DevOps, SRE & Cloud Engineer Jobs Market April 2023
At the start of 2022, DevOps Engineers & SREs were attracted by smaller companies or startups that were not constrained by legacy technologies. Naturally, with the changing market conditions, global organisations or financial institutions that are deemed much more stable have recaptured the interest among engineers. These companies also offer interesting migration projects and are presenting engineers with the opportunity to tackle some interesting projects.
AWS and Azure continue to be the most prominent Cloud providers in the market. As such, Cloud/DevOps/SRE engineers with exposure to these environments remain in high demand. Terraform is a very popular technology due to its cloud-agnostic nature. Furthermore, the growing popularity of containerised applications means that Docker and Kubernetes continue to be highly sought after. Engineers that have a software engineering background are particularly attractive and organisations are eager to meet engineers who not only ensure the functionality of the IT Infrastructure but who can also be involved in the full SDLC and understand engineering best practices.
Salaries have plateaued over the last 6 months, having experienced a steady rise in 2021/2022. Engineers have naturally readjusted their expectations due to the ongoing market conditions. However as mentioned, engineers in this space who come from a software engineering background and who have established themselves with Cloud and DevOps tools will still expect a premium salary due to their technical capabilities and depth of experience.
Technology companies have slowed down their hiring process after a huge recruitment push last year. Financial institutions appear to have taken centre stage over the past 6 months, hiring both permanent and contract engineers.
Two key considerations for candidates in this space are the technological landscapes and the long-term career progression opportunities. Candidates are keen to work with the latest technologies including Kubernetes and Terraform, and furthermore, they are looking for diverse roles that offer exposure to software development as well as Infrastructure. A common career objective for these engineers is to reach the level of a Cloud or Systems Architect, although this will vary depending on their level of seniority.
Typical benefits packages for these types of engineers include a core package of a performance-based bonus (average 10%), full family healthcare and a competitive pension scheme (average 5%).
A noticeable trend some organisations are having is defining an open role as an SRE or a DevOps engineer. The key difference is that an SRE has a higher dependency on an engineer’s software engineering skills. Based on current feedback from our clients and candidates, if you hire an SRE to do DevOps, they may become bored with their day-to-day responsibilities. On the other hand, if you hire a DevOps Engineer to be an SRE, they might be more comfortable focusing on operations and find it difficult to learn the software engineering skills required to be successful in the role.
For more information on the current DevOps, SRE & Cloud Engineering jobs market and the latest salary bands, please download our IT Salary Survey below.