Database Architects
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for database architects. Best paid: California, at $170,160. Tax does not change that. Best off: South Dakota, at $118,725 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- California's $170,160 median for database architects survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: South Dakota takes the top position at $118,725. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$139,500
People doing it
67,140
Highest paid
$170,160
CA
Best off, really
$118,725
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$86,240
Highest tenth
$204,000
Lowest, really
$81,097
NJ
States with data
46
National average
$144,440
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $81,097 and $118,725. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- This is a small job: about 67,140 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- This job is not published everywhere — 46 jurisdictions have a figure, with $139,500 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Wages for database architects cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $81,097 to $118,725. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 67,140 workers, database architects is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- 46 jurisdictions carry a published median for database architects. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Database Architects
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $86,240 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $139,500 |
| Top tenth earn over | $204,000 |
| This salary | $139,500 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Database Architects
The national median for this job
$139,500around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $86,240 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $139,500 |
| Top tenth | $204,000 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Database Architects, state by state
The national median for this job
46states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $98,420 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $170,160 |
| Spread | $71,740 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $151,370 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $155,771 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $136,540 | $104,591 | $118,725 |
| TX | $151,370 | $114,727 | $118,063 |
| AZ | $156,100 | $114,460 | $113,209 |
| VA | $160,360 | $112,412 | $111,576 |
| NV | $140,200 | $107,093 | $110,428 |
| CO | $154,560 | $110,816 | $109,305 |
| NE | $134,320 | $97,666 | $108,066 |
| OH | $132,910 | $99,171 | $108,016 |
| IN | $132,830 | $98,166 | $106,490 |
| WI | $137,810 | $98,742 | $106,063 |
| MA | $161,650 | $113,991 | $105,315 |
| NC | $134,630 | $98,423 | $104,550 |
| DE | $147,800 | $103,764 | $104,544 |
| GA | $139,500 | $100,252 | $103,674 |
| IA | $124,040 | $91,946 | $103,581 |
| KS | $129,990 | $93,149 | $103,539 |
| IL | $142,500 | $101,756 | $102,934 |
| CA | $170,160 | $115,838 | $102,893 |
| KY | $125,400 | $92,706 | $102,473 |
| FL | $138,320 | $105,808 | $102,277 |
| NH | $139,990 | $106,949 | $101,523 |
| MI | $131,000 | $95,488 | $101,384 |
| SC | $130,000 | $94,314 | $101,220 |
| UT | $131,740 | $95,448 | $100,469 |
| RI | $140,320 | $101,862 | $100,444 |
| CT | $144,460 | $102,587 | $98,937 |
| ME | $133,120 | $94,378 | $97,199 |
| TN | $115,170 | $89,852 | $97,122 |
| ID | $121,380 | $88,641 | $96,955 |
| NM | $117,950 | $87,359 | $96,651 |
| MN | $133,050 | $94,594 | $96,116 |
| ND | $109,430 | $84,939 | $95,899 |
| DC | $150,010 | $104,015 | $93,873 |
| NY | $141,350 | $100,196 | $93,097 |
| OK | $110,110 | $81,838 | $92,696 |
| MD | $132,940 | $95,984 | $92,323 |
| WA | $128,760 | $99,273 | $91,444 |
| AR | $104,070 | $78,651 | $90,918 |
| MT | $109,990 | $81,354 | $90,149 |
| OR | $138,250 | $94,092 | $89,851 |
| MO | $110,570 | $82,357 | $89,750 |
| AL | $105,450 | $78,625 | $87,390 |
| HI | $134,040 | $94,125 | $86,664 |
| AK | $112,500 | $87,974 | $86,490 |
| MS | $98,420 | $74,224 | $85,029 |
| NJ | $120,790 | $88,301 | $81,097 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for database architects as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $139,500, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for database architects, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is California, at $115,838.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for database architects. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits New Jersey, on $81,097.
- These are distribution medians for database architects, with a national value of $139,500. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for database architects model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $115,838, which leads in California.
- Real-terms results for database architects rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; New Jersey anchors the distribution at $81,097. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.