Data Engineer vs DevOps Engineer
Measured from each occupation's own live postings: mostly different jobs wearing similar names. Posted pay favors the devops engineer by about $6k at the midpoint. Everything on this page is read from the two occupations’ own live postings and refreshed every night.
The short answer
On pay, devops engineers come out ahead by about $6k a year at the midpoint of posted bands: $68k–$141k against $61k–$135k for data engineers. These are advertised figures from postings that state a salary, not estimates.
On skills, they are mostly different jobs that happen to share a name or a hallway. The overlap is thin, which is often exactly why people search this pair. The readiness numbers further down say how far a typical profile on each side already reaches into the other, and which direction is the easier move.
Data Engineer
data engineer jobs · data engineer salary · data engineer career guide · careers for data engineers
DevOps Engineer
devops engineer jobs · devops engineer salary · devops engineer career guide · careers for devops engineers
The overlap, measured
Skills that appear in both occupations’ posting demand. This is the shared core; everything else on each side is the difference. Each linked skill has its own page with the roles it unlocks.
Switching, both directions
Data Engineer → DevOps Engineer
What devops engineer postings ask for that data engineer profiles usually lack: Site Reliability Engineering, Terraform, Kubernetes, Linux.
DevOps Engineer → Data Engineer
Transition estimate: 12–24 mo.
What data engineer postings ask for that devops engineer profiles usually lack: ETL, Data Analysis, Data Engineering, Spark.
Open data engineer roles right now
The freshest data engineer openings on the board, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
Analytics Engineer (m/f/d) at EnpalBerlinTodayApply
2606413 Data Analytics Engineer – Banking IT at Swisslinx AGBasel, Basel-Stadt, SwitzerlandTodayApply
Senior AI-Native Data Engineer (f/m/x) at ExmoxHamburg1d agoApply- Data Engineer / Cloud Data Platform Engineer (m/w/d) at group24 AGGescher1d agoApply
Open devops engineer roles right now
The freshest devops engineer openings on the board. Same rules: live, tagged to the occupation, linking to the original posting.
DevOps Engineer Cloud Database con inglés at Sopra SteriaSpain · RemoteTodayApply
Infrastructure Engineer at AirtmArgentina · RemoteTodayApply
Staff DevOps Engineer at MEDvidiSpain · RemoteTodayApply
Platform Engineer (Kubernetes and Linux) at Satellite OfficePhilippines · RemoteTodayApply
See the whole board for both
1,200 live roles across the two, freshest first, with posted pay and remote flags where the posting states them.
Related comparisons
- Data Architect vs Data Engineer91% peak overlap
- DevOps Engineer vs Systems Administrator62% peak overlap
- Data Engineer vs Database Administrator59% peak overlap
- Data Analyst vs Data Engineer57% peak overlap
- Data Engineer vs Solutions Architect56% peak overlap
- DevOps Engineer vs Solutions Architect51% peak overlap
Which one do your skills favor?
Run the instrument with your own skill set and both readiness numbers recompute for you. Free, no account.
Quick answers
Which pays more, data engineer or devops engineer?
On pay, devops engineers come out ahead by about $6k a year at the midpoint of posted bands: $68k–$141k against $61k–$135k for data engineers. These are advertised figures from postings that state a salary, not estimates. By seniority and country: data engineer salary and devops engineer salary.
Are data engineer and devops engineer the same job?
On skills, they are mostly different jobs that happen to share a name or a hallway. The overlap is thin, which is often exactly why people search this pair. The skills both sets of postings want most are SQL, Python, AWS, Azure, CI/CD.
Can a data engineer become a devops engineer?
Yes, and the numbers say how far along you already are: a typical data engineer profile covers 36% of what devops engineer postings ask for. The instrument lists the exact skills that make up the rest.
Can a devops engineer become a data engineer?
Going the other way, a typical devops engineer profile covers 33% of what data engineer postings ask for. Our estimate for the move is 12–24 mo.
How many data engineer and devops engineer jobs are open right now?
Right now our board has 600 data engineer openings and 600 devops engineer openings, each linking to the original posting. The board refreshes every night, so the counts move with the market. Hiring the most data engineers at the moment: Bluelight (15), AgileEngine (13), Name (8). For devops engineers: Bright Vision Technologies (8), BoschGroup (7), Name (7).
Method: each occupation’s salary band is the posted 25th to 75th percentile from its own corpus, counting only postings that state pay; readiness is coverage of the destination’s posting-skill weight; shared skills are read from the overlap waterfall. Pairs sharing too few skills are not scored in that direction. Job lists and counts are the live board. Refreshed with the nightly scrape.