Side-by-side distribution
Platform Engineer
$185,400
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 41.8%
- Live roles
- 6,294
SRE
$156,750
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 37%
- Live roles
- 2,080
Highest-paying jobs
AWS Cloud Engineer (Infrastructure and Application)
Pre-training Data Infrastructure Engineer
Platform Engineer
Staff+ Research Engineer, RL Data Platform
Flutter Engineer - Platform
Platform Engineer
Cloud Platform Engineer
Staff Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Staff Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
Staff Software Engineer, Environments Infrastructure
Highest-paying jobs
Staff Software Engineer, AI Reliability Engineering
Staff Security Reliability Engineer
Staff Software Engineer, AI Reliability
Staff+ Site Reliability Engineer, Safeguards ML Infra
Forward Deployed Site Reliability Engineer - TS/SCI (Full Scope Poly)
Forward Deployed Site Reliability Engineer - TS/SCI (CI Poly)
Data Center Engineer, Reliability & Infrastructure Management – Compute Supply
Member of Technical Staff, Production Site Reliability Engineer
Software Engineer, Site Reliability (SRE)
Principal Site Reliability Engineer, Platform Engineering: Dedicated
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$193,000 | 50 |
SpaceX
|
$145,000 | 41 |
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$126,750 | 40 |
Palantir
|
$167,500 | 38 |
|
OpenAI
|
$360,000 | 37 |
Nuro
|
$200,450 | 32 |
|
Anthropic
|
$445,000 | 30 |
Elastic
|
$107,925 | 30 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
SpaceX
|
$143,750 | 46 |
|
Anduril Industries
|
$193,000 | 19 |
| SE Sezzle | $87,000 | 15 |
Okta
|
$206,500 | 14 |
Vast
|
$171,250 | 12 |
Northrop Grumman
|
$121,700 | 12 |
Air Apps
|
$68,929 | 11 |
Cisco
|
$206,450 | 9 |
Platform Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $235,000 | 483 |
| New York | $210,000 | 422 |
| Seattle | $210,000 | 200 |
| Los Angeles | $196,000 | 53 |
| London | $193,292 | 46 |
| Boston | $190,000 | 76 |
| Austin | $180,350 | 89 |
| Denver | $172,500 | 57 |
| Singapore | $166,616 | 4 |
| Chicago | $160,000 | 84 |
SRE salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $211,878 | 86 |
| New York | $194,250 | 72 |
| Los Angeles | $189,081 | 22 |
| Seattle | $188,162 | 21 |
| Austin | $187,000 | 21 |
| Dublin | $182,130 | 5 |
| Chicago | $180,000 | 35 |
| Denver | $168,850 | 12 |
| Boston | $157,750 | 20 |
| Atlanta | $151,000 | 7 |
Platform Engineer vs SRE: which pays more?
The median for Platform Engineer is $185,400 per year (typically $145,000–$225,000), versus $156,750 for SRE ($121,000–$195,857). That puts Platform Engineer about 18% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Platform Engineer and SRE 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.