DevOps salaries rose as organizations accelerated their digital transformation initiatives amid the pandemic, according to Puppet‘s 2020 DevOps Salary Report.

Many organizations have accelerated their digital transformation initiatives by as much as three or four years during the pandemic, according to a late-2020 survey by McKinsey & Co. This phenomenon translated into higher salaries across industries, among both IT and engineering practitioners and managers.

The report also found that organizations that have already reached a higher level of DevOps evolution compensate their employees at a higher rate than those whose DevOps evolution is less advanced.

Among respondents working at companies with highly evolved DevOps practices, 80 percent earn at least $75,000 per year while only 57 percent of respondents at companies with less evolved DevOps practices earn that much.

According to Gartner, platform teams are here to stay, with the majority of large organizations adopting a platform team strategy to scale DevOps by 2025. This rise of platform teams is reflected in salaries, with platform engineers the most likely to earn more than $150,000 per year. They are also the most likely to earn over $100,000 and over $75,000.

Respondents working in life sciences, pharmaceuticals and healthcare (LSPH) were the top earners worldwide. In previous years, practitioners and managers in the financial services and technology spaces were the top earners.

In fact, 64 percent of LSPH respondents earn more than $100,000. Behind LSPH was the financial services industry where 53 percent of respondents earned over $100,000, while those at technology companies trailed at 45 percent.

More women earn mid-range salaries than men, but men still earn more of the top salaries than women. Also, 25 percent of female respondents earn between $100,000 and $125,000, while 18 percent of male respondents are earning in the same range. However, fewer women earn above $125,000 compared to their male counterparts.

Salaries rose worldwide, and rose most steeply for upper-income respondents in Japan and the United Kingdom. Japanese respondents saw the steepest gains in salaries, with 67 percent of respondents moving into the $75,000-plus range, compared with only 24 percent last year.

The next-biggest increase in those earning $75,000 or more was in the United Kingdom, where 74 percent reported being in this salary bracket, up from 57 percent in 2019. U.S. respondents continue to earn more compared to their global peers, with 84 percent making $100,000 or more, and 42 percent earning over $150,000 per year.