Side-by-side distribution
Engineering Manager
$190,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.2%
- Live roles
- 4,377
Platform Engineer
$195,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 44.3%
- Live roles
- 4,041
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Engineering Program Manager II - New Ventures
Business Development Manager
Business Development Manager (Japanese and English bilingual)
Business Development Manager
Engineering Manager, Research Data Platform
Engineering Manager, Research Productivity
Engineering Manager, GPU (ML Accelerator)
Senior Engineering Manager
Senior Engineering Manager, Progressive Onboarding and Funnel Optimisation
Engineering Manager, Product Engineering
Highest-paying jobs
Platform Engineer
Senior Staff+ Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Staff+ Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
Software Engineer, Research Infrastructure
Senior Security Platform Engineer I
Principal .NET Software Engineer - Cloud Payments Platform
Principal .NET Software Engineer- Cloud Payments Platform
Staff+ Software Engineer, Safeguards Infrastructure
SOC Emulation Engineer - Hardware Emulation Infrastructure
Infrastructure Engineer
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$193,000 | 37 |
Databricks
|
$228,138 | 36 |
Brex
|
$254,250 | 29 |
Atwell, LLC
|
$117,500 | 24 |
OpenAI
|
$339,000 | 23 |
|
Anthropic
|
$445,000 | 21 |
Harvey
|
$350,000 | 19 |
DoorDash USA
|
$239,400 | 19 |
Speechify
Nuro
Palantir
Coinbase
Reddit
Platform Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $230,000 | 417 |
| Seattle | $216,000 | 111 |
| New York | $210,000 | 325 |
| Austin | $202,500 | 40 |
| Los Angeles | $187,500 | 31 |
| Chicago | $187,500 | 21 |
| Boston | $185,000 | 64 |
| Toronto | $185,000 | 59 |
| Denver | $180,200 | 28 |
| Atlanta | $176,988 | 8 |
Engineering Manager vs Platform Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Engineering Manager is $190,000 per year (typically $142,350–$238,511), versus $195,000 for Platform Engineer ($166,525–$230,000). That puts Platform Engineer about 3% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Engineering Manager 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.