Report: APAC DevOps salary brackets lagging behind

According to a new salary report by Puppet, APAC salary brackets for DevOps professionals are lagging behind.

While DevOps salaries for APAC professionals are behind the curve, there is a significant global increase worldwide.

More than 2,600 technology professionals globally took part in the research, and the data reflected companies experiencing a high level of DevOps evolution tended to compensate their employees at the highest level, with practitioner salaries doubling and manager salaries nearly tripling from 2020 to 2021.

Only 4% of managers and practitioners in APAC combined earned more than AUD$150,000 in 2021, compared to 6% in Europe/U.K and 35% in the United States.

The share of those earning more than $150,000 at high-evolution firms worldwide more than doubled to 20% in 2021 from 8% in 2020. Financial services DevOps salaries were the highest in the sector category, nearly doubling from 16% in 2020 to 29% in 2021.

Additionally, the data revealed that women are steadily increasing their earning status across regions, roles, and industries in DevOps. More than double the number of women entered the higher income level of $150,000-plus than the year before (17% in 2021 compared to 8% in 2020 and 10% in 2019).

Puppet senior director APAC Rachel Lew says as more countries in APAC take on digital transformation, retaining skilled professionals to keep up with the demand is a top priority for many businesses.

"As APAC markets such as Singapore and Australia continue to become synonymous with innovation and transformation, organisations must digitally transform and modernise faster than ever," she says.

"The survey findings show that companies must keep pace with the competitive compensation globally in order to attract and nurture DevOps talent and critical skills in great demand."

Puppet CTO Abby Kearns is pleased to see a change in the women's salary within the DevOps community and says it's inspiring to see positive data for more women entering the profession in the future.

"It is exciting to see more women increasingly enter higher income brackets, especially in DevOps, which has historically been a male-dominated area," Kearns remarks.

"The gradual decrease in a wage gap hopefully points to a long-term shift in pay equity. As a DevOps leader, I am inspired by this progression and I look forward to seeing more equality in wages and gender parity across DevOps overall."

This is Puppet's seventh annual DevOps Salary Report, and the company says that pandemic-driven digital transformation efforts have directly impacted the DevOps landscape and this is reflected in the data.

Puppet is a privately held company with offices in London, Belfast, Singapore, and Sydney and specialises in infrastructure automation solutions.