DevOps Engineer vs QA Engineer

Measured from each occupation's own live postings: mostly different jobs wearing similar names. Posted pay favors the devops engineer by about $22k at the midpoint. Salary bands, both switching directions, and the shared skills below — every number from live postings, refreshed nightly.

DevOps Engineer

Posted band$71k–$134k

FieldTechnology

Postings read2,646

250 open roles · devops engineer salary · careers for devops engineers

QA Engineer

Posted band$57k–$104k

FieldTechnology

Postings read1,490

198 open roles · qa engineer salary · careers for qa engineers

Switching, both directions

The asymmetry is the finding: devops engineer → qa engineer reads 33% ready; the reverse only 17%. Skill overlap is not symmetric, and the direction you travel matters.

DevOps Engineer → QA Engineer

33% skill readiness

The gap, from qa engineer postings: QA / Testing, Agile, REST APIs, Lean / Six Sigma.

Run this direction on the instrument

QA Engineer → DevOps Engineer

17% skill readiness

The gap, from devops engineer postings: Site Reliability Engineering, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform.

Run this direction on the instrument

Related comparisons

DevOps Engineer vs Systems Administrator58% peak overlap
QA Engineer vs Software Engineer50% peak overlap
DevOps Engineer vs Solutions Architect49% peak overlap
DevOps Engineer vs Security Engineer49% peak overlap
Backend Developer vs DevOps Engineer44% peak overlap
DevOps Engineer vs Software Engineer37% peak overlap

Which one do your skills favor?

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Quick answers

Which pays more, devops engineer or qa engineer?

Posted mid-bands from each occupation's own corpus: DevOps Engineer $71k–$134k, QA Engineer $57k–$104k. At the midpoint that favors the devops engineer by about $22k a year. Only postings that state pay are counted.

Are devops engineer and qa engineer the same job?

No — despite the similar names, their postings demand mostly different skills.

Can a devops engineer become a qa engineer?

Skill readiness is 33 percent: that share of what qa engineer postings demand, a typical devops engineer profile already covers.

Can a qa engineer become a devops engineer?

Skill readiness is 17 percent in this direction. The asymmetry is the finding: devops engineer to qa engineer is the easier direction (33% vs 17%).

Method: each occupation’s salary band is the posted 25th–75th percentile from its own corpus; 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. Refreshed with the nightly scrape.