Salary comparison
Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer salary
Cloud Engineers and DevOps Engineers earn about the same at the national median. Here is the full side-by-side breakdown.
Cloud Engineers and DevOps Engineers earn about the same at the national median — roughly $133,080 per year. Both figures are national benchmarks (one or both mapped from the nearest tracked occupation).
Cloud Engineer
Mapped est.$133,080
Median annual wage
- Entry (10th pct)
- $79,850
- Top 10%
- $211,450
- Discipline
- Emerging
DevOps Engineer
Mapped est.$133,080
Median annual wage
- Entry (10th pct)
- $79,850
- Top 10%
- $211,450
- Discipline
- Emerging
Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer — pay distribution
Percentile-by-percentile comparison of national annual wages.
| Percentile | Annual wage |
|---|---|
| 10th percentileCloud Engineer | $79,850 |
| MedianCloud Engineer | $133,080 |
| 90th percentileCloud Engineer | $211,450 |
| 10th percentileDevOps Engineer | $79,850 |
| MedianDevOps Engineer | $133,080 |
| 90th percentileDevOps Engineer | $211,450 |
Pay by experience
Modeled progression from entry to principal level for each role (estimated from the national percentile curve).
Cloud Engineer
DevOps Engineer
Which should you choose?
On pay alone, the two are close at the median, so the decision comes down to the work itself.
Pick cloud engineer if…
Cloud engineers design, build, and operate applications and infrastructure on cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP — keeping systems scalable, secure, and cost-efficient.
- ▹Cloud platform depth (AWS/Azure/GCP) and certifications
- ▹Company type (Big Tech and cloud-native vs. enterprise)
- ▹Years of experience and seniority
Pick DevOps engineer if…
DevOps engineers build the CI/CD pipelines, automation, and observability that let teams ship software reliably and fast, often sharing ground with SRE and platform engineering.
- ▹CI/CD, Kubernetes, and IaC tooling depth
- ▹Company type (Big Tech vs. enterprise)
- ▹Years of experience and on-call scope
Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer — frequently asked
Who earns more, cloud engineers or DevOps engineers?
What is the salary range for cloud engineers vs DevOps engineers?
Should I become a cloud engineer or a DevOps engineer?
Source details
Cloud Engineer is not a BLS-tracked title. BLS does not publish a separate wage for this title, so the figures shown are the published wage for BLS SOC 15-1252 Software Developers — the closest tracked occupation. Actual pay for this specialization can sit above or below it.
Benchmarks come from published government wage data via BLS OEWS. Local and emerging-role figures are labeled estimates. Full methodology →