San Francisco is the global capital of cloud infrastructure, with 9,200 FY2024 cloud engineer H1B filings and a median wage of $195,000 -- 63% above national. GCP, Salesforce, Databricks, and Cloudflare anchor a market where cloud engineers directly build the platforms other engineers use globally. California's 13.3% top marginal tax rate is the primary financial drag.
| Role | Median |
|---|---|
| Cloud Engineer L3 | $162,000 |
| Senior Cloud Eng L4 | $205,000 |
| Staff Cloud Eng L5 | $248,000 |
| Cloud Architect | $235,000 |
| Principal Architect | $285,000 |
Source: DOL LCA disclosures, FY2024.
| Employer | Median Wage |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud GCP | $225,000 |
| Salesforce / Heroku | $212,000 |
| Splunk / Cisco | $205,000 |
| HashiCorp | $215,000 |
| Cloudflare | $218,000 |
| Databricks | $228,000 |