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In short

Of the 213 platform engineer roles at tech companies in the 90 days to Oct 16, 2026, 77 are senior, more than at any other level. Site reliability engineer roles share 8 of the 11 required skills listed for platform engineer roles; no other role shares more.

Levels in order

Each level counts its own roles. A median shows only where 50 or more of that level’s roles state pay, and each is taken over a different set of roles.

LevelRolesMedian stated payAt least half ask for
Junior platform engineer13 rolesNot shown2+ years, 7 of 12
Mid-level platform engineer46 rolesNot shown3+ years, 42 of 43
Senior platform engineer77 rolesNot shown5+ years, 54 of 65 (83%)
Staff platform engineer28 rolesNot shown8+ years, 12 of 22
Principal platform engineer12 rolesNot shown10+ years, 6 of 12
Lead platform engineer6 rolesNot shown10+ years, 1 of 2

Lead titles say who leads a team, not a step above principal, so lead is listed last and not compared with the level before it.

What rises at the next level

No two neighbouring levels have 50 or more roles whose requirements we read, so no level is compared with the next yet.

Roles closest to platform engineer, by shared skills

Compared over each role’s most-required skills, umbrella labels such as “Programming” left out. The more skills two roles share, the shorter the move between them.

  • Site reliability engineer219 roles

    8 shared: Terraform, AWS, Python, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Go, Networking

    Median stated pay: $184k a year

  • DevOps engineer168 roles

    8 shared: Terraform, AWS, Python, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Docker, Azure

    Median stated pay: $152.5k a year

  • Software architect87 roles

    7 shared: AWS, Python, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, CI/CD, GCP, Azure

  • Security engineer392 roles

    6 shared: AWS, Python, Kubernetes, GCP, Go, Azure

    Median stated pay: $197.5k a year

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How we count: 213 roles from 179 employers in the 90 days to Oct 16, 2026, each role counted once however many boards post it. Methodology