Uptime Report Research · Workforce and pay · DOL filings through June 30, 2026

Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer Salary: $12,200 Apart Nationally, Under $100 Apart in Dallas and New York

Cloud engineer vs DevOps engineer salary, as of the newest Labor Department file (decisions through June 30, 2026): cloud engineer titles carry a $127,200 median offered base wage on 1,593 H-1B filings and DevOps engineer titles $115,000 on 2,633, a $12,200 gap. In Dallas and New York the two medians sit under $100 apart, at the prevailing wage most often recorded there.

  • $12,200 is the national median gap (10.6%), from 4,226 certified full-time filings decided July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.
  • 4 of 15 of the largest metros have medians within $1,000: Dallas, New York, Charlotte and Philadelphia. Cloud leads by more than $1,000 in 10, DevOps in 1 (Boston).
  • $112,424 vs $112,923: the cloud and DevOps medians inside consulting and staffing firms, which file 71% of DevOps titles and 48% of cloud titles.
  • +$2,450 for DevOps on the plain titles: DEVOPS ENGINEER $111,072 (1,159) vs CLOUD ENGINEER $108,622 (310).
  • 74 to 1: cloud engineer vs DevOps engineer filings from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle combined.
  • $12,200 to $15,426: the range of the cloud lead across five years; the latest year is the smallest of the four full ones.
$100K$100K$110K$110K$120K$120K$130K$130K$140K$140K$150K$150K$160K$160K$170K$170K$180K$180K$190K$190K$200K$200KParity: same medianCloud engineer paid moreDevOps engineer paid moreDallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX: cloud engineer median $113,000 on 348 filings, DevOps engineer median $112,923 on 566, gap +$77Dallas +$77New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ: cloud engineer median $131,997 on 96 filings, DevOps engineer median $131,997 on 169, gap $0New York $0Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV: cloud engineer median $130,748 on 61 filings, DevOps engineer median $126,090 on 159, gap +$4,658Washington +$4,658Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA: cloud engineer median $130,010 on 52 filings, DevOps engineer median $109,300 on 159, gap +$20,710Atlanta +$20,710Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX: cloud engineer median $135,000 on 63 filings, DevOps engineer median $114,777 on 138, gap +$20,223Austin +$20,223Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN: cloud engineer median $123,249 on 67 filings, DevOps engineer median $108,077 on 117, gap +$15,172Chicago +$15,172San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA: cloud engineer median $191,890 on 73 filings, DevOps engineer median $173,441 on 107, gap +$18,449San Jose +$18,449San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA: cloud engineer median $172,072 on 64 filings, DevOps engineer median $161,637 on 71, gap +$10,436San Francisco +$10,436Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA: cloud engineer median $174,358 on 68 filings, DevOps engineer median $145,000 on 62, gap +$29,358Seattle +$29,358Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC: cloud engineer median $112,462 on 44 filings, DevOps engineer median $112,470 on 78, gap minus $8Charlotte -$8Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD: cloud engineer median $109,845 on 52 filings, DevOps engineer median $109,845 on 51, gap $0Philadelphia $0Raleigh-Cary, NC: cloud engineer median $136,000 on 41 filings, DevOps engineer median $114,000 on 51, gap +$22,000Raleigh +$22,000Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ: cloud engineer median $132,257 on 28 filings, DevOps engineer median $111,072 on 54, gap +$21,185Phoenix +$21,185Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX: cloud engineer median $108,243 on 27 filings, DevOps engineer median $106,000 on 51, gap +$2,243Houston +$2,243Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH: cloud engineer median $134,720 on 41 filings, DevOps engineer median $140,733 on 37, gap minus $6,013Boston -$6,013DevOps engineer median offered base wageCloud engineer median offered base wageCircle area scales with filings. H-1B filings decided July 2025 to June 2026. Label: cloud median minus DevOps median.

Each circle is one of the 15 metro areas with the most cloud plus DevOps filings (71% of filings with a metro). Points above the dashed line pay cloud engineers more; points on it pay the same. Red: cloud ahead by more than $1,000. Navy: within $1,000. Blue: DevOps ahead.

Cloud engineer vs DevOps engineer salary by metro

Ten of the 15 points sit above the parity line, and the four that sit on it are not close calls. In Dallas, the largest market with 914 filings, the medians are $113,000 for cloud and $112,923 for DevOps. The prevailing wage recorded most often on Dallas filings is $112,923, on 318 of them, 100% at Level II. 64% of DevOps and 62% of cloud offers there sit at or within 0.5% of their prevailing wage, so the median lands on the wage floor for both titles. New York repeats the pattern at $131,997, recorded on 66 filings. Under the Labor Department’s prevailing wage guidance that floor is set for an occupation (O*NET-SOC code), the area of intended employment and one of four wage levels. 53% of cloud and 76% of DevOps filings use the same code, 15-1252, so two titles filed under that code in the same metro and level face the same floor.

The metros with a gap of $15,000 or more tell the other half. In Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, San Jose, Raleigh and Phoenix, consulting and staffing firms file an average 66% of DevOps titles and 41% of cloud titles. Hold the wage level fixed and the gap in those metros ranges from -5.0% to +2.9%. Seattle is the exception: a $29,358 gap that stays at +9.9% at the same level. The cloud providers filed 40 of its 68 cloud engineer titles, 38 of them from Microsoft and mostly under CLOUD NETWORK ENGINEERING; without the cloud providers, Seattle’s cloud median is $149,240 against $145,000 for DevOps.

All 15 metros, sortable

Metro Cloud median Filings DevOps median Filings Cloud minus DevOps Same-level gap DevOps from consulting Cloud from consulting
Dallas $113,000 348 $112,923 566 +$77 -1.6% 78% 55%
New York $131,997 96 $131,997 169 $0 -0.7% 68% 50%
Washington $130,748 61 $126,090 159 +$4,658 -0.5% 81% 62%
Atlanta $130,010 52 $109,300 159 +$20,710 +0.1% 81% 42%
Austin $135,000 63 $114,777 138 +$20,223 +2.9% 77% 51%
Chicago $123,249 67 $108,077 117 +$15,172 -1.4% 71% 48%
San Jose $191,890 73 $173,441 107 +$18,449 +1.0% 39% 14%
San Francisco $172,072 64 $161,637 71 +$10,436 -4.5% 44% 33%
Seattle $174,358 68 $145,000 62 +$29,358 +9.9% 69% 24%
Charlotte $112,462 44 $112,470 78 minus $8 -2.0% 82% 68%
Philadelphia $109,845 52 $109,845 51 $0 -0.4% 71% 62%
Raleigh $136,000 41 $114,000 51 +$22,000 +1.2% 67% 41%
Phoenix $132,257 28 $111,072 54 +$21,185 -5.0% 63% 50%
Houston $108,243 27 $106,000 51 +$2,243 -10.8% 75% 56%
Boston $134,720 41 $140,733 37 minus $6,013 -5.4% 49% 49%

Click a column header to sort. Same-level gap: difference in average log offered wage between the titles at the same DOL wage level, inside the metro. Metro areas are BLS May 2025 definitions; 99% of filings resolved to one.

Same price, different shelf: the employer explains the national gap

Split the filings by who files them and the $12,200 lead nearly vanishes inside each group. Consulting and staffing firms offer cloud engineers $112,424 and DevOps engineers $112,923. End customers, such as banks, insurers and retailers, offer $140,000 and $140,098. What differs is the mix: 71% of DevOps filings come from the lowest-paying group against 48% of cloud filings. Apply the cloud medians by employer type to the DevOps mix of employers and the weighted average of the cloud group medians drops from $129,778 to $121,249, about $8,529 of the $12,200 gap. That is an average of medians, not a true median, but it shows how much of the gap is mix.

Median offer inside each employer typeShare of each title’s filings$100K$130K$160K$190KConsulting and staffing762 cloud, 1,866 DevOpsConsulting and staffing: cloud engineer median $112,424 (762)$112,424Consulting and staffing: DevOps engineer median $112,923 (1866)$112,923Consulting and staffing: 47.8% of cloud engineer filings48%Consulting and staffing: 70.9% of DevOps engineer filings71%End customer531 cloud, 554 DevOpsEnd customer: cloud engineer median $140,000 (531)$140,000End customer: DevOps engineer median $140,098 (554)$140,098End customer: 33.3% of cloud engineer filings33%End customer: 21.0% of DevOps engineer filings21%Other tech vendors226 cloud, 212 DevOpsOther tech vendors: cloud engineer median $149,674 (226)$149,674Other tech vendors: DevOps engineer median $159,046 (212)$159,046Other tech vendors: 14.2% of cloud engineer filings14%Other tech vendors: 8.1% of DevOps engineer filings8%Cloud providers74 cloud, 1 DevOpsCloud providers: cloud engineer median $174,358 (74)$174,3581 DevOps filingCloud providers: 4.6% of cloud engineer filings5%Cloud providers: 0.0% of DevOps engineer filings0%Cloud engineerDevOps engineer
Employer type Cloud median Filings DevOps median Filings Cloud minus DevOps Share of cloud Share of DevOps
Consulting and staffing $112,424 762 $112,923 1,866 minus $499 47.8% 70.9%
End customer $140,000 531 $140,098 554 minus $98 33.3% 21.0%
Other tech vendors $149,674 226 $159,046 212 minus $9,372 14.2% 8.1%
Cloud providers $174,358 74 too few 1 n/a 4.6% 0.0%

The four cloud providers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle) filed 74 cloud engineer titles and 1 DevOps title in the year. Microsoft accounts for 53 of them at a $182,382 median, 52 under the title CLOUD NETWORK ENGINEERING. Other technology vendors are the one group where DevOps pays more, $159,046 against $149,674. Holding the wage level, metro and employer type fixed together puts DevOps 2.9% ahead on 3,545 filings (95% interval 1.4% to 4.4%), clustered by employer. Our cloud architect vs cloud engineer salary report used the same employer rule and found consulting paying cloud engineers less than end customers at the same level.

Title for title, DevOps is usually ahead

The cloud family includes high-paid variants that have no DevOps twin, such as cloud network and cloud solution engineers. Compare the same words and the order flips at most rungs. The plain title DEVOPS ENGINEER, the most filed title in either family with 1,159 filings, has a $111,072 median against $108,622 for CLOUD ENGINEER. Senior titles favor DevOps by $3,660, Staff by $7,000 and Principal by $3,202. Lead titles favor cloud by $5,379.

$0K$50K$100K$150K$200KPlain title only-$2,450 cloud vs DevOpsPlain title only, cloud engineer: $108,622 on 310 filings$108,622 (310)Plain title only, DevOps engineer: $111,072 on 1,159 filings$111,072 (1,159)No seniority word+$77 cloud vs DevOpsNo seniority word, cloud engineer: $113,000 on 940 filings$113,000 (940)No seniority word, DevOps engineer: $112,923 on 1,898 filings$112,923 (1,898)Senior-$3,660 cloud vs DevOpsSenior, cloud engineer: $137,000 on 413 filings$137,000 (413)Senior, DevOps engineer: $140,660 on 508 filings$140,660 (508)Lead+$5,379 cloud vs DevOpsLead, cloud engineer: $150,379 on 70 filings$150,379 (70)Lead, DevOps engineer: $145,000 on 93 filings$145,000 (93)Staff-$7,000 cloud vs DevOpsStaff, cloud engineer: $170,000 on 59 filings$170,000 (59)Staff, DevOps engineer: $177,000 on 51 filings$177,000 (51)Principal-$3,202 cloud vs DevOpsPrincipal, cloud engineer: $156,998 on 105 filings$156,998 (105)Principal, DevOps engineer: $160,200 on 69 filings$160,200 (69)

Exact title pairs

Cloud title Median (filings) DevOps title Median (filings) Cloud minus DevOps
CLOUD ENGINEER $108,622 (310) DEVOPS ENGINEER $111,072 (1,159) minus $2,450
SENIOR CLOUD ENGINEER $120,000 (135) SENIOR DEVOPS ENGINEER $140,814 (203) minus $20,814
LEAD CLOUD ENGINEER $143,302 (26) LEAD DEVOPS ENGINEER $149,363 (46) minus $6,060
PRINCIPAL CLOUD ENGINEER $149,718 (51) PRINCIPAL DEVOPS ENGINEER $161,741 (29) minus $12,023

By DOL wage level

Level Cloud n DevOps n Gap
Level I $92,394 131 $91,520 343 +$874
Level II $112,923 682 $112,923 1,416 $0
Level III $138,880 294 $138,000 396 +$880
Level IV $160,000 333 $163,000 296 minus $3,000

The Labor Department’s wage levels tell the same story. Level II is the most common filing for both titles and its medians are identical at $112,923. Cloud filings skew more senior, with 39% at Level III or IV against 26% for DevOps, and at the same level the log gap is +0.5% (interval -2.5% to +3.6%). The bottom rung is covered in our entry level DevOps engineer salary report.

Seniority word in title Cloud median Filings DevOps median Filings Cloud minus DevOps Log gap, same level, metro, employer type
No seniority word $113,000 940 $112,923 1,898 +$77 -3.2%
Senior $137,000 413 $140,660 508 minus $3,660 -3.7%
Lead $150,379 70 $145,000 93 +$5,379 -0.5%
Staff $170,000 59 $177,000 51 minus $7,000 -3.3%
Principal $156,998 105 $160,200 69 minus $3,202 -0.5%

The gap over five years

The cloud lead has stayed between $12,200 and $15,426 in every window since October 2021. In the latest year DevOps rose faster: its median grew 5.5% to $115,000, against 2.2% for cloud to $127,200, and the gap fell from $15,426 to $12,200. At the same wage level the gap was never more than 2.2% in either direction. The DevOps share from consulting firms slipped from 76% to 71%.

$90K$105K$120K$135KCloud engineer, Oct 2021 to Jun 2022: $110,000 on 1,181 filingsCloud engineer, Jul 2022 to Jun 2023: $115,419 on 1,257 filingsCloud engineer, Jul 2023 to Jun 2024: $115,000 on 1,446 filingsCloud engineer, Jul 2024 to Jun 2025: $124,426 on 1,539 filingsCloud engineer, Jul 2025 to Jun 2026: $127,200 on 1,593 filingsCloud $127,200DevOps engineer, Oct 2021 to Jun 2022: $96,481 on 2,994 filingsDevOps engineer, Jul 2022 to Jun 2023: $101,109 on 3,157 filingsDevOps engineer, Jul 2023 to Jun 2024: $102,000 on 3,216 filingsDevOps engineer, Jul 2024 to Jun 2025: $109,000 on 3,043 filingsDevOps engineer, Jul 2025 to Jun 2026: $115,000 on 2,633 filingsDevOps $115,000$13,519Oct 2021 to Jun 2022*$14,310Jul 2022 to Jun 2023$13,000Jul 2023 to Jun 2024$15,426Jul 2024 to Jun 2025$12,200Jul 2025 to Jun 2026* Nine months: the extract starts with October 2021 decisions.
Decided Cloud median Filings DevOps median Filings Cloud lead Same level From consulting (DevOps / cloud) Share of all H-1B filings (DevOps / cloud)
Oct 2021 to Jun 2022 (9 months) $110,000 1,181 $96,481 2,994 $13,519 +1.3% 76% / 52% 0.69% / 0.27%
Jul 2022 to Jun 2023 $115,419 1,257 $101,109 3,157 $14,310 +2.2% 76% / 50% 0.70% / 0.28%
Jul 2023 to Jun 2024 $115,000 1,446 $102,000 3,216 $13,000 +0.7% 76% / 50% 0.66% / 0.30%
Jul 2024 to Jun 2025 $124,426 1,539 $109,000 3,043 $15,426 -0.3% 70% / 46% 0.58% / 0.30%
Jul 2025 to Jun 2026 $127,200 1,593 $115,000 2,633 $12,200 +0.5% 71% / 48% 0.54% / 0.33%

Cloud and DevOps engineer salary: the hybrid and neighbor titles

Titles that name both, led by CLOUD DEVOPS ENGINEER (55), AWS DEVOPS ENGINEER (32) and AZURE DEVOPS ENGINEER (32), sit in the DevOps family under our rules. Their $110,000 median on 276 filings is below both families, and 82% come from consulting and staffing firms. For the step up, cloud architect titles have a $143,766 median on 324 filings in the same window, $28,766 above DevOps engineers.

Why BLS cannot answer this

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no cloud engineer or DevOps engineer occupation. Its 2018 SOC direct-match title file (6,520 titles) has 0 titles containing “cloud” and 0 containing “DevOps”. Employers still pick a code on each filing: 15-1252, Software Developers, covers 53% of cloud and 76% of DevOps filings. BLS publishes one wage per code, so its May 2025 median of $135,980 for 15-1252, the newest release on the BLS tables page on November 12, 2026, cannot separate the two titles.

SOC code BLS occupation Cloud filings DevOps filings BLS median, May 2025
15-1252 Software Developers 52.7% 75.5% $135,980
15-1244 Network and Computer Systems Administrators 9.1% 7.2% $99,130
15-1241 Computer Network Architects 8.3% 0.5% $134,050
15-1212 Information Security Analysts 2.6% 0.3% $129,180
Other codes Mostly 15-1299, Computer Occupations, All Other 27.3% 16.6% Not used

What the published comparisons say

Google’s first result for this query is a Reddit thread, followed by course sellers and job boards. The four pages we read do not agree on the direction: Coursera puts cloud ahead, Indeed puts DevOps ahead, and two give overlapping ranges with no source. The ZipRecruiter page at position 9 disallows automated access in its robots.txt, so we did not read it. None of the four reports the employer, metro or job level behind its number.

Source Cloud engineer DevOps engineer Gap
This report: H-1B filings decided Jul 2025 to Jun 2026, median offered base wage, 4,226 filings $127,200 $115,000 Cloud +$12,200
Coursera, citing Glassdoor September 2026, median total pay (base plus additional pay); updated Sept. 21, 2026 $152,000 $145,000 Cloud +$7,000
Indeed Career Guide, average salary from Indeed listings; updated June 16, 2026 $117,624 $121,945 DevOps +$4,321
K21 Academy, “recent industry surveys”, none named; modified Sept. 16, 2026 $110,000 to $160,000 $120,000 to $150,000 Not stated
GeeksforGeeks, “average salary” outside India, no source; updated July 23, 2025 $95,000 to $140,000 $90,000 to $130,000 Not stated

What this means for MSPs

Price the job by employer type and metro, not by which of these two titles it carries. In consulting and staffing, the group closest to MSP and managed cloud work in this data, Level II medians are $107,411 for cloud and $112,424 for DevOps, and Level III medians are $127,250 and $134,971. In Dallas, New York, Charlotte and Philadelphia a candidate weighing two offers with these titles is usually looking at the same prevailing wage. The competition that moves pay is end customers ($140,000 cloud median) and technology vendors ($149,674), plus Microsoft in Seattle. Only 17 of these filings carry NAICS 541513 (computer facilities management), so we did not publish an MSP-only figure.

Frequently asked questions

Who earns more, a cloud engineer or a DevOps engineer?

Cloud engineers, by $12,200 at the median: $127,200 against $115,000 on 4,226 H-1B filings decided from July 2025 to June 2026. The lead comes from where each title is filed. On the plain titles CLOUD ENGINEER and DEVOPS ENGINEER, DevOps is ahead by $2,450, and in Dallas and New York the two medians are under $100 apart.

Which is better, DevOps or cloud engineer?

On base pay the two are close once you compare like with like: at DOL wage Level II both medians are $112,923, and inside consulting firms they are $112,424 and $112,923. The bigger difference is who hires: 71% of DevOps filings come from consulting and staffing firms against 48% of cloud filings. Workload, on-call duty and job satisfaction are not in this data.

What is the salary for a cloud and DevOps engineer?

Titles that name both, such as CLOUD DEVOPS ENGINEER, AWS DEVOPS ENGINEER and AZURE DEVOPS ENGINEER, carry a $110,000 median on 276 filings, below both the cloud ($127,200) and DevOps ($115,000) medians. 82% of those hybrid filings come from consulting and staffing firms.

Is DevOps a dead-end job?

The pay ladder in these filings does not look like one. DevOps titles with Staff in them carry a $177,000 median and Level IV DevOps filings $163,000, against $91,520 at Level I. DevOps filings fell from 3,157 in the year to June 2023 to 2,633 in the year to June 2026, while their share of all certified H-1B filings moved from 0.70% to 0.54%. H-1B rules changed in the same period, so counts are not a clean read on demand.

Do cloud engineers earn more than software engineers?

No. Software engineer titles have a $157,123 median on 73,829 H-1B filings in the same window, $29,923 above cloud engineers ($127,200) and $42,123 above DevOps engineers ($115,000). Our SRE vs DevOps salary analysis compares those titles at the same employer.

Does a DevOps engineer or a cloud security engineer earn more?

The plain title CLOUD SECURITY ENGINEER has a $118,404 median on 30 filings, $3,404 above the DevOps median of $115,000. All cloud engineer titles naming security (101 filings) have a $131,082 median. The samples are small, so treat the security figures as rough.

Download the data. cloud-engineer-vs-devops-engineer-salary-segments.csv (CSV). Licensed under CC BY 4.0: free to reuse with attribution to The Uptime Report.

Free to cite and republish with a link to this page.

Methodology

Source. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification, LCA Disclosure Data, FY2022 Q1 to FY2025 Q4 and FY2026 Q3 (October 2025 to June 2026). On November 12, 2026, the Labor Department’s performance data page still listed FY2026 Q3 as the newest LCA file. We reused the extract built for our earlier cloud and DevOps reports from those files rather than downloading them again. Public domain.

Filters. VISA_CLASS H-1B, deduplicated by CASE_NUMBER (later file wins), CASE_STATUS Certified, FULL_TIME_POSITION Y, annualized wage from $30,000 to $1,000,000. Headline window: decision dates from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. The first trend window holds only October 2021 to June 2022, because the extract starts with FY2022. Filings with no wage level (10% of cloud, 7% of DevOps) are left out of level tables but form their own cell in controlled comparisons.

Wage. WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM, annualized: Hour x 2,080, Week x 52, Bi-Weekly x 26, Month x 12. Where a range was filed (41% of cloud, 31% of DevOps) we use the bottom; using range midpoints gives $134,971 vs $118,098. “At the prevailing wage” means an offer no more than 0.5% above PREVAILING_WAGE: 51% of cloud and 56% of DevOps offers nationally.

Title rules. Titles are upper-cased and cleaned. Cloud engineer: the title names CLOUD, AWS, AMAZON WEB SERVICES, AZURE, GCP or GOOGLE CLOUD and ENGINEER or ENGINEERING, and does not name SOFTWARE, a data, DevOps, SRE, SaaS application or sales specialty, or MANAGER, DIRECTOR, HEAD, ARCHITECT, VICE PRESIDENT or VP. DevOps engineer: \bDEV ?-?OPS\b|\bDEV ?SEC ?OPS\b plus ENGINEER, ENGINEERING, ENGR or DEVELOPER, without site reliability or SRE and without the management words above or ARCHITECT, OWNER, ANALYST, PRODUCT or PROGRAM. These are the same rules as our cloud architect and entry level DevOps reports, so a title naming cloud and DevOps (such as CLOUD DEVOPS ENGINEER) counts as DevOps. Seniority tiers come from words in the title (Senior or Sr, Lead, Staff, Principal).

Precision. For those earlier reports the AI research agent read a random sample of 100 titles per family (seed 20261102) from the title text alone, with no human review: 91 of 100 cloud engineer titles and 97 of 100 DevOps titles were correct. Recall was not measured.

Employer type. A short name list first, then NAICS: 5415, 5416, 5412 and 5613 are consulting and staffing; 5182, 5112, 5132, 5191, 5192, 5179, 3341, 3342 and 3344 are technology vendors; the rest are end customers. For this report, filings whose employer parent is Amazon (including AWS), Microsoft, Google or Oracle are split out as cloud providers. For our cloud architect report the AI research agent checked the base rule against employer names on 200 random filings: right on 169, wrong on 24, unclear on 7. Treat employer-type splits as approximate. Fidelity entities alone filed 108 cloud engineer titles; without them the national gap is $12,773.

Gaps. Dollar gaps are differences between medians. Percentage gaps in controlled comparisons are the difference in average log wage between the titles inside cells of the listed controls, using only cells holding both titles, with standard errors clustered by employer parent. Same level and metro: -0.9% (3,912 filings). Same level, metro and employer: -2.6% on 342 filings at 75 employers (interval -6.2% to +1.2%). Metro is WORKSITE_COUNTY and state mapped to BLS May 2025 areas, with city and state as a fallback. These comparisons are descriptive, not causal.

Limits. H-1B positions only, which are a subset of all cloud and DevOps jobs. Base wage only: no equity, bonus or benefits, so total pay gaps (as quoted by Glassdoor-based sources) can differ. An offer on a certified filing is not a wage paid, and a filing may lead to no hire. 21% of cloud and 20% of DevOps filings list a new employment slot; the rest include extensions and employer changes. The employer chooses the wage level, which describes the job, not the person. Pay in India and other countries is not covered. Not advice: these are labor market statistics, not a compensation recommendation.

Cite as:The Uptime Report. "Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer Salary: $12,200 Apart Nationally, Under $100 Apart in Dallas and New York." November 2026. https://theuptimereport.com/cloud-engineer-vs-devops-engineer-salary/

References

  1. U.S. Department of Labor, OFLC Performance Data: LCA Disclosure Data FY2022 to FY2026 Q3, with record layout. Accessed November 2026.
  2. U.S. Department of Labor, Prevailing Wage Determination Policy Guidance, Nonagricultural Immigration Programs (revised November 2009). Accessed November 2026.
  3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 national estimates. Accessed November 2026.
  4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 area definitions. Accessed November 2026.
  5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018 SOC direct match title file. Accessed November 2026.
  6. Coursera, DevOps Engineer vs. Cloud Engineer (citing Glassdoor, September 2026). Accessed November 2026.
  7. Indeed Career Guide, DevOps Engineer vs. Cloud Engineer. Accessed November 2026.
  8. K21 Academy, Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer. Accessed November 2026.
  9. GeeksforGeeks, DevOps Engineer vs Cloud Engineer. Accessed November 2026.

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