Also called: DBA
Keeps an organization's databases running, backed up, secure, and fast.
You get an alert at 7 a.m. that a database is filling up, fix it, then spend the afternoon testing backup restores. If the database goes down, the whole company stops, so you are the guardian.
BLS median about $104,620 (May 2024).
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor's in IT or CS; vendor certifications (Oracle, Microsoft) common.
Ways in: 4-year college, Certification, On-the-job training. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Information Technology, Computer Science.
Growing slowly. BLS projects slow growth; cloud-managed databases reduce hands-on admin work.
Medium risk in 5 years, high in 10. Cloud databases now patch, back up and tune themselves, so far fewer DBAs are needed to keep them running.
Classes: AP Computer Science A, Computer applications.
Official data: O*NET occupation 15-1242.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.