Database Administrator Salary Range

Jenny Physioc:

What is the salary range for your Database Administrator position?  Putting some material together and this information is needed.  Thanks!

I would guess that you won't hear from many DBAs that are willing to post their salary on a forum.  Also, there are plenty of variables like benefits, organization size and budget, years of experience, and location, along with actual position responsibilities, so I'm not sure how helpful the responses will be (not sure how you are using the info).  You might want to check salary surveys.  (I searched and found this one: http://www.cnm.org/Documents/2012-Watkins-Uiberall-NFP-Survey.pdf)  Checking job postings might help too, some of them list the salary range.  I have seen dba positions listed anywhere between $25k and $85k.

Jenny Physioc:

What is the salary range for your Database Administrator position?  Putting some material together and this information is needed.  Thanks!

To get a more accurate answer, one also needs to look past the title "Database Administrator" and compare upon exactly what the job responsibilities and scope entail.  There are two general classifications of responsibilities I've encountered which are both referred to as "database administrators."

There are IT DBAs who are highly trained and specialized stewards of institutional database information who are focused on just the core IT responsibilities of managing databases on servers for the entire institution.  They know little to nothing about your industry or your business practices.  They just manage database creation, table sizing, free space allocation, running statistics, server capacity, batch jobs, and make sure that SQL developers create efficient programs.

Then there are DBAs who are more like information administrators, who manager where and how bits of information for donor records and so forth are housed in an application like Raiser's Edge or Access.  These database administrators will usually know more about your business practices and in-house guidelines for recordkeeping, but don't typically know much about technical needs and specifications.

 The former of these two types of DBAs generally command a much higher salary due to their specialized training, responsibilities, and portability.