DevOps experts command high salaries as adoption pivots to 'as a Service' model

Dive Brief:

DevOps practitioners and managers are commanding high salaries in the U.S, with 64% of survey respondents earning salaries higher than $100,000, according to a Puppet survey of more than 3,000 technology professionals about DevOps salaries. Almost 20% earn between $150,000 and $250,000.
As DevOps is gaining traction in the enterprise, department structures are changing. More than half of those surveyed globally work in IT, with 21% working on IT operations teams and 14% working on DevOps teams, according to the survey. More than one-third of practitioners work in development or engineering, with 15% dedicated to DevOps teams in the department.
Salaries for managers are shifting downward, according to the report. In the U.S., 72% of managers report earning more than $100,000 compared to 85% last year. However, managers bring in higher salaries at larger organizations and when serving as management in engineering departments, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

High salaries in DevOps is not a unique occurrence in the well-paid technology sector. Technologists regularly bring in six-figure salaries, with special attention paid to experts in emerging technologies.

DevOps is coming up on its 10-year anniversary, and more industries across sectors are working to weave in the methodology. A marriage between development and operations eases technology implementation practices in the enterprise.

But changing how organizations adopt and use technology is a challenge, centered around breaking habits that slow production. In some instances, organizations are hesitant to invoke real change, reliant on the vendor landscape to augment entrenched behavior.

What has emerged is more organizations are implementing DevOps as a Service, according to TJ Randall, VP of Customer Success at XebiaLabs.

DevOps is "people, process, tools," and when you run it as a service, businesses can take the question of tools out of the equation, Randall said, in an interview with CIO Dive. If an organization is running Java code, with DevOps as a Service they no longer have to think about deployment and can start to address core process, security compliance or getting additional reporting.

DevOps as a Service creates a centralized DevOps hub in the enterprise, a place where experts can set implementation standards for a company. Such an offering introduces a new hiring need, Randall said. Companies will need more technical DevOps practitioners who can build out and support as a service offerings.