In this Kubernetes and DevOps job market blog, we will look into the top DevOps tools, popular certifications, kubernetes job market, DevOps job trends, Salary insights, remote work stats, and what companies were looking for in Q4 2024.
The current size of the global DevOps market stands at 13.2 Billion USD, and forecasts suggest it will reach 81.1 billion by 2033. Gartner also indicates by 2027, 80% of the organisations will have introduced a DevOps platform in their development pipeline.
If you’d like to participate in the trend and land a DevOps job in 2025, it wouldn’t hurt to know what it takes to get one, what salary ranges are being offered, and how remote-friendly these jobs are.
Let’s find answers to the above questions (and perhaps more) by analysing the insights from Kube Careers’ State of the Kubernetes job market report for 2024 – one of the most condensed datasets in the cloud computing domain.
For their job trends report, Kube Careers scrapped through more than 25,000 jobs, meticulously filtering these down to a dataset of 4850 jobs which fulfilled their integral criteria.
That all jobs must require Kubernetes experience, should mention clear salary ranges, and must not be listed via recruitment agencies.
With the introductions out of the way, let’s get some answers.
Top Tools for DevOps Engineers
In the report, the following DevOps tools were mentioned in the job descriptions.
- Languages: Python (56%), Go (30%), Shell (18%) – Scripting & automation skills
- CI/CD: Jenkins (35%), GitLab (28%), GitHub Actions (11%) – Pipeline automation essentials
- Containers: Docker (59%), Kubernetes (100%), Helm (9%) – Deployment & orchestration must-haves
- Monitoring: Grafana (20%), Prometheus (19%), Datadog (11%) – System reliability tools
Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Prometheus, Grafana, Python, and Go make up the in-demand tech stack for DevOps Engineers
Popular Certifications
Cloud certifications top the list. Overall, only 12% of jobs mention the need for certifications.
DevOps Positions are Among the Most Popular Roles in the Kubernetes Job Market
Out of the 4850 jobs Kube Careers published in 2024:
- 2033 (41%) were Software Engineer roles.
- 499 (10%) were DevOps Engineer roles.
- These were followed by 405 (8.35%) Platform Engineer, 291 (6%) Site Reliability Engineer, and 206 (4.24%) DevSecOps Engineer roles.
In fact, DevOps roles were popular in the Kubernetes job market for 2023, too, averaging 8%-11% through the quarters.
The DevOps Job Market Seeks Senior-Level Experience
If we break down the total number of DevOps roles according to the required experience level, we find:
- 60% of the DevOps roles in 2024 mentioned a requirement for senior-level experience.
- Interestingly, we had more Lead-level DevOps positions (15%) than Mid-level (11%) ones in 2024.
- These were followed by Principal-level experience roles with 7.2% representation.
- Unfortunately, only 5% of the DevOps roles were for the Junior-level position, which is still better than 2% and 1% of these positions for platform engineer and software engineer roles during the same period.
How much does a DevOps Job Pay on Average? How Does it Compare to other Positions?
In 2024, the average minimum salary for a DevOps Engineer role is $112,144, while the maximum average salary is $171,147. This brings the average salary to $141,645 for 2024.
Do keep in mind that this salary is inclusive of all DevOps salaries from around the world, converted to USD.
The maximum recorded salary in 2024 was up to $230,000 for a Principal DevOps Engineer role published in Q3 2024.
Comparing DevOps salaries with other popular job titles gives us the following insights:
- The minimum salary for a Platform Engineer role is 24% higher at $138,995, while the maximum salary is higher by 18% at $202,299. Thus, the average salary for Platform Engineer roles comes to $170,657, 20% more than the DevOps average in 2024.
- As for Software Engineer positions, the minimum salary is 5.2% higher at $118,643, while the maximum salary is 5.5% higher at $180,654. The average salary for Software Engineer roles is then arrived at $149,648.5, which is only 5% higher than the DevOps average.
While Platform Engineer roles pay, on average, 20% more than DevOps roles, there is almost a parity of pay between Software Engineer and DevOps positions.
Most DevOps Roles are Remote-Friendly, but it also depends on how we Define Remote.
Remote jobs are primarily divided into the following categories:
- Remote from a country: jobs require employees to work remotely within a specific geography. For example, remote work is only for US citizens within the United States of America.
- Remote in specific business hours: jobs require employees to work only within a particular timezone, e.g. +3 GMT to -4 GMT.
- Hybrid roles allow you to alternate between working from home and the office. Usually, these jobs specify a minimum frequency of office visits. For example, the employee should report to the San Francisco office at the latest twice a week.
For DevOps roles, the working mode distribution is the following:
The key takeaways from the data are:
- More than 60% of the DevOps jobs don’t require the employee to show up at the office everyday, but 39.4% do.
- 33.1% of DevOps jobs allow remote working but within the confines of the country, and a majority of these jobs have been from North America.
- 27.3% of the DevOps jobs are Hybrid, which makes sense since 1 in 3 of the total Kubernetes jobs published in 2024 was Hybrid.
- Lastly, only 1 DevOps job out of 499 (0.2%) allowed remote working as long as the employee adhered to a time zone irrespective of the location.
Working Modes in Relation to Different Job Titles
Here are the key takeaways from the comparison:
- Platform Engineer jobs are most remote-friendly with 41% of these allowing remote work, as opposed to 33% for DevOps positions and 32% for Software Engineer roles.
- Software Engineer roles are more hybrid-friendly, with 30% of these allowing hybrid work, while an identical 27% of the Platform Engineer and DevOps roles offer the same.
- DevOps Engineer roles require marginally more In-Office presence as 39% of these are strictly In-Office jobs, as opposed to 36% for Software Engineer roles and 31% for Platform Engineer roles.
Conclusion
The DevOps job market is booming and will continue to do so into the near future.
If you are looking for a DevOps role, know that:
- Most of these jobs require senior-level experience.
- It would be ideal if you know Kubernetes.
- The pay is on par with Software Engineer positions
- Remote working options are plenty.
What has your experience been with DevOps jobs?
Let me know in the comments in the web version.
🔔 This trend report is brought to you in collaboration with Kube Careers
