Remuneration benchmarks
Cloud & Infrastructure Salary Guide
Australian benchmark base salaries and candidate daily contract rates across support, systems, network, cloud, platform and infrastructure leadership roles.
| Role Title | Permanent Salary | Contract Rate / day | Male | Female |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service Desk/Desktop Support – Level 1–3 | $55k – $90k | $300 – $650 | 75% | 25% |
| Application Support Analyst | $80k – $115k | $350 – $750 | 64% | 36% |
| System Administrator | $75k – $100k | $400 – $850 | 78% | 22% |
| System Engineer | $110k – $135k | $450 – $900 | 86% | 14% |
| Network Engineer | $90k – $110k | $450 – $750 | 86% | 14% |
| Network Architect | $175k – $190k | $1,100 – $1,400 | 92% | 8% |
| Cloud Engineer (AWS/Azure/GCP) | $120k – $140k | $500 – $950 | 82% | 18% |
| Platform Engineer | $160k – $180k | $750 – $900 | 83% | 17% |
| DevOps Engineer | $140k – $170k | $800 – $1,000 | 81% | 19% |
| Site Reliability Engineer | $160k – $190k | $800 – $1,200 | 83% | 17% |
| Cloud Architect | $170k – $220k | $1,000 – $1,300 | 86% | 14% |
| Automation Engineer (IaC, Terraform, Ansible) | $105k – $130k | $700 – $850 | 82% | 18% |
| Infrastructure Manager | $155k – $190k | $850 – $1,100 | 84% | 16% |
Salary methodology. All figures represent benchmark base salaries, excluding superannuation, and candidate contract/day rates. Benchmarks reflect averages across different business sizes and industries.
Australian hiring landscape
Market Overview
Over the past 12 months, Australia's cloud and infrastructure market has remained one of the more resilient areas of technology hiring, driven by ongoing cloud migration programs, cyber security investment, data centre expansion, platform modernisation and growing AI adoption. Cloud and infrastructure teams are being asked to do more than keep systems running. Demand has been strongest across financial services, government, utilities, healthcare and enterprise technology organisations, with particular interest in Cloud Engineers, Cloud Architects, Platform Engineers, Infrastructure Managers, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and DevOps professionals who can support scalable, secure and automated environments.
Cloud engineering, platform engineering, DevOps and site reliability remain important capabilities, alongside the infrastructure and network expertise needed to support complex hybrid environments. Cost optimisation, security and operational resilience are also shaping how organisations invest and the skills they prioritise.
Investment is reinforcing the market's long-term direction.
Gartner forecast Australian public cloud spending to reach $33.6 billion in 2026, with Infrastructure-as-a-Service spending projected to grow by 24.1%. At the same time, major data centre commitments and expanding AI infrastructure are increasing the importance of the underlying compute, networking, storage and platform capabilities that make these environments possible. For employers, the challenge is balancing investment in new infrastructure with the specialist skills needed to build, secure and operate it effectively.
Capability outlook
Where Demand Is Growing
Seven capability areas shaping Cloud & Infrastructure hiring across modern, secure and automated environments.
Platform Engineering
DevOps & SRE
Cloud Security
Kubernetes & Containers
Infrastructure as Code
FinOps & Cloud Optimisation
Investment and workforce
Australian Market Insights
Five indicators showing the scale of investment, infrastructure expansion and specialist talent supporting Australia's cloud economy.
+24.1%
Forecast growth in Infrastructure-as-a-Service spending
Gartner forecasts Australian IaaS spending will increase from A$5.7 billion in 2025 to A$7.1 billion in 2026.
Source: Gartner+14.6%
Annual growth in private capital expenditure
Australian private capital expenditure rose 14.6% year on year in the March 2026 quarter, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics identifying investment in data centre equipment, including server racks and processing equipment, as a major driver.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 28 May 2026A$35bn
Funding raised by Australian data centre operators in 2026 so far
The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates data centre operators raised A$35 billion across covered funding markets by September 2026, up from A$24 billion in 2025. This captures the financing behind the expansion, rather than just announced project values.
Source: Reserve Bank of Australia, September 202670,900
Australians employed across Database & Systems Administration and ICT Security occupations
Source: Jobs and Skills AustraliaA$20bn
AWS investment in Australian digital infrastructure
Amazon Web Services announced a further A$20 billion investment over 2025–2029 to expand its Australian infrastructure footprint. The investment includes data centre expansion in Sydney and Melbourne, alongside renewable energy projects supporting its operations.
Source: Austrade / AWS announcementTalent representation
Diversity Snapshot
Average gender representation across the Cloud & Infrastructure professional talent markets included in this guide.
Average gender representation
Male
82.1%
Female
17.9%
Across the Cloud & Infrastructure roles analysed by Tech & Data People, women represent approximately 18% of the talent pool, highlighting a significant gender imbalance across infrastructure engineering, cloud platforms and network architecture.
The data shows a consistent gender gap across operational and specialist technical disciplines, with female representation varying by role:
Support roles
Application Support Analysts have the highest female representation at 36%, followed by Service Desk/Desktop Support at 25%. This contrasts with the more specialised engineering disciplines.
Network and systems architecture
Women represent just 8% of Network Architects, while System Engineers, Network Engineers and Cloud Architects each sit at 14%.
Cloud and platform engineering
Across Cloud, Platform, DevOps, Site Reliability and Automation Engineering, female representation ranges from 17% to 19%, showing a consistent gap across these closely related disciplines.
Infrastructure leadership
Women account for 16% of Infrastructure Managers, suggesting the gender gap persists beyond technical delivery roles into infrastructure leadership.
Source: LinkedIn Talent Insights. These figures relate to gender representation in the relevant professional talent markets and do not represent placements made by Tech & Data People.
Methodology
About the Data
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the current Cloud & Infrastructure recruitment market, with detailed insights into remuneration and hiring trends across Australia.
Drawing on the expertise of our specialist recruiters and advanced data tools, we've compiled key information on salary benchmarks, contract rates and gender distribution. These insights are designed to help employers make informed hiring decisions and support professionals in understanding their market value.
All figures represent benchmark base salaries, excluding superannuation, and candidate day rates. Salary data has been sourced through a combination of specialist recruitment knowledge, historical placement records, industry participation and online data collection, reflecting averages across a range of business sizes and industries.
Gender representation data has been sourced from LinkedIn Talent Insights.