Go West, Young Data Engineer
In the 1960s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” when Jed Clampett accidentally fell to the ground resulting in the discovery of oil, his relative said, according to the opening song, “Jed, got away from there …. California the place where you’re going. “
California today is also a place where you can get out if you’re a data engineer dealing with what The Economist called in 2017 the world’s most important resource: Data. Data, especially capturing valuable information and insights from the mountains of data collected by almost every company, has become the lifeblood of those companies, and indeed the “oil” that keeps businesses growing.
Data engineers are responsible for developing “big data” strategies within a business or organization, managing and managing data, preparing data for both operational and analytical tasks, and developing algorithms. which helps businesses get full value from their data.
“It is the duty of a data engineer to store, extract, transform, load, aggregate and validate data,” according to a job description of data consulting firm PhData. They build data pipelines and efficiently store data for tools that need to query data. They review the data to make sure it complies with data management rules and regulations. And they understand the pros and cons of data storage and query options.
Blind, an on-line community of more than 5 million professionals talking to their peers, said its members have identified the cities where data engineers get the best overall compensation, including cash salaries, stock-based compensation, and bonuses, with nine of the top 10 cities in California. (In total, the list includes the average total compensation for data engineers in 48 cities.)
And how much is the compensation of those engineers? According to the Blind community, this amounts to up to $ 403,612 on an annual basis.
When Horace Greeley wrote in 1865 “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,” he could not have imagined how much the young men – and young women – of the 21st Century could do to choose a data engineer as their careers. so good.
For a look at the top 10 US cities in terms of salaries and total compensation for data engineers (both average and median), click on
No. 10: Seattle
Seattle and its environs, home to Microsoft, Amazon, Tableau, Cray, and other large tech companies, are the only non-California city ranked in the top 10 of the Blind ranking.
The average total compensation for data engineers in Seattle is $ 196,013. The median total compensation in the city is $ 180,000.
The average salary for data engineers is $ 130,761, of which the city has a median salary of approximately $ 133,000.
No. 9: San Jose, Calif.
San Jose is home to many tech companies and others that generate large amounts of data, including Cisco Systems, Western Digital, Sanmina, PayPal, Adobe, and GlobalLogic.
Data engineers in San Jose receive an average total compensation of $ 200,281 and a median total compensation of $ 172,200.
Data engineers in the city receive an average salary of $ 148,171 and a median salary of $ 135,500.
No. 8: Palo Alto, Calif.
Palo Alto, where Hewlett Packard started with a garage in 1938, is a long-time tech hub. And while its successor company Hewlett Packard Enterprise has moved its headquarters out of the city, several other companies are generating data in Palo Alto, including HP Inc., VMware and Tibco Software-all headquartered there. .
Data engineers in Palo Alto see an average annual total payout of $ 205,613 and a median total payout of $ 183,000.
The average salary of a data engineer is $ 152,780 and the median salary is $ 167,000.
No. 7: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Sunnyvale is home to NetApp, the IT industry’s largest independent storage vendor and a cloud infrastructure powerhouse. Google, Apple, Amazon, Juniper Networks, Applied Materials, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems maintain a large presence in the city.
Sunnyvale data engineers charge an average annual total compensation of $ 209,477 and median total compensation of $ 197,000.
Data engineers in the city earn an average salary of $ 154,546 and a median salary of $ 155,000.
No. 6: Santa Clara, Calif.
Santa Clara counts many tech and other large companies within its borders including Intel, Nvidia, Applied Materials, AMD and ServiceNow.
The average annual total compensation for a data engineer in Santa Clara is $ 212,642, according to Blind, while the median total compensation is $ 194,337.
The average salary of a data engineer is $ 161,705 and the median salary is $ 162,500.
No. 5: Mountain View, Calif.
One of the largest data generators in the world, the Google parent Alphabet, is called the Mountain View home, as are Intuit and the NASA Ames Research Center. Other leading companies including Microsoft, Symantec, LinkedIn, Samsung, and more have a large presence in the city.
Data engineers working in Mountain View earn an average total compensation of $ 220,913 per year and a median total compensation of $ 204,000.
Data engineers see an average salary of $ 162,674 and a median salary of $ 160,000.
No. 4: San Francisco
City by the Bay is home to many major businesses where data is an integral part of their operations including Uber, Fitbit, Wells Fargo Bank, Visa, Airbnb, Craigs List, Dropbox, Salesforce, Twitter and Yelp.
Data engineers working in San Francisco can command an average total annual compensation of $ 225,935 and a median total compensation of $ 193,000.
Data engineers in San Francisco earn an average salary of $ 158,190 and a median salary of $ 156,000.
No. 3: Cupertino, Calif.
Cupertino is probably best known as the location for Apple’s headquarters. But some other large companies that generate the kind of data that data engineers work for include Seagate Technology, SugarCRM, Packeteer, and technology advertising giant CKS Group.
The average total annual compensation of a data engineer in Cupertino is $ 230,421, according to Blind, while the median total compensation is $ 245,000.
Data engineers in Cupertino earn an average salary of $ 163,395 and a median salary of $ 160,000.
2. Menlo Park, Calif.
Menlo Park is home to the headquarters of Meta, the main social media giant Facebook company – which you can be sure will generate a lot of data. The city also has a thick concentration of finance and investment companies such as Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Silver Lake, Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Llightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, GE Ventures, US Venture Partners, and others.
For a Menlo Park -based data engineer, the average total annual compensation is $ 253,645 and the median total compensation is $ 250,000.
City data engineers see an average salary of $ 169,198 and a median salary of $ 165,000.
1. Santa Monica, Calif.
It is noteworthy that the city in California – and across the U.S. – where data engineers can find the highest total compensation is not in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay area, but in the “Silicon Beach” area east of Los Angeles. Silicon Beach covers a wide area from the beaches of Los Angeles County to several miles inland, with the center generally considered to be in Santa Monica. Santa Monica itself has attracted data -driven businesses in the film and music industry and gaming businesses including Hulu, A&M Records, Activision Blizzard, Bad Robot Productions, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Lionsgate, Xbox Entertainment Studios, Universal Music, and more.
Head a few miles east of Santa Monica and there’s Hollywood, Culver City, Glendale, and other cities at the heart of the filmmaking business, a business that probably generates as much data as any and, in turn, has the greatest need for data engineers.
Data engineers in Santa Monica are rewarded with an average annual total compensation of $ 403,612 and a median total compensation of $ 442,000.
City data engineers earn an average salary of $ 168,312 and a median salary of $ 180,000.
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