DevOps Engineer
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
A DevOps Engineer works with software engineers and system operators to develop, build and install new technology systems and manage code releases. Participates in strategic project planning; tracks changes in projects and guides project team work as new systems are deployed. Identifies and fixes problems and provides system maintenance.
Job Outlook
There were 848 DevOps Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 24465 in the United States.
In combination with other careers in the Software Developer / Engineer industry, which includes the DevOps Engineer career, the following graph shows the number of people employed for each year since 2016:
Salary
Many new DevOps Engineer jobs have salaries estimated to be in the following ranges, based on the requirements and responsibilities listed in job postings from the past year.
National
The average estimated salary in the United States for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $128,759.
State
The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $126,155.
Percentiles represent the percentage that is lower than the value. For example, 25% of estimated salaries for DevOps Engineer postings in the United States in the past year were lower than $117,936.
Education and Experience
Posted DevOps Engineer jobs typically require the following level of education. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.
| Education Level | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Associate's Degree | 0% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 55.7% |
| Master's Degree | 14.52% |
| Doctoral Degree | 3.4% |
| Other | 3.06% |
Posted DevOps Engineer jobs typically require the following number of years of experience. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Years of Experience | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0 to 2 years | 9.6% |
| 3 to 5 years | 49.11% |
| 6 to 8 years | 26.63% |
| 9+ years | 14.66% |
Skills
Below are listings of the most common general and specialized skills DevOps Engineer positions expect applicants to have as well as the most common skills that distinguish individuals from their peers. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is also listed.
Baseline Skills
A skill that is required across a broad range of occupations, including this one.
- Troubleshooting (Problem Solving) (42.68%)
- Communication (35.72%)
- Management (31.32%)
- Operations (30.71%)
- Problem Solving (28.27%)
- Leadership (11.92%)
- Innovation (10.03%)
- Information Technology (9.37%)
- Collaboration (8.99%)
- Reliability (8.83%)
Defining Skills
A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.
- DevOps (91.89%)
- CI/CD (67.82%)
- Automation (62.48%)
- Amazon Web Services (55.95%)
- Python (Programming Language) (59.63%)
- Kubernetes (55.77%)
- Terraform (50.09%)
- Docker (Software) (45.47%)
- Scripting (46.64%)
- Jenkins (39.98%)
- Ansible (38.24%)
- Microsoft Azure (38.84%)
- Computer Science (37.96%)
- Agile Methodology (31.18%)
- Linux (30.69%)
- Git (Version Control System) (30.19%)
- Bash (Scripting Language) (32.33%)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (35.82%)
- Continuous Integration (28.12%)
- Software Development (23.92%)
- Scalability (32.33%)
- Java (Programming Language) (21.22%)
- Github (25.66%)
- Software Engineering (20.78%)
- Configuration Management (20.58%)
- Gitlab (22.1%)
- AWS CloudFormation (15.62%)
- Puppet (Configuration Management Tool) (11.95%)
- Progress Chef (Software) (8.08%)
- Grafana (13.54%)
- Prometheus (Software) (12.77%)
- Artifactory (6.91%)
- Infrastructure Automation (11.38%)
Necessary Skills
A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.
- Windows PowerShell (20.47%)
- Version Control (20.51%)
- Containerization (24.78%)
- Azure DevOps (17.63%)
- Cloud Infrastructure (19.5%)
- JIRA (15.37%)
- SQL (Programming Language) (13.22%)
- Workflow Management (18.8%)
- Microservices (13.34%)
- Continuous Delivery (11.83%)
- DevSecOps (13.56%)
- Go (Programming Language) (13.38%)
- JavaScript (Programming Language) (9.99%)
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (11.27%)
- Tooling (10.2%)
- Scrum (Software Development) (9.6%)
- Application Programming Interface (API) (11.19%)
- Debugging (10.63%)
- Test Automation (11.57%)
- Splunk (9.31%)
- Ruby (Programming Language) (8.77%)
- Software Development Life Cycle (10.54%)
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (10.85%)
- Bitbucket (7.62%)
- Operating Systems (8.57%)
- Cloud Services (8.81%)
- Unix (8.64%)
- Continuous Deployment (9.2%)
- Programming Languages (8.5%)
- Atlassian Confluence (8.44%)
- Application Deployment (9.85%)
- Systems Development Life Cycle (7.6%)
- System Administration (8.52%)
- Apache Maven (5.69%)
- PostgreSQL (7.67%)
- C# (Programming Language) (5.68%)
- Node.js (Javascript Library) (5.16%)
Distinguishing Skills
A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.
- Amazon CloudWatch (6.63%)
- Linux Administration (6.74%)
- SonarQube (5.91%)
- DevOps Engineering (6.19%)
- Datadog (5.77%)
- YAML (5.88%)
- Cloud DevOps (4.09%)
- AWS Devops (4.22%)
- Groovy (Programming Language) (3.26%)
- Build Automation (3.7%)
- Argo CD (5.1%)
- Circleci (3.73%)
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is listed.
- Cloud DevOps (4.44%)
- AWS CloudFormation (16.98%)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (38.93%)
- DevOps Engineering (6.73%)
- Build Automation (4.02%)
- Cloud Infrastructure (21.2%)
- Computer Science (41.26%)
- Linux (33.36%)
- Scalability (35.14%)
- Python (Programming Language) (64.82%)
- SonarQube (6.42%)
- Terraform (54.44%)
Alternative Job Titles
Sometimes employers post jobs with DevOps Engineer skills but a different job title. Some common alternative job titles include:
- Azure DevOps Engineer
- Cloud DevOps Engineer
- DevSecOps Engineer
- AWS DevOps Engineer
- Lead DevOps Engineer
- DevOps Software Developer
- DevOps Infrastructure Engineer
- Site Reliability Engineering Manager
- DevOps Release Engineer
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring occupations with similar skills, you may want to research the following job titles. Note that we only list occupations that have at least one corresponding NC State Online and Distance Education program.
Common Employers
Here are the employers that have posted the most DevOps Engineer jobs in the past year along with how many they have posted.
United States
- Motion Recruitment (429)
- Insight Global (384)
- Northrop Grumman (324)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (252)
- Capital One (238)
- Eliassen Group (236)
- Booz Allen Hamilton (234)
- Ford (222)
- Leidos (200)
- GAF Materials Corporation (195)
North Carolina
- Northrop Grumman (27)
- Genesis10 (20)
- Insight Global (19)
- Actalent (15)
- General Dynamics (14)
- Cognizant Technology Solutions (14)
- Motion Recruitment (14)
- Truist Financial (12)
- Zachary Piper Solutions (12)
- Allegis Group (10)
NC State Programs Relevant to this Career
If you are interested in preparing for a career in this field, the following NC State Online and Distance Education programs offer a great place to start!
All wages, job posting statistics, employment trend projections, and information about skill desirability on this page represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is provided by and downloaded regularly from Lightcast. For more information about how Lightcast gathers data and what it represents, see Lightcast Data: Basic Overview on Lightcast's Knowledge Base website.