How much does a Cloud Engineer make?

The median Cloud Engineer salary is $166,364 per year, from 208 job postings that disclosed pay across 71 companies in September 2026. Most fall between $133,500 and $192,000.

Which companies pay Cloud Engineers the most?

Of employers with at least three open Cloud Engineer postings, Apple posted the highest median range at $214,000.

Do remote Cloud Engineer jobs pay less?

In this sample remote-eligible postings had a median of $136,000 against $168,500 for onsite — 19.3% less.

What skills do Cloud Engineer jobs require?

Across 300 Cloud Engineer posting descriptions read in September 2026, the most frequently required were: Python, AWS, Azure, Software Engineering, Kubernetes. The top one appears in 37% of postings.

Cloud Engineer Skills and Job Description (September 2026)

Name: Cloud Engineer salary data, September 2026
Creator: FitToHire

Python is asked for by 37% of Cloud Engineer employers, the most common requirement across 300 live postings read in September 2026. Then AWS, Azure, Software Engineering.

Median posted pay is $166,364, most postings between $133,500 and $192,000 — from 208 postings that disclosed it, across 71 companies.

Posted pay is up 8.4% since 2026-09-07 ($153,500 → $166,364).

Check your résumé against these →

These are ranges employers published in their own job postings — not salaries people typed into a form years ago.

What Cloud Engineer postings actually ask for

Ranked by how many of the 300 posting descriptions mention them.

Python 37%

AWS 22%

Azure 21%

Software Engineering 20%

Kubernetes 17%

Terraform 17%

Electrical Engineering 15%

SQL 15%

Configuration Management 15%

Git 15%

Security Clearance 13%

U.S. Citizenship 12%

Cloud Platforms 12%

JavaScript 11%

CI/CD 11%

Agile 10%

Project Management 10%

Java 10%

Systems Engineering 10%

LLM 9%

Information Systems 8%

TypeScript 8%

PowerShell 8%

Distributed Systems 8%

GCP 8%

Would your background clear the bar?

These are the requirements Cloud Engineer postings list. Paste one of those postings and your résumé — FitToHire checks you against every requirement and shows the evidence behind each verdict.

15 companies in this sample have Cloud Engineer postings open right now.

Check your fit →

What Cloud Engineers earn

10th $118K 25th $134K median $166K 75th $192K 90th $215K

$101K $240K

Each bar is a pay band. Height is how many of the 71 employers who published a salary fall in it, counted once each.

Pay bands in numbers

Employer median pay by band
Pay band	Employers
$100,550–$114,525	7
$114,525–$128,500	5
$128,500–$142,475	12
$142,475–$156,450	8
$156,450–$170,425	7
$170,425–$184,400	9
$184,400–$198,375	9
$198,375–$212,350	5
$212,350–$226,325	2
$226,325–$240,300	7
Total	71

Cloud Engineer vs adjacent roles

Roles people compare this one against, taken from what they search.

cloud architect
network engineer
software engineer
devops engineer
data engineer
cloud security engineer

Who is hiring Cloud Engineers

15 companies with open postings in this sample.

Apple

$214,000 15

Anduril

$208,000 9

ServiceNow

$206,000 6

Varda Space Industries

$192,549 9

Shield AI

$192,500 4

Microsoft

$190,400 7

Viasat

$172,500 3

JPMorganChase

$168,625 3

Serco

$166,364 25

Slalom Consulting

$150,500 6

Also hiring: Syms Strategic Group, LLC (SSG), Raytheon, Odyssey Systems Consulting Group, Odyssey Consulting, ECS Limited, Smart Apply Test Company, BlueFlag LLP, Capital One.

Remote vs onsite pay

Median of remote-eligible postings against the rest.

Remote-eligible

$136,000

Onsite

$168,500

73 remote-eligible postings against 135 onsite. Onsite pays 19.3% more in this sample.

Pay by experience level

Level is taken from the posting title, so only postings that state one are counted.

Senior

$158,717 158

Principal / Staff

$206,000 23

Pay by location

Metros with at least three salaried postings.

Remote, US

$150,000 10

San Diego, CA

$205,000 10

Austin, TX

$184,950 7

New York, NY

$177,500 6

Wright-Patterson AFB, OH

$166,364 6

Boulder, CO

$161,207 6

San Francisco, CA

$234,000 5

Cupertino, CA

$214,000 5

Santa Clara, CA

$223,000 4

Los Angeles, CA

$192,774 4

Calabasas, CA

$138,000 4

$183,050 4

Where this data comes from

300 live postings analysed
208 (69%) published a salary range
103 (34%) were remote-eligible
117 distinct employers
Requirements read from 300 full posting descriptions
Each employer gets one vote in the median, so a company running a large hiring campaign cannot move it
Ranges are converted to annual figures; hourly and contract postings are normalised before comparison

How the requirements were read

Requirements are not keyword counts. Each posting is read by our extraction engine, which works out what the employer is actually asking for and separates a requirement from a section heading or a line of boilerplate. Two postings asking for the same thing in different words are counted once, because our skills graph knows which phrasings mean the same thing and which imply others.

The share beside each requirement is the percentage of distinct EMPLOYERS in that sample who asked for it, counted one vote per company so a firm posting the same role many times cannot inflate its own requirements. Measured, not estimated, and read from the posting text rather than counted as keywords.

Because every reading is dated, the movement figures above are real month-over-month change. Sites built on self-reported salaries cannot produce that number: their data has no posting date.