Latest Salary Information for DBA and Database Specialists

I try to keep my eyes open for new and updated salary information for database professionals and blog about it whenever I can. My most recent blog entry on DBA salaries was back on December 1, 2006. The average DBA salary quoted in that survey (from Certification Magazine) was a respectable $83,790. But as we all know, your salary will vary based on industry, location, and the DBMS you administer.

I also blogged about DBA salaries back in August 2006, where Enterprise Systems pegged the average DBA salary at $75,500, and even back on November 5, 2005 where Information Week published several hourly rates for different types of DBAs.

Well, earlier this year Janco Associates, Inc. came out with their 2007 IT Salary Survey. Janco's salary survey is based on over 50,000 data points collected from survey forms sent to businesses throughout the United States and Canada. You can buy Janco's research if you are interested in salary trending or analyzing the data.

OK, so what does it say about our favorite profession, DBAs? Well, there are quite a few different titles that will be of interest to dbazine readers, so I'll highlight a few of them. The three most pertinent job titles in the study for dbazine readers were:

Manager - Data Warehouse

Manager - Database

Database Specialist

I think, for our purposes, we can assume that Manager - Database is close enough to DBA Manager and Database Specialist is akin to a DBA. But the titles are nebulous enough that some other job duties probably fell under these titles for the purpose of this study.

Also, keep in mind that the salary I will list is a mean salary and it is total compensation (that is, base salary plus bonus & commissions). Additionally, Janco breaks things down so that employees at large companies are listed separately from those at smaller to mid-size companies. So, here is a quick chart for these three titles for your perusal:

Title	Large Co Salary	Percentage	Small Co Salary	Percentage
Manager - Data Warehouse	$107,226	up 8.2 pct	$56,712	down 4.36 pct
Manager - Database	$99,717	up 2.6 pct	$92,980	up 3.49 pct
Database Specialist	$86,116	up 1.32 pct	$73,856	down 0.6 pct

What can we make of these numbers? Well, it would seem that you should try to work for a BIG company if you want to do data warehousing. Either that, or the data is skewed somehow. Maybe only larger companies are doing anything significant with data warehousing; or maybe, not enough of the better-paid folks from smaller companies responded to the survey. I mean, a $50,000 decrease just for working at a smaller company at the same position seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it?

Also, it looks like DBA managers do well regardless of company size. And if I had to guess as to why database specialists earn less at smaller companies, I think it might have something to do with what DBMSes are being used at those sites. If you recall from the December salary survey, Microsoft SQL Server DBAs earned less than DB2 and Oracle DBAs... and the smaller the company, the better the chance that the DBMS in use is SQL Server.

What do you think? Are these salaries "within range" of your expectations?