |
| Chicago | $160,000 | 88 |
| Toronto | $158,166 | 96 |
Cloud Engineer vs Platform Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Cloud Engineer is $154,625 per year (typically $126,750–$184,963), versus $185,000 for Platform Engineer ($145,000–$225,000). That puts Platform Engineer about 20% 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.