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Information Technology | DevOps Engineer

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 842 DevOps Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 23862 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 LevelPercentage
Associate's Degree0%
Bachelor's Degree56.01%
Master's Degree13.88%
Doctoral Degree3.23%
Other2.85%

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 ExperiencePercentage
0 to 2 years10.08%
3 to 5 years50.31%
6 to 8 years25.13%
9+ years14.48%

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) (42.31%)
  • Communication (34.76%)
  • Management (30.66%)
  • Operations (30.16%)
  • Problem Solving (28.46%)
  • Leadership (10.65%)
  • Information Technology (9.89%)
  • Innovation (9.8%)
  • Collaboration (9.18%)
  • Planning (8.03%)

Defining Skills

A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.

  • CI/CD (67.33%)
  • Terraform (50.01%)
  • Docker (Software) (45.98%)
  • Jenkins (40.2%)
  • Artifactory (7.73%)
  • Gitlab (22.31%)
  • Kubernetes (56.16%)
  • Grafana (12.6%)
  • Scripting (45.95%)
  • Datadog (5.62%)
  • Prometheus (Software) (11.66%)
  • Ansible (39.02%)
  • Python (Programming Language) (59.72%)
  • Scalability (29.77%)
  • Github (24.75%)
  • Linux (31.07%)
  • DevOps (92.78%)
  • Computer Science (37.9%)
  • Cloud Infrastructure (18.31%)
  • Containerization (24.77%)
  • Automation (61.32%)
  • Microsoft Azure (39.65%)
  • Bash (Scripting Language) (32.68%)
  • Amazon Web Services (56.42%)
  • Software Development (24.65%)
  • Agile Methodology (32.49%)
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (35.23%)
  • AWS CloudFormation (15.77%)
  • Git (Version Control System) (31.37%)
  • Infrastructure Automation (10.32%)
  • Puppet (Configuration Management Tool) (12.08%)

Necessary Skills

A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.

  • Programming Languages (8.69%)
  • Observability (7.94%)
  • Continuous Deployment (9.41%)
  • Splunk (9.43%)
  • Microservices (13.36%)
  • Bitbucket (8.14%)
  • Tooling (9.91%)
  • Software Engineering (20.4%)
  • SQL (Programming Language) (13.39%)
  • Windows PowerShell (20.82%)
  • Scrum (Software Development) (9.97%)
  • Systems Development Life Cycle (7.03%)
  • Public Cloud (5.73%)
  • OpenShift (6.39%)
  • PostgreSQL (7.45%)
  • Debugging (10.72%)
  • System Administration (8.23%)
  • Operating Systems (8.74%)
  • Software Development Life Cycle (10.03%)
  • Continuous Improvement Process (7.34%)
  • Continuous Delivery (12.41%)
  • Continuous Integration (28.99%)
  • Configuration Management (21.15%)
  • Version Control (19.65%)
  • C# (Programming Language) (6%)
  • Unix (8.63%)
  • Test Automation (11.27%)
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (11.63%)
  • JIRA (15.52%)
  • Application Programming Interface (API) (11.41%)
  • Artificial Intelligence (4.47%)
  • Azure DevOps (17.69%)
  • Application Deployment (9.02%)
  • Java (Programming Language) (22.03%)
  • JavaScript (Programming Language) (10.94%)
  • Ruby (Programming Language) (9.07%)
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (10.82%)
  • Workflow Management (17.55%)
  • Go (Programming Language) (13.29%)
  • Cloud Services (9.01%)
  • Atlassian Confluence (8.86%)
  • DevSecOps (14.09%)
  • Cloud-Native Computing (7.64%)

Distinguishing Skills

A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.

  • HashiCorp (2%)
  • GitOps (3.75%)
  • GitLab CI/CD (4.55%)
  • Cloud DevOps (4.4%)
  • DevOps Engineering (6.02%)
  • AWS Devops (4.32%)
  • Argo CD (4.85%)
  • AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) (3.34%)
  • Elastic (ELK) Stack (4.27%)
  • Teamcity (1.86%)
  • Amazon CloudWatch (6.69%)
  • YAML (6.35%)
  • Circleci (3.73%)
  • SonarQube (6.26%)
  • Nginx (2.14%)
  • Linux Administration (6.5%)
  • Groovy (Programming Language) (3.61%)
  • Build Automation (3.69%)
  • Progress Chef (Software) (8.21%)

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 (4.8%)
  • AWS CloudFormation (17.2%)
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (38.44%)
  • DevOps Engineering (6.57%)
  • Build Automation (4.02%)
  • Cloud Infrastructure (19.98%)
  • Computer Science (41.35%)
  • Linux (33.9%)
  • Scalability (32.48%)
  • Python (Programming Language) (65.16%)
  • SonarQube (6.83%)
  • Terraform (54.57%)

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 Infrastructure Engineer
  • DevOps Software Developer
  • DevOps Developer
  • DevOps Systems 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 (426)
  • Insight Global (372)
  • Northrop Grumman (273)
  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (252)
  • Booz Allen Hamilton (244)
  • Leidos (223)
  • Capital One (220)
  • Beacon Hill Staffing Group (195)
  • Ford (190)
  • Eliassen Group (182)

North Carolina

  • Northrop Grumman (19)
  • Genesis10 (17)
  • Insight Global (16)
  • Motion Recruitment (16)
  • General Dynamics (15)
  • Cognizant Technology Solutions (15)
  • Zachary Piper Solutions (14)
  • Truist Financial (13)
  • Actalent (11)
  • Allegis Group (11)

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!