Cloud Engineer Salary: AWS, Microsoft, and Google Pay Ranges

The massive demand for cloud talent shows no signs of cooling down. But what are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and some of the top companies in the world of cloud paying their engineers, architects, and assorted cloud gurus? (TL;DR? Good money.)

For six years in a row, cloud has been one of the most in-demand hard job skills, according to LinkedIn. It's the number one most in-demand skill according to a recent report from Indeed. So it's no surprise that job postings around cloud are numerous and the pay is plentiful.

But what kind of salary can cloud gurus expect if working at some of the top companies in the cloud?

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Business Insider (paywall, ahoy!) has an in-depth look at salaries from the three big public cloud players (AWS, Azure, and Google) and companies like IBM, VMware, Citrix, Adobe, Accenture, Atlassian, JPMorgan Chase, and Chewy. The salaries reported are based on salaries or salary ranges reported by companies when hiring foreign workers, giving a peek behind the curtain at what these top employers shell out for top talent.

• At AWS, Cloud Application Architects could earn between $140,000 and $150,00.

• At Microsoft, a Cloud Solution Architect might pull in between $89,149 and $183,116.

• At Google, recent cloud-related hires included in the report have been around sales engineers and program managers, with salaries ranging from $134,000 to $174,000.

Some of the top salaries and highest-paying positions in the report include a Cloud Native Architect at IBM ($279,600) and an AI Platform Senior Cloud Engineer at JPMorgan Chase ($210,000).

Some other positions and salaries included in the report include:

• Cloud Engineers at Cisco can make as much as $187,300.
• Cloud Ops Engineers at Citrix can earn approximately $150,000.
• Cloud Developers at VMware can bring home $202,982.
• Cloud DevOps Engineers at Lenovo can earn $163,645.

The numbers are pretty in line with recent reports of salaries from various sources. A Global Knowledge 2020 report found the average cloud computing professional earns $160,000. Certain cloud certifications can also help cloud engineers command bigger salaries, including the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect cert, which on average earns cloud-skilled talent a salary of $175,761.

For some other perspective around cloud salaries, Indeed found that the average salary for cloud engineers is $120,370 with a $10,000 cash bonus per year — based on a survey of more than 4,000 salaries. And according to Glassdoor, where workers can self-report salary, the national average salary for a Cloud Engineer is $131,409 in U.S. (based on 738 responses).

Cloud architects in particular can expect even higher annual pay, according to ZipRecruiter, which reports that the average salary nationwide for cloud architects is $153,000 and can go as high as $210,000.

All salaries above are in U.S. dollars. Salary can, of course, vary by geography, so your mileage may vary depending on your base of operations. And of course, as they say, money isn't everything. (But you can use it to buy almost anything, which is something.)