Data Center Network Engineer Salary 2026: What Employers Actually Post
Quick answer: Amazon posts the senior grade of this job at 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD a year and the entry grade at 114,100.00 to 160,000.00, read from live requisitions on October 1, 2026. The US median for computer network architects across all industries was $134,050 in May 2025.
Those are posted bands, not averages. Every figure on this page comes from a job posting with a requisition number, a government table, or a certification issuer’s own price list. No number here came from a crowd-sourced salary site.
One thing worth saying before the numbers: almost nobody posts the job under the name you searched for. More on that below, because it changes how you look for the work.
Key numbers, each with its source
- $134,050, median annual wage for computer network architects, all industries. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 wage data, page updated August 27, 2026.
- $143,310, annual mean wage for computer network architects working inside the data center industry. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2023, NAICS 518000.
- 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD, Amazon’s posted band for a senior network development engineer, printed identically for San Diego, Austin and Redmond. Requisition 10538345, read October 1, 2026.
- 114,100.00 to 160,000.00 USD, Amazon’s posted band for the entry grade network development engineer in Seattle. Requisition 10553614, read October 1, 2026.
- $2,000, the exam fees Cisco publishes to hold a CCIE Data Center: $400 for the qualifying exam plus $1,600 for the lab. Cisco price pages, read October 1, 2026.
- Minus 4 percent, the BLS projected change for network and computer systems administrators from 2025 to 2035, inside an industry projected to grow 25.1 percent.
What employers actually call this job
Search Amazon’s own job board for the exact phrase “data center network engineer” and you get one result. Search it for “network development engineer” and you get 122.
The one result is titled Optical Network Engineer, Data Center Regional Engineering Services, requisition 10375020 in Seattle. It matched the words, not the title.
| Search run on amazon.jobs, October 1, 2026 | Results returned |
|---|---|
| data center network engineer | 1 |
| network development engineer | 122 |
| A nonsense phrase, run as a control | 0 |
The control matters. A search engine that returns zero for gibberish is telling the truth when it returns a low number for a real phrase. This one does.
We then counted titles by hand across nine job boards belonging to data center operators, colocation firms and one tier-one carrier: T5 Data Centers at 97 postings, xAI at 288, Armada at 50, Megaport at 46, Serverfarm at 38, Cologix at 24, TierPoint at 13, Cogent at roughly 65, and F6 Data Solutions at 4. That is about 625 live postings.
The title “data center network engineer” appeared zero times in all of it. TierPoint is the sharpest example. Run a keyword search for “network engineer” on a colocation provider’s own careers site and it answers: “Sorry, no jobs were found that match your search criteria.”
The handful of places the literal title does appear are staffing and contract firms, not operators. Two of the four we found had already been pulled by the time we checked them.
What this means for a job search. If you type “data center network engineer” into a careers site, you will miss almost the whole opening set. The words that find the work are network development engineer, network deployment engineer, network infrastructure engineer and NOC engineer.
Data center network engineer salary 2026: what the postings print
Below is every band we could read off a live requisition on October 1, 2026, with the requisition number beside it so you can check our work. These are base salary bands as the employer printed them.
| Employer | Title as posted | Location | Band exactly as printed | Years asked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Network Development Engineer, GCNA (req 10553614) | Seattle WA | 114,100.00 to 160,000.00 USD annually | No number printed |
| Amazon | Network Dev Engineer, Amazon Leo (req 10564515) | Bellevue WA and Arlington VA | 136,000.00 to 184,000.00 USD annually, both locations | 4+ |
| Amazon | Sr. Network Development Engineer, Leo (req 10551390) | Arlington VA | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD annually | 8+ |
| Amazon | Network Infrastructure Eng I, Amazon Dedicated Cloud (req 10546758) | Culpeper VA | 96,000.00 to 166,300.00 USD annually | 1+ and 3+, plus TS/SCI clearance |
| Amazon | Data Center Network Deploy Technician (req 10562271) | Chantilly VA | 27.98 to 48.99 USD hourly | 2+ hardware, 1+ networking |
| Armada | Lead Data Center NOC Engineer (req 803) | United States, remote | Tier 1 $144,715 to $180,890; Tier 2 $125,840 to $157,300; Tier 3 $119,548 to $149,435 | 7+ |
| Cloudflare | Network Deployment Engineer (req 935) | Atlanta, Austin, Denver, New York | $114,000 to $157,000 Colorado; $126,000 to $173,000 New York City and Washington DC | 5+ |
| xAI | Network Engineer | Palo Alto CA | $150,000 to $250,000 USD | “Several years”, no number printed |
| SpaceX | Network Engineer, AI Infrastructure | Washington DC | Level 1: $125,000.00 to $160,000.00; Level 2: $145,000.00 to $195,000.00 | 1+, or 4+ without a degree |
| SpaceX | Sr. Network Engineer, AI Infrastructure | Redmond WA | Level 3: $165,000.00 to $270,000.00 | 5+ with a degree, 7+ without |
Two things stand out. The Amazon job that carries “Data Center Network” in its title is the technician, paid 27.98 to 48.99 an hour. The engineer jobs are salaried and carry no “data center” in the title at all.
The second is the cleared band. Amazon’s Network Infrastructure Engineer I inside the government cloud runs 96,000.00 to 166,300.00, a 73 percent spread from floor to ceiling. That is far wider than any uncleared network band on the list, and the same band appears in both Culpeper, Virginia and Jessup, Maryland.
Server network infrastructure engineer salary with 3 years of experience
This is the question readers ask most on this page, so here is the honest answer: three years lands you between the two lowest rungs, and the employers who print numbers do not use a three year bar.
The years floors that employers actually print cluster at 1, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10. Three years sits in a gap. Here is the ladder as the postings print it.
| Years the posting asks for | Employer and requisition | Band exactly as printed |
|---|---|---|
| None printed | Amazon, Network Development Engineer GCNA, req 10553614 | 114,100.00 to 160,000.00 |
| 1+, or 4+ without a degree | SpaceX, Network Engineer AI Infrastructure, Washington DC | Level 1: $125,000.00 to $160,000.00 |
| 1+ and 3+, with a TS/SCI clearance | Amazon, Network Infrastructure Eng I, req 10546758 | 96,000.00 to 166,300.00 |
| 4+ | Amazon, Network Dev Engineer, req 10564515 | 136,000.00 to 184,000.00 |
| 5+ | Cloudflare, Network Deployment Engineer, req 935 | $114,000 to $157,000 in Colorado |
| 7+ | Armada, Lead Data Center NOC Engineer, req 803 | $125,840 to $157,300 in a Tier 2 metro |
| 8+ | Amazon, Sr. Network Development Engineer, req 10551390 | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 |
Read down that table and a three year candidate is shopping in the first three rows. The cleared Amazon role is the one job on the whole list that names a three year bar, and it names it alongside a TS/SCI clearance with polygraph, which takes months to get and which you cannot start without a sponsor.
The practical move at three years is to clear the four year bar on a requisition like 10564515 rather than wait. Amazon’s own entry grade posting prints no years floor at all and lists knowledge instead: BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), a network operating system such as Cisco IOS or Junos, and Linux. A candidate who can show those is not blocked by a year count that is not written down.
Data center network engineer salary by location
Here is something that will save you a move. Amazon prices this job by level, not by state.
Requisition 10538345 is one posting listed in three states. The band printed beside each one is identical to the dollar.
| Location on requisition 10538345 | Band exactly as printed |
|---|---|
| USA, CA, San Diego | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD annually |
| USA, TX, Austin | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD annually |
| USA, WA, Redmond | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD annually |
California, Texas and Washington, same number. Requisition 10564515 does the same thing for Bellevue, Washington and Arlington, Virginia at 136,000.00 to 184,000.00.
The one place we found a discount was requisition 10541918, which lists Nashville alongside Austin and Bellevue:
| Location on requisition 10541918 | Band exactly as printed | Gap against Austin |
|---|---|---|
| USA, TX, Austin | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD annually | Reference |
| USA, WA, Bellevue | 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 USD annually | None |
| USA, TN, Nashville | 151,200.00 to 204,500.00 USD annually | $7,900 lower at the floor, $10,800 at the ceiling |
A 5 percent haircut for a second tier metro, and nothing at all between a high cost coastal market and a no income tax state. The old story that you must live in the Bay Area or Northern Virginia to get the top band is not what this employer prints.
Cost of living is where the difference actually shows up. The Bureau of Economic Analysis measures price levels by metro area as a percentage of the national level. For 2023, the most recent year published as a readable table: Seattle 113.0, San Jose 112.9, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria 108.6, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler 105.5, Dallas-Fort Worth 103.3, Columbus 94.5.
Take Amazon’s 159,100.00 floor. In Columbus that money buys about 19 percent more than the same floor in Seattle, on BEA’s own index. The band did not move. Your rent did.
CCIE data center salary and what Cisco actually charges
Cisco publishes what its exams cost. Cisco does not publish a salary figure or an earnings premium for any of its certifications. We checked the CCNA page, the fee schedule and the Data Center track pages on October 1, 2026.
Anyone quoting “CCIE holders average $X” is quoting a crowd-sourced salary site, usually two steps removed. We will not print that number, so here is the number Cisco does print.
| Exam | Code | Fee Cisco publishes |
|---|---|---|
| CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) | 200-301 v1.1 | $300 USD |
| CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) Data Center core | 350-601 DCCOR v1.1 | $400 USD |
| CCNP Data Center concentration | 300-610 DCID v1.1 | $300 USD |
| CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) Data Center qualifying exam | 350-601 DCCOR, the same exam | $400 USD |
| CCIE Data Center lab exam | CCIE Data Center Lab Exam v3.1 | $1,600 USD |
Read the third and fourth rows again. The CCIE Data Center qualifying exam is the CCNP Data Center core exam. One exam, 350-601 DCCOR, counts toward Cisco Certified Specialist Data Center Core, CCNP Data Center and CCIE Data Center. Cisco says so on the exam page.
That breaks the usual framing. An article telling you a CCNP adds one salary bump and a CCIE adds a bigger one is describing two credentials that share an exam. The thing that separates them is the lab, and the lab costs $1,600 a sitting.
So the issuer-published minimum to hold a CCIE Data Center is $2,000 in exam fees, before tax, travel, a lab retake or a single hour of training. That is arithmetic on two published Cisco prices and nothing else.
Cisco also publishes how long the credential lasts. CCNA is valid for three years and recertifies on 30 continuing education credits. CCIE is a three year cycle on 120 continuing education credits. A Cisco Certified Specialist runs three years on 40.
CCNP data center salary: what we can and cannot tell you
Employers name certifications in postings. They almost never attach a dollar figure to one. Across every posting we read for this page, here is where the Cisco credentials actually turn up.
- CCNA is a requirement at Armada on the Lead Data Center NOC Engineer role, and at the integrator Trace3, where it must be earned within 30 days of starting.
- CCNP and JNCIP (Juniper Networks Certified Internet Professional) show up as preferences at Cloudflare and Trace3, never as requirements.
- CCIE Data Center appeared exactly once in the entire sweep, at the carrier Bandwidth, on a role asking for 10 or more years. It was listed as a bonus qualification, not a requirement.
- CDCP (Certified Data Centre Professional) and CDCTP appeared once, at Armada, on the one posting that both carries a data center title and prints a band.
- AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty costs 300 USD, and Amazon Web Services has posted that the exam is being retired. Its own page reads: “This exam is being retired. The last day to take the exam is December 31, 2026.”
The pattern is worth more than a fake premium number. CCNA gets you past a screen. CCNP is a preference. CCIE Data Center shows up at the carrier tier after a decade, as a nice to have. If someone is selling you a CCIE as a direct route to a six figure raise, the postings do not support it.
What BLS measures, and what it does not
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a wage for “data center network engineer.” It never has. BLS measures occupations across the whole economy and separately measures the data center business as an industry, and it does not cross the two at the level of a job title.
So any page quoting you a BLS figure for this exact title is quoting something that does not exist. Here is what BLS does publish.
| What BLS measures | Figure | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Computer network architects, median annual wage, all industries | $134,050 | May 2025 |
| Computer network architects, 10th and 90th percentile | $79,900 and $202,680 | May 2025 |
| Computer network architects, projected change | Plus 8 percent, 9,600 openings a year | 2025 to 2035 |
| Network and computer systems administrators, median annual wage | $99,130 | May 2025 |
| Network and computer systems administrators, projected change | Minus 4 percent, 13,400 openings a year | 2025 to 2035 |
| Computer network architects working inside the data center industry, annual mean wage | $143,310 | May 2023, NAICS 518000 |
| Data center industry, projected growth | Plus 25.1 percent, 120,400 new jobs | 2025 to 2035 |
The contradiction nobody writes about. BLS projects the data center industry to grow 25.1 percent between 2025 and 2035. In the same release, it projects the occupation most of this work sits in, network and computer systems administrators, to shrink 4 percent. Computer network architects grow 8 percent. The buildings multiply faster than the headcount that runs their networks, and automation is the reason BLS gives.
There is still hiring in a shrinking occupation. BLS projects 13,400 openings a year for administrators, driven by people leaving the field rather than by new roles being created. That is a real job market. It is just not the growth story the rest of the internet tells.
One more claim worth retiring: this is not an aging workforce waiting to retire. The Current Population Survey puts the 2025 median age at 45.1 for computer network architects and 43.8 for network and computer systems administrators, with the biggest single age bracket in both being 35 to 44.
Operator, carrier or contractor: who actually hires you
The employer type decides the title, the pay and whether a number is published at all. This is the comparison that matters most before you apply.
| Employer type | Example | Posts the literal title | What it posts instead | Prints a pay band |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colocation operator | T5, Cologix, Serverfarm, TierPoint | No, zero across 172 postings | Critical facilities technician, MEP technician, operations technician | No network band found at all |
| Hyperscaler | Amazon Web Services | No, 1 of 122 | Network development engineer, network infrastructure engineer | Yes, on every requisition |
| AI compute firm | xAI, SpaceX, Cerebras | No | Network engineer, network engineer AI infrastructure | Yes, in transparency states |
| Network operator | Cloudflare, Megaport, Bandwidth, Cogent | No | Network deployment engineer, IP network engineer, NOC engineer | Sometimes |
| Staffing and contract firm | RYZ Labs, US IT Solutions | Yes, this is the only place it appears | The literal title | No |
The verdict. The operator owns the building and hires the trades that keep it cool and powered. The network belongs to the tenant, so the network engineer is hired by the hyperscaler, the AI compute firm or the carrier, and gets paid on their scale rather than on the facility scale.
There is a second pattern underneath that one, and it surprised us. The network engineer is usually not in the data hall. xAI runs a large campus in Memphis, staffs it with data center operations technicians and electrical reliability engineers, and posts its one Network Engineer requisition in Palo Alto at $150,000 to $250,000. The single SpaceX network posting physically sited at a build, in Starbase, Texas, is also the only one of its five that prints no money at all.
If you want this job and you want the posted band, apply to the company that owns the traffic, not the company that owns the floor.
The organisations, credentials and protocols named on this page
- BLS, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) survey and the CPS (Current Population Survey).
- NAICS 518000, the North American Industry Classification System code for computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting and related services. This is the code that means “data center industry” in government data.
- SOC 15-1241 and SOC 15-1244, the Standard Occupational Classification codes for computer network architects and for network and computer systems administrators.
- BEA, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, which publishes Regional Price Parities by metro area.
- Cisco, issuer of CCNA, CCNP Data Center and CCIE Data Center.
- Juniper Networks, issuer of JNCIA and JNCIP, named as alternatives to the Cisco track in postings at Armada, Cloudflare and Trace3.
- Amazon Web Services, issuer of the Certified Advanced Networking Specialty, and the largest single publisher of network engineering bands in this research.
- EPI and the CDCP (Certified Data Centre Professional) family, the data-center-specific credentials named at Armada.
- Employers whose live postings are quoted here: Amazon, Armada, Cloudflare, xAI, SpaceX, Bandwidth, T5 Data Centers, Cologix, Serverfarm, TierPoint, Megaport, Cogent Communications and F6 Data Solutions.
- Protocols and technologies named in the postings: BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), IS-IS, VXLAN, EVPN, Cisco IOS, Juniper Junos and Linux.
What we could not verify
Every gap named here makes the numbers above easier to trust, because you can see where we stopped.
- No colocation operator band exists in public. Flexential has a live network engineer requisition in Denver, a pay transparency state, and its careers system cannot be read by anything but a browser. The one Equinix network band we located carried a “no longer available” notice and was thrown out. So there is no colocation figure on this page.
- No total compensation figure is traceable. Amazon states that its packages include sign-on payments and restricted stock units, and prints no dollar value for either. Every band above is base salary only. Treat any “total comp” range you read elsewhere with suspicion.
- The 25th and 75th percentile wages inside the data center industry are not published as a web page. BLS puts them in spreadsheets only. We will not estimate them, and we will not annualise an hourly median to fake one.
- The industry wage cross-tab is two years old. BLS stopped publishing static industry pages after May 2023 and moved later editions behind an interactive tool. $143,310 is a May 2023 figure and is labelled as such everywhere it appears here.
- Microsoft, Google and Meta published nothing we could read. All three blocked automated reads. Rather than fill the gap with a salary site, we left them out.
- Metro price levels are a year behind. BEA’s 2024 metro figures are not published as a readable table, so the price parities above are 2023.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a data center network engineer make in 2026?
Amazon posts 114,100.00 to 160,000.00 USD a year at the entry grade and 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 at the senior grade, read from live requisitions on October 1, 2026. The US median for computer network architects across all industries was $134,050 in May 2025, per BLS.
What is a server network infrastructure engineer salary with 3 years of experience in 2026?
Three years sits in a gap. Employers print floors at 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8 years, not 3. The nearest posted bands are Amazon’s entry grade at 114,100.00 to 160,000.00 and SpaceX Level 1 at $125,000.00 to $160,000.00.
What is the CCIE data center salary?
Cisco publishes no salary figure for any certification. It publishes a cost: $400 for the qualifying exam and $1,600 for the lab, so $2,000 in exam fees. Every CCIE salary average you find online traces back to a crowd-sourced salary site.
Does CCNP data center increase your salary?
No posting we read attaches a dollar figure to it. CCNP appeared as a preference at Cloudflare and Trace3 and never as a requirement. Worth knowing: the CCNP Data Center core exam, 350-601 DCCOR, is also the CCIE Data Center qualifying exam.
Is data center network engineer a good career in 2026?
The pay is real and posted. The outlook is mixed. BLS projects the data center industry to grow 25.1 percent by 2035 while projecting network and computer systems administrators to shrink 4 percent, with 13,400 openings a year from people leaving the field.
Do you need a degree to be a data center network engineer?
Not always. Amazon’s GCNA requisition 10553614 lists a bachelor’s degree, and SpaceX accepts 4 or more years of networking experience in place of one at Level 1 and 7 years at Level 3. Amazon’s technician route asks only for a high school diploma.
Which companies hire data center network engineers?
Amazon Web Services posts the most, 122 network development engineer requisitions. Cloudflare, xAI, SpaceX, Bandwidth and Megaport also post network roles. Colocation operators such as T5, Cologix and TierPoint post none, because the network belongs to their tenants.
Does a data center network engineer get paid more in Virginia or California?
Not at Amazon. One requisition, 10538345, lists San Diego, Austin and Redmond at 159,100.00 to 215,300.00 for all three, identical to the dollar. Another lists Bellevue and Arlington at the same band. Amazon prices this job by level, not by state.
Where to go next
Three things to take away. The title you searched for is a search term and not a job title, so search “network development engineer” instead. Amazon prices this job by level rather than by state, so a move is unlikely to pay for itself. And the issuer publishes a cost, not a premium, so budget $2,000 of exam fees against a raise nobody has promised you.
Related reading on DC Geeks: our data center engineer salary guide covers the wider engineering ladder, the CCNP data center certification page goes deeper on the exam path, and is a CCNA worth it for data center technicians answers the entry level version of the same question.
For pay in neighbouring roles, see data center technician salary and data center cabling technician salary. For geography, see data center salary by state, data center salary cost of living rankings, and our guide to data center jobs in Northern Virginia.
To check our sources yourself: the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook page for computer network architects, the Cisco 350-601 DCCOR exam page, and Amazon’s own job search, where you can run the title census for yourself.
Updated October 1, 2026. Pay figures re-anchored to employer-published requisitions and government wage tables, with the requisition number printed beside each band.
Methodology. Every band on this page was read directly from a live job posting on October 1, 2026, and the requisition number is printed so you can check it. Government figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, released August 27, 2026 on May 2025 wage data, from the OEWS May 2023 industry survey for NAICS 518000, and from the Current Population Survey 2025 annual averages. Certification costs come from Cisco’s and Amazon Web Services’ own published price pages. Metro price levels come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2023.
No figure on this page came from a crowd-sourced salary site. We do not publish numbers from Glassdoor, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Salary.com, Levels.fyi, PayScale, Comparably, Blind or LinkedIn Salary Insights. Where no honest figure exists, we say so in the section above rather than fill the space.
