By Clémence Gaisnon, Recruitment and Talent Management Lead at Gologic
Since my return from maternity leave at the end of 2023, I’ve noticed that the job market in Montreal, particularly in the consulting sector, has changed significantly. Demand is gradually picking up, but with different expectations. To better understand these new dynamics, I initiated a first survey on the subject. This first blog article analyzes the collected results, which are enriched by anonymous responses from DevOps candidates and managers, offering a concrete overview of current market trends.
Why this survey?
At Gologic, DevOps isn’t just a role, it’s a culture. By leveraging best practices in software development, it aims to accelerate deliveries through improved collaboration. To help our clients implement it effectively, we’ve created several expert groups: CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, SRE, cloud computing… and recently, artificial intelligence has made its entrance.
It’s in this context, driven by a curiosity to better understand the market, that I launched this initiative
In 2024, the HR team at Gologic worked extensively on skill development to map tools/technologies and create a development plan. Relating the structure to salaries, I wondered: is there a salary difference between DevOps roles? If you look at current job postings, two main trends emerge:
- Generalist positions, with a long list of tools and concepts to master.
- Specialized roles, as it becomes difficult to master everything.
At the same time, I also wanted to look into recruitment practices. What do candidates appreciate in a hiring process? Which methods are most effective for attracting and evaluating DevOps talent?
So we conducted a survey to:
- Compare salaries between generalists and specialists
- Identify the most sought-after skills and roles
- Understand what recruiters really expect from candidates
🔍 Who responded to this survey?
We collected 160 responses from various DevOps profiles in Montreal:
👨💻 DevOps professionals and consultants (experts and generalists)
🎯 Team managers
🧑💼 Recruiters
Survey distributed on LinkedIn to my direct network.
Salaries and market trends
While demand for DevOps profiles remains strong, one trend is confirmed: salary differences between generalist and specialist DevOps are not as marked as one might think. The data collected during my survey, combined with statistics published by Randstad, provide a better understanding of salary dynamics.
💰 DevOps Salaries (in thousands of Canadian dollars):
- Junior: $74.4 – $97.8K
- Intermediate: 84,3 – 115,5 K$
- Senior: 98,7 – 132,5 K$
- Average salary observed in my survey, all experiences combined: $106K
Does company size influence salary?
The survey presents an interesting trend:
👉 What we observe:
✅ The average salary rises with company size… to a certain point!
✅ The biggest jump seems to be when moving from a micro-enterprise (1-10) to an SME (11-50).
✅ The average salary peak is reached in the 201-500 employee category.
✅ Curious fact: the average drops slightly for companies with more than 500 employees. More rigid salary structures? A greater variety of junior/intermediate positions? Food for thought!
📈 Factors influencing salaries:
- Experience: an experienced senior profile can reach $140K and more.
- Sector of activity: some sectors stand out with more generous offers, notably:
- Professional services
- Transportation and logistics
- Arts, entertainment and recreation
- Company size: medium and large companies generally offer comparable salaries, while micro-enterprises tend to offer slightly lower compensation.
On my end, I observe that DevOps has become widely democratized. Training has multiplied and now integrates this culture from the academic path. This is excellent, as it allows new generations to quickly develop sensitivity to automation, collaboration, and continuous delivery practices.
However, during my interviews, I often meet candidates with a few years of DevOps experience, whose mastery of development or operations sometimes remains insufficient for market expectations. However, to excel in this field, a solid understanding of both aspects remains essential. Practical experience, on-the-ground learning, and professional experience remain key factors in assessing a profile.
This situation can also create a gap between candidates’ salary expectations and market reality, where compensation is often adjusted based on the level of expertise and depth of acquired experience.
The most in-demand DevOps roles
By asking participants about their roles, some trends emerged:
- Cloud DevOps Expert (24.8%): this role clearly dominates, reflecting the growing importance of cloud infrastructures in modern businesses. Skills in managing cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) and automating deployments in the cloud are highly sought after. This shows a focus on flexible and scalable solutions.
- SRE Expert (14.7%): the Site Reliability Engineer role is growing, as companies seek to ensure the reliability, availability, and performance of their large-scale systems. This indicates a growing demand for experts capable of integrating DevOps culture with a strong focus on service reliability.
- Infrastructure as Code DevOps Expert (13.8%) and DevSecOps (13.8%): these two roles, which are quite close, highlight the importance of infrastructure automation and integrated security in development processes. Managing configurations via tools like Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes is essential, as is integrating security practices from the early stages of software development.
- CI/CD Automation Expert (10.1%): while this role is in demand, it represents a smaller share compared to others. This may be due to the fact that more and more DevOps professionals are integrating CI/CD automation into broader roles, such as SRE, for example.
I also went to Indeed to analyze DevOps job postings and correlate the survey results. After reviewing about fifty job offers, here are some observations on the roles sought and the sectors with high demand.
Sought-after roles
The cloud DevOps role is the most common, followed by DevOps and DevSecOps. This confirms the strong focus on the cloud and security in companies.
📌 What we observe:
- The cloud dominates! The cloud DevOps expert is the most sought-after profile, with a strong demand for cloud-related skills and cloud deployment automation.
- Security is becoming a key issue: while demand for DevSecOps profiles is present, companies favor generalist DevOps with an integrated DevSecOps culture, showing that security is now an integral part of the DevOps process.
- Variability in job titles: job titles vary by company, and the diversity of responses in the “Other” category confirms this, which demonstrates a certain flexibility and customization of needs based on each company’s specifics.
Sectors of activity
Consulting and placement services: this sector shows a strong demand for DevOps profiles, which is logical since consulting firms often recruit for various assignments with their clients. These companies seek to integrate DevOps talent to meet their clients’ digital transformation needs.
AI (artificial intelligence): AI is growing rapidly, and this is reflected in the demand for DevOps experts capable of managing the infrastructure necessary for deploying AI models and scaling them. Companies in the AI sector seek to strengthen their teams to integrate DevOps culture to ensure continuous deliveries and efficient deployments.
Video games and IT services: these sectors also have strong DevOps demand, as managing DevOps infrastructures is essential for rapid development environments and frequent video game updates, as well as for IT services that depend on reliable and scalable infrastructure.
Media: the media sector often requires DevOps skills to manage online content systems, real-time data flows, and large-scale digital services.
What recruiters are looking for
By interviewing recruiters to identify the most crucial aspects and what they prioritize in a candidate, here are the key criteria that make a difference in landing a DevOps position!
The most important criteria for a recruiter
- 81,8% – Technical skills
- 63,6% – Soft skills
- 63,6% – DevOps culture (continuous improvement, collaboration)
- 59,1% – Personality
- 59,1% – Experience
The most sought-after technical skills
- 77,3% – Deployment automation
- 50% – Security
- 50% – Container management
- 40,9% – Monitoring and observability
👉 Key observation: Companies are looking for these skills, not just specialized roles.
Example: CI/CD automation is in high demand (77.3%), but there are few positions (10.1%). This shows a strong expectation of versatility among DevOps professionals.
To demonstrate that you possess this sought-after mix of skills and qualities, a well-structured and impactful CV is essential. It’s your main tool to convince the recruiter of your value even before the interview.
➡️ Consult my guide to writing the perfect DevOps CV.
Recruiter selection criteria
Two key observations:
- Versatility before specialization
- Recruiters prefer candidates capable of navigating between multiple areas of expertise rather than ultra-specialized profiles.
- Soft skills and DevOps culture are decisive
- Communication, collaboration, and continuous improvement are just as important skills as technical skills.
The preferred evaluation method by recruiters
📌 81.8% of recruiters prefer open technical interviews with a DevOps expert rather than standardized tests.
💡 Key takeaway: be prepared to discuss your experience and technical choices rather than simply answering theoretical quizzes!
At Gologic, we conduct open technical interviews with one of the co-founders. This allows us to better assess the candidate’s technical skills, but also to understand their ability to reason, solve complex problems, and collaborate effectively. By combining practical scenarios with technical discussions, we create a more engaging, less stressful interview experience that better reflects the real challenges our teams face.
Beyond evaluation, these interviews become a real moment of exchange between technology enthusiasts. It’s not uncommon for my colleague, after an interview, to explore a new tool they hadn’t tested yet, or to share knowledge with the candidate by explaining a solution or principle in detail. This process not only enriches the candidate’s experience but also nurtures our culture of innovation and collaboration at Gologic.
Trends to watch
The DevOps universe continues to evolve, driven by the rise of the cloud, automation, and artificial intelligence. Here are some questions I ask myself to anticipate market movements:
- Will salaries continue to rise?
- Faced with a talent shortage and increasingly complex technological environments, compensation has increased significantly in recent years. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue or if the market will reach a plateau.
- What will be the most in-demand roles in 2 to 3 years?
- SRE, DevSecOps, Platform Engineer… Some roles are becoming increasingly important. The challenge will be to identify, from today, the trades that will become key tomorrow to train accordingly.
- What skills will become essential with AI and the cloud?
- Integrating AI into DevOps pipelines, multi-cloud management, and automated security practices could become fundamental skills. Keeping up-to-date and developing hybrid expertise will be a real competitive advantage.
Conclusion: what you need to remember
Salaries in Montreal are competitive with an average of around $106K, but they vary by experience, sector, and company size.
Recruiters today are looking for profiles capable of adapting to various contexts. Rather than specialists in a single tool or technology, versatile professionals who understand the entire software lifecycle stand out. This ability to “see broadly” while knowing how to “act precisely” is valuable, especially in hybrid, distributed, or transforming environments.
Finally, cultural and human aspects should not be neglected. DevOps culture is based on collaboration, communication, and continuous improvement. Technical skills are essential, but they must be accompanied by strong soft skills: knowing how to work in a team, demonstrating curiosity, solving problems autonomously but collaboratively, and above all, learning continuously.
In summary: technical expertise opens doors, but it’s your overall vision, adaptability, and human qualities that will allow you to go far in this profession.
👉 Whether you’re a candidate or a recruiter, this information should give you concrete benchmarks for navigating this ever-evolving universe!
🚀 Stay connected! More surveys will follow. Follow me and contribute to this study of the DevOps market by responding to future editions!
🔍 Want to go further? Contact me to discuss DevOps trends and exchange best practices in the market!
For DevOps professionals in Montreal who value versatility and collaboration, career opportunities are available at Gologic. Discover our open positions.
By Clémence Gaisnon, Recruitment and Talent Management Lead at Gologic
⚠️ Attention: some points about our survey
Let’s keep in mind that this first snapshot isn’t an exact science!
- Sample & Source: 160 responses, that’s a good start, but it mainly comes from my LinkedIn network. So it doesn’t necessarily reflect 100% of the Montreal DevOps market (some bias is possible).
- Small subgroups: when we focus on specific roles (SRE, DevSecOps…), the number of respondents per category decreases. The trends for these groups should therefore be taken with a grain of salt (possible bias due to a small sample).
- Self-reported answers: as in any survey, answers can sometimes tend towards extremes (extreme response bias) or be a bit influenced by what is “expected”. 🤔
