Attention, DevOps workers: If you’re seeking the best-paid position, don’t answer to the title “system administrator.” Though the jobs may carry identical responsibilities, a system administrator most often makes $75,000-$100,000 a year in the U.S., as compared to a “systems developer or engineer,” “DevOps engineer,” “software developer or engineer” or “architect (excluding cloud, infrastructure and systems architect),” who most often make $100,000-$125,000.
That’s according to the fifth annual State of DevOps survey from Puppet, released and freely downloadable today. DevOps refers to the confluence of software development and IT operations, often oriented toward cloud computing.
Fully 43 percent of U.S. IT managers this year will earn $150,000 a year or more, up from 26 percent last year, according to poll of more than 4,600 technology professionals worldwide. The U.S. is the best place to work in DevOps, with both IT practitioners and managers earning more than their counterparts elsewhere — most commonly $100,000 to $125,000 for practitioners and $150,000 or more for managers.
U.S. practitioners are mostly like to earn $100,000 if they’re working in the technology, media/entertainment, retail/consumer/e-commerce or finance industries. Organizations with more than 10,000 servers are most likely to pay salaries of $150,000 or more. The worst place in the world to work in IT is Latin America and the Caribbean, where the biggest group of practitioners (42 percent) earn less than $25,000 a year. Eastern Europe is nearly as bad, with 40 percent earning less than $25,000.
The study defines “IT practitioner” to include job titles such as system administrator, cloud developer or engineer, software developer or engineer, and cloud or infrastructure architect.
In the U.S., the biggest group of practitioners (29 percent) are earning $100,000 to $124,000 a year. The largest group of managers (43 percent) are earning $150,000 or more.
This year’s survey let respondents choose their own job titles rather than selecting from a list, which made it impossible to compare 2016 salaries with those from past years, Puppet said.
