Side-by-side distribution
Platform Engineer
$198,450
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 44.6%
- Live roles
- 4,126
System Administrator
$120,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 44%
- Live roles
- 459
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
Highest-paying jobs
Systems Administrator 0-3 - Linux/KVM/Ansible/Slat/SSP/STE/STN/Scripting/AWS
Systems Administrator 2 - Linux/CI/CD/Ansible/Terraform/DevOps
Systems Administrator 2 - Linux
Systems Administrator 3 (On-Call) - Linux/Bash/Python/Ansible/SaltStack/Docker
Systems Administrator 1 - Linux
Windows Systems Administrator - McLean, VA - TS/SCI
IT Support Engineer, Application Administrator
System Administrator (SF)
Senior System Administrator (Storage Engineer)
Senior DevOps / System Administrator
Speechify
Palantir
Nuro
Elastic
Coinbase
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Saalex
|
$112,500 | 17 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$141,175 | 14 |
Air Apps
|
$62,289 | 11 |
| GR GRVTY | $153,000 | 8 |
Anduril Industries
|
$150,250 | 8 |
|
Captivation Software
|
$200,000 | 5 |
SMX
|
$116,800 | 5 |
| PI Pingwind | $87,750 | 4 |
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 |
System Administrator salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $146,250 | 10 |
| Boston | $127,500 | 4 |
| New York | $121,719 | 11 |
| Los Angeles | $102,500 | 5 |
| Toronto | $61,027 | 4 |
Platform Engineer vs System Administrator: which pays more?
The median for Platform Engineer is $198,450 per year (typically $166,975–$235,000), versus $120,000 for System Administrator ($94,500–$145,625). That puts Platform Engineer about 65% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Platform Engineer and System Administrator 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.