Data Administrators manage how organizational data is structured, accessed, governed, and protected — schema management, metadata, access provisioning, lineage, data quality, partnering across IT and business units. The work tends to mix database administration with data governance rigor.
Most days mix data structure work, access management, and governance support — maintaining schemas and metadata, managing data access provisioning, supporting data lineage and cataloging, addressing data quality issues, and partnering with database, application, security, and analytics teams. You're often working in enterprise IT, regulated industries, or data-intensive organizations, and the data governance maturity shapes daily work.
What tends to be harder than people expect is the cross-functional politics of data governance. Different teams want different things from shared data, data quality issues trace back across many sources, and regulatory requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA) add compliance weight. The line between data admin, DBA, and data steward can vary considerably between organizations.
People who tend to thrive here are organized, comfortable with both technical and policy dimensions, patient with consensus-building, and quietly precise about data structure. If you want pure database operations, DBA roles offer that. If you like the organizational craft of how data gets used responsibly across the business, the role offers durable demand in data-intensive enterprises.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Technology roles →Data Administrators manage how organizational data is structured, accessed, governed, and protected — schema management, metadata, access provisioning, lineage, data quality, partnering across IT and business units. The work tends to mix database administration with data governance rigor.
Median pay for a Data Administrator (Data Admin) is about $105K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $57K to $161K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Critical Thinking, Complex Problem Solving, Active Listening, Judgment and Decision Making, and Reading Comprehension.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to decline about 0.7% through 2034, with roughly 73,180 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Data Operations Director, Data Center Product Director, and Clinical Data Management Director (CDM Director).
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