Salary Trends for DevOps and Cloud Native Professionals

According to a Glassdoor report surveying over 5,000 salaries, the average base salary for a DevOps engineering role in the US is $103k. Multiple reports and articles on the web classify DevOps as one of the top 10 highest-paying tech jobs. This is because the DevOps discipline requires knowledge across software development, IT operations, and IT system management. However, this diverse knowledge requirement does not have enough professionals with sufficient knowledge to take on the DevOps engineering role. The increasing demand and scarcity of DevOps talent subsequently result in continuous value and high salary offers for professionals who fit in.

There are, however, three main factors that determine how much a DevOps engineer gets paid: the company you work with, geographical location of the company, and experience level.

Generally, companies in the US may offer a more competitive salary for tech roles than other countries worldwide, where the base salary of a professional with the same level of experience may trail at up to 20% less than that of a company in the US.

Top-tier tech companies such as Google, Facebook, or Oracle, offer even more competitive salaries for tech roles than the average because they make more profit than, say, an average startup—and, of course, you have to be highly qualified to get a job in such companies.

While the average DevOps engineer salary in the US is $100k, senior DevOps engineer and Lead DevOps engineer roles can attract up to $130k and $150k in annual base salary.

For the sake of concurrency and conciseness, this article will focus more on the salary of DevOps engineers in an average tech company based in the US with mid-level experience.

A DevOps engineer handles mission-critical tasks, and top-tier tech companies value the input and impact of the practitioners, which prompts them to compensate for the role with a much higher base salary and bonuses than the average.

According to Comparably, an average DevOps engineer at Google earns up to $158k in annual base salary excluding other compensations, bonuses, and shares which may all add up to over $200k in annual gross income.

Based on information available on salary tracking websites such as Glassdoor, Indeed, and Payscale, other top-deck tech companies, also offer a similar base salary for DevOps professionals with the same experience in the US.

Below is the average salary and salary range of DevOps engineers in well-known tech companies, according to Glassdoor.

• At Oracle, a DevOps Engineer earns an average base salary of $113k, while the pay range is around $87k-$159k annually.
• IBM pays an average of $117k with the ranges starting from $67k to $169k
• Facebook offers $128k in annual base salary in the range of $96k -$139k.
• At the range of $105-$182, an average DevOps engineer at Microsoft earns up to $120k in annual base salary.
• Amazon pays an average of $126k, with the lowest at $96k and the highest at $152k per annum.
• Walmart offers an average DevOps salary of $130k at the range of $92-$148k
• Cisco pays in the range of $94-$171k and up to $124k on average.
• Intel offers a competitive salary ranging from $80-$124k at an average of $99k
• Apple pays $148k on average in the range of $102-$200k.

Though the salary information for Walmart, Facebook, and Intel is based on a relatively low amount of data, many of these top tech companies offer even higher base salaries if you're working in a highly valued location like Silicon Valley because of the concentration of tech companies and high-cost of living. Working in New York, LA, or San Francisco may also guarantee you a similar privilege of a salary higher than the average.

Aside from DevOps engineer roles, other cloud-related job roles also command similar salary ranges, higher than the average.

On average, according to information available on Glassdoor, a  Site Reliability Engineer earns $126k while a Linux Administrator and Release Engineers also earn over 80k and 90k in annual base salary, respectively. Also, a 2020 survey by Puppet reports that Platform engineer roles attract an even higher salary than DevOps, with an average of $150K in annual base salary.

Depending on the company, other bonuses and compensations can also drive up the total annual income of a cloud native professional. Compensations and bonuses are made in shares, project bonuses, and other insurance and health benefits.

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