AWS Jobs in the USA: Roles, Salaries & How to Apply

November 14, 2024 February 3, 2026 by Jennifer Walsh in Tutorials 19 min read

AWS Jobs in the USA: Opportunities and Insights

The AWS job market in the USA has gotten complicated with all the new role titles, salary inflation, remote work debates, and certification requirements flying around. As someone who has been working in the US cloud market for years and has navigated multiple job changes, I learned everything there is to know about finding and landing AWS positions in the States. Today, I will share it all with you.

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The US market for AWS professionals is unlike anywhere else in the world. The salaries are higher, the competition is stiffer, the interviews are more rigorous, and the opportunities are more abundant. Whether you’re a US-based professional looking to break in or advance, or an international candidate eyeing the American market, the landscape is worth understanding in detail.

Understanding AWS and Its Scope

Probably should have led with this section, honestly. AWS dominates the US cloud market with roughly a third of all cloud infrastructure spending going to Amazon’s platform. That market share translates directly into jobs. Every company that runs on AWS needs people to design, build, manage, and optimize their cloud infrastructure. And in the US, that’s a LOT of companies.

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AWS DevOps Engineer

DevOps engineers automate everything — infrastructure provisioning, application deployment, monitoring, and incident response. You’re building CI/CD pipelines with CodePipeline or Jenkins, writing Infrastructure as Code with Terraform or CloudFormation, and managing container deployments with ECS or EKS. This role is in massive demand. Salaries range from $120,000 to $190,000.

Cloud Security Engineer

Security-focused AWS roles have exploded in demand over the past few years. You’re implementing IAM policies, configuring GuardDuty, managing Security Hub findings, setting up WAF rules, and ensuring compliance with frameworks like SOC 2, HIPAA, or FedRAMP. These roles often pay a premium — $130,000 to $200,000+ — because finding people who know both security and cloud well is genuinely difficult.

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• San Francisco/Seattle: Highest pay, highest cost of living. Tech companies here set the salary ceiling for the industry.
• New York City: Nearly as high as the West Coast, driven by financial services and media companies with massive AWS footprints.
• Austin/Denver/Raleigh: Growing tech hubs with strong salaries and more reasonable cost of living. These markets have gotten very competitive over the past few years.
• Washington DC/Northern Virginia: Government and defense contractors create strong demand for AWS professionals with security clearances. The us-east-1 region is literally located here, and so are many of the companies that rely on it.
• Remote: Most companies that offer remote AWS roles pay based on a “national band” that falls between coastal and inland rates. Expect 10-20% less than SF rates but significantly more than traditional local rates in most areas.

How to Apply and Stand Out

The US AWS job market is competitive but navigable. Here’s my practical advice for standing out:

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Jennifer Walsh

Author & Expert

Senior Cloud Solutions Architect with 12 years of experience in AWS, Azure, and GCP. Jennifer has led enterprise migrations for Fortune 500 companies and holds AWS Solutions Architect Professional and DevOps Engineer certifications. She specializes in serverless architectures, container orchestration, and cloud cost optimization. Previously a senior engineer at AWS Professional Services.

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