Working in IT has never been more lucrative. According to the newest DevOps Salary Report from infrastructure automation giant Puppet Inc., some 58 percent of enterprise technology practitioners in the U.S. now earn over $100,000 annually. This figure represents a massive 11 percent increase over 2015 when less than half of the community counted itself in the six-figure club.

Application developers and systems engineers benefited the most from the increase, with more than 60 percent of those who participated in Puppet’s survey having told its pollsters that their compensation exceeds $100,000 per year. Professionals specializing in DevOps fall in the same range, while traditional operations staff who focus exclusively on managing infrastructure continue to lag behind. The study found that only 34 percent of sysadmins earn six figures while most of the rest are in the $75,000 to $100,000 band. The stagnation of traditional IT roles stand in contrast with the rapidly increasing demand for senior technologists and decision-makers, whose know-how is invaluable to companies seeking to address the new technologies entering their environments.

Puppet found that a whopping 88 percent of IT architects now make over $100,000 a year while a quarter bring home $150,000 or above. And their peers at the decision-making level continue to fare well too. Today’s report states that 84 percent have salaries in the six-figure range while a full 43 percent earn more than $150,000 per year, which represents a massive 17 percent jump from 2015.

Managers and executives rank at the top of the compensation scale outside the U.S. as well, but the salaries of international decision-makers are closer to that of practitioners. In Western Europe, for instance, Puppet found that most IT workers make between $50,000 and $74,999 while their higher-ups’ compensation typically falls in the $75,000 to $99,999 range.

The study’s results show that demand for technology talent is continuing to increase all around the world even as more and more traditional IT tasks are automated by new tools. That’s encouraging news for computer science graduates and others who are looking to get into the field, as well as experienced practitioners seeking career advancement.

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