DevOps Engineer Salary in Berlin 2026: What the Market Pays

Berlin has become one of Europe's most active markets for DevOps talent. In 2026, the city's mix of high-growth startups, established scale-ups, and legacy enterprise employers means DevOps engineers can choose between equity-heavy upside and corporate stability - with salaries ranging from €55,000 at junior level to €130,000+ for senior engineers at Big Tech or major enterprises.

What DevOps Engineers Earn in Berlin

The median DevOps engineer salary in Berlin is approximately €82,000 per year for mid-level engineers with 3-6 years of experience. See live DevOps engineer salary data for Berlin →

Salary ranges reflect base pay. Equity and bonuses vary significantly by employer type - Berlin startups increasingly offer meaningful RSU or ESOP packages, while enterprise employers provide structured bonuses of 8-15%.

Company Types and What They Pay

Employer type is one of the biggest drivers of DevOps salary in Berlin. The market divides into three distinct tiers.

Startups and scale-ups (Zalando, HelloFresh, N26, Delivery Hero, SumUp): These employers pay competitively on base - typically €70K-€105K for mid-to-senior engineers - and supplement with equity. At a Series B-D startup, a senior DevOps or platform engineer can accumulate meaningful equity value alongside a market-rate salary. The trade-off is higher operational responsibility and sometimes less mature tooling. Enterprise and corporate (SAP, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Allianz): Corporate employers anchor the mid-range. Base salaries for senior DevOps engineers run €90K-€110K, with structured performance bonuses and defined career ladders. The tooling environment often skews Azure or SAP Cloud Platform rather than AWS - experience in enterprise-scale cloud migrations is valued here. Job security and benefits are strong. Big Tech and FAANG-adjacent (AWS Berlin, Google, Booking.com, Spotify): The highest base salaries in the Berlin market. Staff and senior engineers at Big Tech earn €115K-€130K+, with RSUs on top. These roles are selective and typically require demonstrated experience at scale - large Kubernetes deployments, multi-region infrastructure ownership, or SRE-level expertise.

Berlin vs. Munich vs. London

Berlin is a strong market, but understanding how it compares to other European hubs helps with negotiation.

Munich pays a consistent €8K-€15K premium over Berlin, driven by BMW, Siemens, and enterprise software demand. London pays the most in absolute terms but with significantly higher income tax (40-45% above £50K) and living costs. For engineers who want strong European pay without relocating to London, Berlin paired with a scale-up equity package is increasingly competitive.

Compare DevOps salaries in London → | See remote DevOps salary data →

Skills That Move You Into the Top Bands

Specific technical expertise commands consistent premiums in the Berlin DevOps market:

1. Kubernetes and container orchestration - CKA certification and production EKS/GKE/AKS ownership is the single most valued skill. Engineers with documented Kubernetes at scale earn €10K-€18K above peers. Berlin's density of cloud-native startups means Kubernetes fluency is effectively table stakes for senior roles. 2. Terraform and Infrastructure as Code - Terraform, Pulumi, and CDK expertise is expected at mid-level and above. Cross-cloud IaC module design and state management at scale separates senior from mid-level candidates in recruiter screens. 3. AWS or Azure certifications - AWS Solutions Architect Professional is the most universally valued. Azure certifications carry extra weight at SAP, Deutsche Telekom, and Siemens. Engineers with a major cloud certification typically earn €8K-€15K above uncertified peers. 4. GitOps pipelines - ArgoCD, Flux, GitHub Actions, and Tekton expertise is increasingly requested as Berlin companies mature their delivery infrastructure. Platform engineers who own the entire pipeline earn a meaningful premium. 5. Observability and monitoring - Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog. Engineers who design and operate observability stacks, not just configure dashboards, are valued at senior and staff levels.

SRE vs. DevOps vs. Platform Engineer - Titles and Pay

The Berlin market uses three titles for overlapping but distinct roles, and pay varies accordingly:

DevOps Engineer: The broadest title. Responsible for CI/CD, cloud provisioning, and developer tooling. Median senior salary: €95K-€110K.

Site Reliability Engineer (SRE): Focuses on reliability, SLO/SLA design, on-call, and incident management. Commands a 10-15% premium over equivalent DevOps roles - senior SREs earn €100K-€120K. Demand is highest at scale-ups with mature production traffic.

Platform Engineer: Owns the internal developer platform - tooling, golden paths, self-service infrastructure. Growing fastest in headcount at Berlin scale-ups. Senior platform engineers earn €98K-€118K.

Engineers who can move across all three modes - shipping infrastructure as code, owning reliability metrics, and enabling other developers - are the most sought-after candidates in 2026.

What Recruiters See in Berlin

Berlin tech recruiters consistently report three hiring trends for DevOps in 2026:

1. Cloud-native depth is non-negotiable. Engineers who list Kubernetes, Terraform, and at least one major cloud platform are progressed to interview at 3× the rate of generalists. Recruiters screen for production ownership, not familiarity. 2. English-only applications are fine. Berlin's tech ecosystem is heavily international. Most DevOps teams operate entirely in English, and German language skills are rarely a hiring requirement outside of traditional enterprise roles. 3. Salary expectations are trending upward. Berlin DevOps engineers with 4+ years of experience are increasingly negotiating €90K+ as a floor. The talent shortage in cloud-native infrastructure has tightened the market, and candidates with Kubernetes and Terraform experience are receiving multiple competing offers.

For a global comparison, see the full DevOps engineer salary guide 2026 covering six cities and the DevOps engineer salary in London 2026 for UK market context. Remote DevOps roles are also worth evaluating - remote DevOps salaries often match or exceed Berlin base for senior engineers.