There isn't a simple answer that AIOps always pays more than DevOps. Salary depends on experience, location, company, technical depth, and the responsibilities of the role. However, AIOps can offer strong earning potential because it combines DevOps, monitoring, automation, data, and AI-related skills.
DevOps Engineer
DevOps is a more established career path with a large number of job opportunities. A DevOps Engineer may work with cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines, containers, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and automation.
Professionals who develop strong skills in areas such as Kubernetes, Terraform, cloud architecture, CI/CD, and production troubleshooting can move into senior DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Engineering roles.
AIOps Engineer
AIOps focuses on applying AI and machine learning techniques to IT operations. An AIOps Engineer may work on areas such as anomaly detection, intelligent alerting, event correlation, log analysis, predictive monitoring, and automated incident response.
Because this field requires a combination of operations knowledge and data/AI skills, experienced professionals with the right combination of expertise can command competitive salaries.
Which Career Has Better Potential?
For someone starting from scratch, DevOps is generally the more practical starting point because the fundamentals are widely applicable and there are more established roles.
AIOps becomes particularly valuable after building a strong foundation in DevOps and operations. Someone who understands cloud infrastructure, observability, automation, and distributed systems and then adds AI/ML knowledge can develop a very strong profile.
The most valuable skills for either path are not just individual tools. Employers generally value professionals who can:
- Automate repetitive operational work
- Design reliable cloud infrastructure
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines
- Troubleshoot production issues
- Implement effective observability
- Understand security and scalability
- Use data to improve operational decisions
So rather than choosing a career only based on which title pays more, I would focus on building deep DevOps fundamentals first and then adding AIOps, AI, and data-driven automation skills. That combination can provide strong long-term career opportunities as organizations continue to automate their IT operations.