DevOps Engineer Salary in India 2026-2031: Fresher to 5 Years PDF

Key takeaways

• PayScale (self-reported, 777 profiles, updated 11 October 2026): DevOps Engineer average base pay about Rs 10.0 lakh, typical range Rs 4.0 lakh to about Rs 30 lakh.
• Entry level (under 1 year) averages about Rs 4.5 lakh total pay (80 salaries), which PayScale shows as 55% below the role average.
• Indeed (225 salaries, October 2026) shows an average base of about Rs 7.6 lakh, with Noida and Gurgaon the top-paying cities.
• Solutions Architects average about Rs 28.9 lakh base on PayScale, a common long-term path for senior DevOps and cloud engineers.
• Kubernetes, AWS, Jenkins, Linux, Azure, Terraform and Python are the skills PayScale lists most for DevOps engineers.

How to read these numbers

Every salary in this report comes from a page we opened on PayScale India or Indeed India. Both are built from pay that people report themselves, and Indeed also uses job postings. So treat them as a guide.

• Base pay vs total pay. Base is your fixed salary. Total pay adds bonus and other cash. PayScale's experience-level figures are total pay.
• The average hides a wide spread. DevOps has very few true fresher roles. Many people move into DevOps after a few years in support, testing or development, which pulls the average up.
• Sample size. We give it each time. Small samples can swing a lot.
• Your offer will differ by company, city, cloud certifications and interview performance.

We tried to open AmbitionBox and Glassdoor pages, but they blocked access, so no numbers from those sites are used.

DevOps engineer salary by experience

PayScale's typical base range is about Rs 4.0 lakh to Rs 30 lakh (10th to 90th percentile), one of the widest of any IT role. PayScale shows only percentages for the 1 to 4 and 5 to 9 year levels, so we do not turn them into rupee figures. What the data does show: freshers start well below the average, and pay rises steeply once you can run production systems on your own.

Salary by city

Indeed India (updated 30 October 2026) lists these top-paying cities. It does not give a sample size per city.

PayScale also lists Pune, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai as main DevOps cities, without city pay figures. Many DevOps teams work remotely or hybrid, which can reduce city gaps.

Salary by company type

Product and software companies. Indeed's top-paying companies for DevOps engineers, based on job postings over the past 36 months, include Apar Technologies (about Rs 25 lakh), Epicor Software (about Rs 22.5 lakh), Pristyn Care (about Rs 22 lakh) and Broadcom (about Rs 20.3 lakh). These are mostly experienced roles.

IT services companies (mass hiring). These hire many freshers at fixed packages. Business Today (25 December 2025) reported Infosys packages of Rs 7 lakh for Digital Specialist Engineer trainees and Rs 11 lakh, Rs 16 lakh and Rs 21 lakh for Specialist Programmer L1, L2 and L3, with Infosys group CHRO Shaji Mathew confirming packages of up to Rs 21 lakh. EnggWave (21 March 2026) reported TCS NQT packages of Rs 3.36 lakh (Ninja), Rs 7 lakh (Digital) and Rs 9 lakh (Prime) for undergraduates. We could not open an official TCS notice, so confirm these on the TCS careers site. The higher bands need strong test scores and coding or AI skills.

IT services and enterprise employers. PayScale lists Amdocs, Wipro, Accenture, Amazon, SAP Labs India, IBM India, Infosys, HCL and Oracle among common DevOps employers, without pay for each. Many freshers start here in cloud support or build and release teams, then move into DevOps.

Skills that raise your pay

PayScale lists these as top DevOps skills: Kubernetes, AWS, Jenkins, Linux, Azure, Chef, automation scripting, Terraform and Python. PayScale does not show the pay effect of each skill, so use it as a checklist.

DevOps engineers who earn more usually:

• Know Linux and networking deeply
• Build CI/CD pipelines that teams trust
• Run containers on Kubernetes in production
• Write infrastructure as code with Terraform
• Set up monitoring and fix outages calmly
• Keep cloud bills under control

Next roles and their pay

The Site Reliability Engineer figure is based on only 11 salaries, so treat it with care. Solutions Architect pays the most but usually needs many years of experience.

How AI changes the DevOps role

AI tools can now write pipeline files, Terraform code and scripts in seconds. That makes basic scripting less rare, but it raises the value of people who understand systems.

• Naukri JobSpeak for October 2026 (via CareerIndia) showed AI/ML hiring up 32% year on year, and the article mentions MLOps and CI/CD skills in AI teams. General software and QA hiring grew only 1%.
• Naukri's World AI Day Report 2026 (via Telangana Today) found AI skills in 15.4% of tech job descriptions, up from 0.9% in 2020.
• NASSCOM (via Angel One News, February 2026) projected India's tech industry at $315 billion in FY26 with AI revenue of $10 to 12 billion and a headcount of 59.5 lakh.

AI systems need GPUs, data pipelines, model deployment and monitoring. DevOps engineers who learn MLOps and platform engineering will run this work. Engineers who only copy scripts will find AI doing that part.

Year by year: what to learn and expect

2026

Learn Linux, networking, Git and one cloud (AWS or Azure). Build a CI/CD pipeline for a small app. PayScale's entry average of about Rs 4.5 lakh is a fair benchmark for a first offer.

2027

In your first job, learn Docker, Kubernetes and monitoring tools. Take part in on-call and learn from real outages.

2028

Add Terraform and one cloud certification. Own a pipeline or environment end to end. This is a good time for a switch.

2029

Aim for senior DevOps or SRE work: reliability targets, cost control, security in pipelines. Pick a direction: platform engineering, DevSecOps or MLOps.

2030

WEF expects 39% of workers' existing skills to change by 2030. Learn to run AI workloads and use AI tools for automation and incident analysis.

2031

No source we opened publishes DevOps salary forecasts for 2031, so we do not give one. With about 5 years of hands-on cloud and Kubernetes work, you are best placed for senior DevOps, SRE, platform or cloud architect paths.

A 5-step plan for a student

1. Master Linux and networking. These are the base of every DevOps job.
2. Learn one cloud well. AWS or Azure. Deploy real apps, not only tutorials.
3. Build pipelines and containers. Git, Jenkins or GitHub Actions, Docker and Kubernetes.
4. Show your work. Put 2 or 3 projects on GitHub with clear notes, including Terraform code.
5. Apply widely and compare. Apply for cloud support, build and release, and junior DevOps roles. Compare offers with the PayScale and Indeed numbers in this report.

Download DevOps Engineer Salary in India 2026-2031: Fresher to 5 Years PDF

Sources and further reading

• PayScale: DevOps Engineer salary in India (self-reported)
• PayScale: Senior Software Engineer salary in India (self-reported)
• PayScale: Security Engineer salary in India (self-reported)
• PayScale: Machine Learning Engineer salary in India (self-reported)
• PayScale: Solutions Architect salary in India (self-reported)
• Indeed India: DevOps Engineer salaries (self-reported and job postings)
• Indeed India: Site Reliability Engineer salaries
• Business Today: Infosys hikes fresher pay to Rs 21 lakh for specialised tech roles (December 2025)
• EnggWave: TCS NQT hiring 2026, Ninja, Digital and Prime packages (news report, not an official TCS notice)
• CareerIndia: Naukri JobSpeak October 2026, AI and ML roles jump 32%
• Telangana Today: AI skills feature in 15.4% of tech job descriptions (Naukri World AI Day Report 2026)
• Angel One News: India tech industry projected to reach $315 billion in FY26 (NASSCOM)
• People Matters: 170 million jobs to emerge by 2030 but 92 million at risk, WEF warns (Future of Jobs Report 2025)