Network Administrator Salary Range Guide (SOC 15-1244)

Why Your Network Administrator Salary Range Needs a Defensible Foundation

Your IT team's posting closes Friday. You need a salary range in the listing — not because it sounds progressive, but because Colorado, California, Washington, New York, Illinois, and several other states now legally require it, each with its own penalty structure. The number you post is not just a recruiting signal; it is the figure your employment attorney will examine if a complaint is filed, and the figure your employees will quietly benchmark against the moment it appears online.

For network and computer systems administrators — classified under SOC 15-1244 in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard Occupational Classification — the national wage spread is wide: from around $60,000 at the entry level to more than $150,000 at the senior end (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024). Posting "competitive salary" where a range is required is a violation. Posting a range you cannot document is a risk you are absorbing unnecessarily.

By the end of this guide, you will know exactly where the BLS OEWS wage data for SOC 15-1244 comes from, how to convert those percentile figures into a range your HR team can defend, and how to adjust for your geography before the posting goes live.

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What SOC 15-1244 Covers — and Why the Classification Matters

SOC 15-1244, Network and Computer Systems Administrators, covers the professionals who install, configure, and maintain an organization's local area networks, wide area networks, intranets, and internet systems. The title is broad by design: a network administrator managing on-premise switches and firewalls for a 75-person professional services firm and a systems administrator overseeing cloud infrastructure for a regional healthcare operator may both fall under this code.

The classification matters for pay-transparency compliance for two reasons. First, several state laws explicitly tie wage-disclosure requirements to job function, not job title — so the SOC code is the defensible anchor when a regulator asks how you determined what "similar work" pays. Second, the BLS OEWS program produces wage estimates at the SOC level, which means any salary range you build from BLS data needs to map cleanly to the right code. A mismatch between the work performed and the code cited is a documentation gap.

If the role also involves significant software or cloud-platform development, review our Software Developer Salary Range guide to confirm which SOC better reflects the primary duties. If you need a primer on reading and applying BLS data generally, see How to Read BLS OEWS Data before continuing.

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The BLS OEWS National Wage Picture for SOC 15-1244

The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program produces employment and wage estimates annually for over 800 occupations, drawn from a sample of approximately 1.1 million establishments (BLS, May 2025). The estimates are reported at five percentile points — the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th, and 90th — for national, state, and metropolitan-area geographies. We recommend always verifying the current release at bls.gov/oes before building a range, because figures update annually.

For SOC 15-1244 — Network and Computer Systems Administrators, the most recent national figures in our library are from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024 reference period:

Percentile	Annual Wage (National)
10th percentile	$60,320
Median (50th percentile)	$96,800
90th percentile	$150,320

Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, SOC 15-1244, May 2024. Figures are national estimates. Always confirm the current release at bls.gov/oes.

A note on percentiles: a percentile is the wage below which a given share of workers in that occupation earn. The median — the 50th percentile — means half of network administrators nationally earned below $96,800 and half earned above it. The 10th percentile ($60,320) represents the lower end of the distribution; the 90th percentile ($150,320) represents the upper end. Neither is a floor or a ceiling — they are reference points that let you position your range relative to the market.

The library does not carry 25th or 75th percentile figures for this occupation; this guide will not supply them. To access those control points, download the May 2024 (or the most current available) OEWS national or state-level data file directly from bls.gov/oes.

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Building a Network Administrator Salary Range from the Data

A salary range — also called a pay band — has three control points: a minimum, a midpoint, and a maximum. The midpoint is typically anchored to your target market position (often the median, though some employers target the 60th or 75th percentile to compete for talent). The range spread — how wide the band is, expressed as a percentage of the midpoint — reflects how much the role can grow within the grade before a promotion is required.

Here is a worked example anchored to the BLS national median for SOC 15-1244. This is teaching the arithmetic, not asserting a recommended range — your actual range depends on your geography, your competitive position, and your compensation philosophy.

Worked example (median-anchored, ±20% spread):

• Midpoint: $96,800 (BLS national median, May 2024)
• Range spread: ±20% around the midpoint (a 40% total spread, typical for individual-contributor technical roles)
• Minimum: $96,800 × 0.80 = $77,440
• Maximum: $96,800 × 1.20 = $116,160

A broader spread — say ±25%, producing a band of roughly $72,600–$121,000 — accommodates wider variation in experience level within a single grade. A tighter spread — ±15% — is appropriate when the role is narrowly scoped and experience variation is limited.

Geographic adjustment is not optional. National BLS medians are population-weighted averages across every metro and rural area in the country. A network administrator in the San Francisco Bay Area, metropolitan New York, or the Seattle metro earns substantially more than the national median; one in a mid-sized Midwestern market may earn somewhat less. The OEWS program publishes state-level and metropolitan-area estimates — use those figures, not the national figure, as your midpoint anchor whenever you are posting for a role tied to a specific location. For a framework on applying location adjustments, see Geographic Pay Differentials Explained.

For multi-state remote roles — where the posting triggers transparency requirements in Colorado, Washington, California, or New York simultaneously — you will need a defensible position on which geography governs the range, or a range wide enough to reflect the full market spectrum. How to Build a Salary Range covers the methodology for those scenarios.

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Pay-Transparency Posting Requirements That Apply to This Role

If your organization posts a network administrator or systems administrator opening in any of the following jurisdictions, a salary range is legally required in the posting. Requirements, effective dates, and penalties vary — confirm the current rule with the issuing authority or your employment counsel before posting.

• Colorado — Equal Pay for Equal Work Act: employers with at least one Colorado employee must include a pay range in all postings. Fines range from $500 to $10,000 per violation (Colorado General Assembly, SB19-085). Verify current requirements with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE).
• California — SB 1162 / Labor Code §432.3: employers with 15 or more employees must include a pay scale. Civil penalties range from $100 to $10,000 per violation (California Legislative Information, 2022). Each posting without a range can be treated as a separate violation. Verify with the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR).
• Washington State — Equal Pay and Opportunities Act: employers with 15 or more employees must disclose a wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits. Statutory damages of $100–$5,000 per applicant plus attorney fees; L&I civil penalty up to $500 for a first violation and up to $1,000 for subsequent violations (Epstein Becker Green, 2025). Verify with Washington Labor & Industries (L&I).
• New York State — Labor Law §194-B: private employers with 4 or more employees must include a salary or salary range in postings for roles performed at least in part in New York, effective September 17, 2023. Penalties escalate up to $3,000 per violation (NY State DOL, 2023). Verify with the NY State Department of Labor.
• Illinois — HB 3129 amending the Equal Pay Act: employers with 15 or more employees must include pay scale and benefits in postings, effective January 1, 2025. Penalties escalate $500 / $2,500 / $10,000 for first, second, and third or subsequent violations (Illinois DOL, 2025). Verify with the Illinois Department of Labor.
• Washington, D.C. — Wage Transparency Omnibus Amendment Act, effective June 30, 2024: private employers of any size with at least one D.C. employee must disclose minimum and maximum projected pay in all postings. Civil fines of $1,000 / $5,000 / $20,000 for first, second, and subsequent violations (Cooley LLP, 2024). Verify with the D.C. Office of Human Rights.

As of 2026, 16 states plus Washington D.C. mandate salary disclosure in job postings, with Delaware joining in 2027 (Paycor / Nesco Resource, 2026). Network and systems administrator roles — which are often posted nationally or for remote-eligible positions — are frequently among the first a multi-state employer must reconcile across overlapping requirements.

For the full landscape of applicable state laws, see the Occupation Salary Guides Hub or our state-specific compliance resources.

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Documenting the Range You Post

Posting the range is step one. Documenting your methodology is step two — the one most SMB HR teams skip, and the one that matters most if a complaint is filed.

A defensible documentation package for a network administrator posting includes:

1. The BLS OEWS source file — the exact dataset (national, state, or metro), the release year, and the percentile(s) used as anchors. Download the file and retain it.
2. The range-spread decision — a brief written record of why you chose the spread you chose (e.g., "±20% to reflect a single grade spanning junior-to-senior network admin experience in the Seattle metro, anchored to the BLS OEWS May 2024 Washington State median").
3. The geographic-adjustment rationale — if you deviated from the national figure, note which BLS geography you used and why.
4. The posting date and version — a record of what you posted, where, and when. Illinois requires employers to retain pay-scale information and the posting for each position for five years (Greenberg Traurig / Illinois DOL, 2024).

If you are building ranges in a spreadsheet today, the Salary Range Builder Workbook (Excel) structures this documentation step directly into the build process — each range tab outputs a summary record that captures your BLS source, your spread inputs, and your geographic-adjustment rationale in a format you can email to counsel or attach to a compliance file.

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Start Building a Defensible Range Today

A network administrator salary range built on BLS OEWS data — anchored to the right SOC code, adjusted for your geography, and documented before the posting goes live — is a range you can defend. One built on a job-seeker salary estimator or a rough industry sense cannot be.

Salary Range Builder gives HR generalists and people operations leads at 10–200-person companies a self-serve way to build, document, and format pay-transparent salary ranges from BLS OEWS data without a dedicated comp analyst or an enterprise software contract. See pricing and start your 14-day free trial — no credit card required to begin.

For methodology context before you build, How to Build a Salary Range walks through the full range-construction process, and the Occupation Salary Guides Hub links every SOC-level guide in this series.