Kubernetes Job Market: Platform Engineers Earn 20% More Than DevOps Engineers

In the rapidly evolving tech landscape, the roles of Platform Engineers and DevOps Engineers have garnered significant attention. Though both positions play crucial roles in software development and operations, recent trends suggest that Platform Engineer jobs may offer particular advantages over their DevOps counterparts.

What are these advantages? And why should you consider a Platform engineer role instead of a DevOps? Let’s find out.

We will use the Kube Careers State of the Kubernetes job market report Q3 2024 for this analysis, as it has one of the most significant job datasets in the Kubernetes domain.

Please note that Kube Careers only lists jobs that require Kubernetes experience and are not listed by recruitment agencies.

The Dataset

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For Q3 2024, Kube Careers scrapped through 8772 jobs, filtering these down to a dataset of 1607 jobs in total.

Of these, Software Engineer positions were the most popular, followed by DevOps and Platform Engineer roles. Of the total jobs published,

• 41% (666) of these were Software Engineer positions.
• 11% (190) were DevOps Engineer roles.
• 9% (139) of these were Platform Engineer roles.

DevOps vs. Platform Engineers

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For Q3 2024,

• On average, the minimum salary for a DevOps Engineer was $112,875, and the maximum was $168,744.
• The minimum average salary for a Platform Engineer was $138,609, and the maximum was $198,069.
• If we compare the average salaries for the two positions, we find that:
• The minimum salary is higher by 18%, while the maximum salary is higher by 14% for Platform Engineers compared to DevOps.

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If we compare the data for the past five quarters, Q3 2023 to Q3 2024, we find that:

• On average, Platform Engineer salaries have been a staggering 21% higher than DevOps Engineer salaries.
• The highest difference was, in fact, in Q3 2023, where the Platform Engineer salaries were 26% higher than their DevOps counterparts.

Platform Engineer Positions Pay More and are More Remote-Friendly

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In Q3 2024, 40% of the DevOps jobs required In-office presence, 32% allowed remote work, and 28% preferred a Hybrid working model.

During the same quarter, 49% of the Platform Engineer jobs offered remote working, 28% were Hybrid jobs, and 23% were strictly In-Office jobs.

Thus, Platform Engineer jobs were 17% more remote-friendly than DevOps jobs.

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Q3 2024 was an exception, after all.

If we look at the data for the past five quarters, we can see that DevOps Engineer positions have historically been more remote-friendly, but the tables have turned in Q3 2024.

If we average the remote working preference for the past five quarters, DevOps Engineer positions average 47%, while Platform Engineer positions average 45%.

Platform Engineer Positions, Though, Have Always Been More Hybrid-Friendly

It gets interesting if we take the data for the past five quarters based on the hybrid working mode.

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The findings are:

• The preference for hybrid working in DevOps and Platform Engineer jobs has risen over the quarters.
• Platform Engineer positions have always been more hybrid-friendly than DevOps positions.
• If we take the average of the past five quarters, Hybrid is the preferred working mode for 21% of the DevOps jobs and 30% of the Platform Engineer jobs.

Conclusion

While both DevOps and Platform Engineer positions have advantages and disadvantages, Platform Engineer positions pay more, offer at least similar remote work, and are more hybrid-friendly.