DEVOPSdigest

Companies are placing a greater value on high performing IT professionals as IT demands continue to escalate. According to Puppet's fourth annual DevOps Salary Report, IT professionals overseeing large environments — typically 500 servers or more — command the highest salaries, between $100,000 and $125,000, as compared to those overseeing environments of 100-500 servers, with salaries between $75,000 and $100,000, and those overseeing environments of 100 servers or less, with salaries between $50,000 and $75,000.

The report finds that salaries also vary by the degree of manual configuration management. Practitioners who reported their manual configuration management at less than 25 percent are likely to earn more than practitioners whose configuration management is more manual — that is, less automated. Of the practitioners whose configuratiion management is less than 25 percent manual, 61 percent earn $100,000 or more (compared to 55 percent for practitioners with more manual configuration management) and 39 percent earn less than $75,000 (compared to 45 percent for those who exceed 25 percent manual configuration management).

As more enterprises fundamentally change the way they deliver IT services and software to users around the globe in support of digital transformation efforts, they are also challenged with finding the right talent to help increase deployment speed and innovation. To address these issues, they are adopting new processes, technologies and cultural norms to keep pace with the rapid rate of change. This year's salary report reveals that organizations are investing more heavily in talent and positions that better support DevOps as they rush to transform their businesses and remain competitive.

Other key findings revealed in the 2017 DevOps Salary Report include:

■ The most common job titles reflected are DevOps engineer and software engineer, accounting for 29 percent of respondents. Other respondents included architects (10 percent), system engineer (8 percent) and system administrator (7 percent).

■ Organizations with the most servers pay their IT employees the highest salaries, with IT professionals more likely to earn $100,000 or more if they work for an organization with more than 500 servers.

■ IT practitioners in the U.S. continue to earn higher salaries than their counterparts around the world, with the most common annual salary being in the $100,000-$125,000 range for the second year running.

■ IT manager salaries have fallen in the U.S. and are now commensurate with the most common range for U.S. IT practitioners, $100,000-$125,000, compared to the most common salary in 2016 of $150,000 and higher.

Methodology: The salary report is based on data collected from 3,200 professionals across six continents.