This year, more than 4600 technology professionals from around the world took the fifth annual State of DevOps survey, presented by Puppet and DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA).

This year’s report shows again that DevOps practices such as continuous delivery and automated testing contribute to both IT team performance and an organisation’s overall productivity and performance.

DevOps salary data

In addition to DevOps practices and performance, Puppet also looked at salary data. This year’s survey also collected data on the number of servers and employees at respondents’ organisations.

Since most respondents are based in the United States, Europe, or Asia – approximately 50% in the United States alone – much of the salary analysis is focused on these regions.

Key findings from the report

• IT practitioners earn more in the United States, Australia/New Zealand and Canada. The most common salary range in the United States is US$100,000 – US$125,000, and in the Australia/New Zealand region and Canada it’s US$75,000 – US$100,000.
• Salaries for IT practitioners in the United States jumped up this year. The most common salary range moved from US$75,000-US$100,000 in 2015 to US$100,000-US$125,000 in 2016, and the percentage earning more than US$100,000 increased from 47% to 58%.
• Sysadmins aren’t making as much as their practitioner peers. The most common salary range for sysadmins in the United States is US$75,000 – US$100,000 and 34% earn more than US$100,000, while the four other most common IT practitioner job titles are most likely to make US$100,000 – US$125,000 and over half earn more than US$100,000.
• IT practitioners earn more at organisations with more servers. The most common salary range at organisations with more than 5,000 servers is US$100,000 – US$125,000, while it’s US$75,000 – US$100,000 at organisations with fewer than 5,000.
• Manager salaries are almost off the chart. The percentage of DevOps managers in the US earning more than US$150,000 jumped from 26% in 2015 to 43% this year.

DevOps – IT practitioner salaries by gender

More than 99% of the 2016 survey’s practitioners reported their gender, up 1% from 2015’s initial gender survey. More than 94% of them identified as male, down from 95% in 2015, and a fraction of 1% selected “Other.”

Because of the small sample sizes beyond men (out of 2,808 practitioners globally and 1,358 in the United States, 156 and 101 identified as women), the survey cannot confidently compare salaries by gender in detail.

The data shows that 95% of practitioners in the United States – both male and female – made US$50,000 or more per year. There were no gender lines in the practitioner group’s jump from the US$75,000 – US$100,000 salary band to the US$100,000 – US$125,000 band.

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.