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Comment by metaphor | Hacker News Reader

> The average annual salary for a systems engineer working for the U.S. government with a security clearance is about $119,000...

In other words, the average USG systems engineer is roughly a GS-14 Step 6 based on 2017 Rest-of-US locality...GTFO with this garbage.

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It does seem high. I don't know where they get this info, because these are all contractors, so the only info the govt has is how much it pays the labor hire company (e.g. Booz). There are no govt public service employees on a special 'cyber' pay grade. But a special IT stream would make sense - like doctors and lawyers. Otherwise the skills haemorrhage will continue.

Most with that high of clearance are working in the DC area, one of the highest locality pay in the country

For USG systems engineers, clearance level has zero impact on compensation; you either have it or you don't.

> Most with that high of clearance are working in the DC area...

For a systems engineer based on 2017 DC locality, that's lead-/supervisory-level GS-14 Step 3, or working-level GS-13 at the tail end of a long career in government...hardly an average.

Note that many of the systems engineers are not working directly for the government.

To be sure, the article states, working for the U.S. government, not working for a private company contracted by the U.S. government.

If the latter, then US$120k as a mean sounds about right, anecdotally based on friends who work in that part of industry.

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