Who’s winning in DevOps? Americans and Brits, according to Puppet Salary Report

Who’s winning in DevOps? Americans and Brits, according to Puppet Salary Report
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Salaries for DevOps workers are continuing to go up, but if you think there’s a quick way to upskill yourself into a cushier gig, you’re probably mistaken.

Puppet’s Fifth DevOps Salary report, covering 3,000 self-declared DevOps pros, showed the US topping the salary charts, followed by the UK.

Taking both managers and practitioners into account, 64 per cent of US respondents were pulling in over $100,000, with 4 per cent pulling in more than $250,000 while 31 per cent of DevOps types in the UK were pulling in over $100,000, with 3 per cent breaching the $250,000 mark. The figures for Asia and Europe were 28 per cent and 19 per cent respectively.

A whacking 55 per cent of US practitioners were earning $100,000 or more, with another 29 per cent being in the $75,000 to $100,000 bracket. In the UK, the figures were 18 per cent and 27 per cent respectively .For Asia and Europe, the equivalents were 11 per cent and 7 per cent respectively earning more than $100,000. The Europe-wide figures were skewed by lower salaries in the East.

Breaking the figures down by industry, retail was the most lucrative individual sector, and larger companies tended to pay better – as they have more positions, and more complex challenges to grapple with.

Another way to bump up your salary? Look for an organisation with strong “senior leadership support” for DevOps.

Puppet’s director of product marketing, Alanna Brown, said a prime reason for the US’ higher salaries is that the DevOps market is simply more mature there, meaning companies are already convinced of the benefits, are happy to pay accordingly, but still face something of a skills shortage.

We suspect some mega salaries in certain regions on either coast might also skew the figures, but the figures aren’t broken to that degree. However, they do show that DevOps workers in the US technology sector fare better than their overseas counterparts, with 57 per cent making over $100,000 compared to 39 per cent elsewhere.

Brown said the UK’s premium over Europe and Asia could be partly down to a skills gap, though she added “I don’t know if that’s real or perceived.”

But if you were thinking a crash course in DevOps will give you a sudden salary bump, you might be disappointed.  “Noone who is a serious practitioner in DevOps takes this seriously,” Brown said.

Anyone looking for a serious (high paying) DevOps job would need to show “concrete experience with a specific set of skills, and certain tech stacks” as well as “proven ability to work cross functionally”. “Culture” are a large part of any DevOps migration, said Brown, but “it’s the soft skills that are really hard to suss out.”

Brown said Puppet itself was steering away from pushing accreditation, and focusing on encouraging customers to use its Insights product to focus customers on how they DevOps-up their software lifecycles.

You can access the report, in exchange for your email address, here.