Brian Suda - 2017 ops salary survey : tools, trends, titles : what pays (and what doesnt) for IT operations and DevOps professionals

More than half of the survey respondents are from the United States. The second largest group (24 percent) are from Western Europe. Aside from that, no region represented more than 5 percent of our sample group. This means that these results are weighted nearly three to one in favor of US and Western European responses and trends. This is important to keep in mind if you work outside of these regions.

Looking at US-based respondents, about 30 percent work in California, 16 percent in the Northeast, and 15 percent in the Midwest. The salaries for these three regions vary widely and seem to reflect costs-of-living differences: California has the highest median salary at $152,000 (and the highest cost of living), followed by the Northeast at $122,000, with the Midwest at $102,000.

Not surprisingly, salaries tend to increase with both age and experience. Those with less than five years experience make around $51,000, whereas those with more than 20 years experience earn a median income of $135,000. Clearly, within our survey cohort, time spent learning the tricks of the trade for automating daily scripts provides the types of skills and experience to take on the complex, difficult, and demanding roles that lead to higher compensation.

As for age, the older you are, the more experience you have probably accrued, which feeds back into the experience factor and an increased salary. Sixty percent of our respondents are under the age of 40 and nearly 90 percent are under the age of 50. The biggest cohort (44 percent) is between the ages of 31 and 40. There were few respondents under age 30only 16 percent.

The gender split was around 8 percent female and 92 percent male. This is similar to what we saw in the Software Development Salary Survey and elsewhere in the computer industry. The median salaries between men and women were nearly the same: men make $99,000, and women $99,400.