As a senior data engineer, your primary duties include managing junior data engineers' activities and helping develop the business’s data collection systems and process pipelines.
You’ll be developing and maintaining data pipelines to enable deeper analysis and reporting by the department. Therefore, owing to the demand and expertise that the role requires, you can expect pretty high senior data engineer salary packages. Let’s take a look at how much a senior data engineer makes in the US.
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If you’re researching the senior data engineer’s salary, you’ve come to the right place. To help you out, in this article, we’ll cover:
- What Does a Senior Data Engineer Do?
- Skills Required to Become a Senior Data Engineer
- Average Senior Data Engineer Salary
- Senior Data Engineer Salary at FAANG Companies
- FAQs on Senior Data Engineer Salary
What Does a Senior Data Engineer Do?
Senior data engineers help develop and maintain databases that power modern businesses. They’re responsible for ensuring the databases are efficient, secure, and accurate while striving for growth and expansion.
Further, they actively participate in designing new database systems and applications per business requirements. This also includes developing new software programs and updating the existing ones that’ll handle the different kinds of data better.
As a senior data engineer, you’ll have a wide range of responsibilities. Some of these include:
- Design and build data models to develop new databases and update the existing ones
- Offer insights on data management issues to team members
- Give solutions that can be carried out in a production environment to enhance the company’s data management practices
- Collaborate with data architects to develop data warehouses for securing massive quantities of data for later retrieval
- Recommend changes that improve the performance and/or solve the issues of the current databases
To understand the role better, read What Does a Data Engineer Do?
Skills Required to Become a Senior Data Engineer
Some of the most important senior data engineer skills are:
- Database Management: The skills required to develop and maintain databases.
- Data Analysis: Knowledge of data interpretation and figuring out patterns and trends.
- Algorithms: Expertise in solving technical problems and developing software.
- Machine Learning: Knowledge of machine learning comes in handy when making decisions to enhance the company’s data systems and predict future trends.
Education qualifications required:
- A bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, statistics, or another closely related field.
- A master’s degree in computer science or a related field.
Do you want to learn what a data engineer’s interview process looks like? Read our blogs on:
Average Senior Data Engineer Salary
In the US, the average senior data engineer salary package amounts to around $123,645 per year. But since this is an average salary, the exact amount can vary depending on a number of factors such as education, experience, company, location, and so on.
At the management level, a senior data engineer manager's salary is around $152,536 per year (according to salary.com).
Senior Data Engineer Salary at FAANG Companies
If you’re aiming to get into FAANG companies, here is an estimate of the senior data engineer salary each of them offers annually:
(Source: glassdoor.com)
As you can see, Facebook pays the highest senior data engineer salary packages. The gap between the total salary package offered by Facebook and the other companies is pretty huge. So as you start applying, do keep these figures in mind.
For more detailed senior data engineer salary information offered by FAANG, read:
- Facebook Data Engineer Salaries at Different Levels
- Amazon Data Engineer Salary in the United States
- Apple Data Engineer Salary All Levels
- Google Data Engineer Salaries
To get a job as a senior data engineer, you’ll need at least five years of experience. Further, you’ll work with some of the most advanced technologies and decode complex problems. However, don’t forget that this is a highly competitive field, so you’ll need to work extra hard to land your desired job.
FAQs on Senior Data Engineer Salary
Q1. What does a senior data engineer do?
A senior data engineer supervises the department’s data integration work, such as maintaining data warehouses and analytics environments, creating data models, and so on.
Q2. What’s the average salary of a senior data engineer?
As per salary.com, a senior data engineer makes $123,645 per year on average.
Q3. What is the salary of a senior data engineer in NYC?
On average, a senior data engineer’s salary in NYC is $151,242 per year (according to glassdoor.com).
Q4. How long does it take to be a senior data engineer?
To become a senior data engineer, you’ll need 5-10 years of experience.
Q5. Which company pays the highest salary for data engineers?
According to Upgrad.com, the companies that pay the highest data engineer salaries are — Amazon, Airbnb, Spotify, Netflix, IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, and so on.
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