DevOps Engineer Salary in India, Kochi and Kerala — 2026 Reality

Cloud and DevOps salaries in India have held strong through 2025 and 2026 because demand continues to outpace supply. Here is an honest breakdown by role and experience level — not marketing estimates, but what the market is actually offering.

Entry-level cloud and DevOps salaries in India (0-1 year)

• Cloud Engineer fresher with portfolio + certification: ₹4-8 LPA
• DevOps Engineer fresher: ₹5-9 LPA
• Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) fresher: ₹6-10 LPA
• MLOps Engineer (AI + cloud combined): ₹6-11 LPA — highest entry-level in this category
• Platform Engineer fresher: ₹5-9 LPA

Mid-level salaries (2-4 years)

• DevOps / Cloud Engineer: ₹10-18 LPA
• SRE: ₹12-20 LPA
• MLOps Engineer: ₹14-22 LPA
• Cloud Architect: ₹18-28 LPA

Kochi vs Bengaluru salary comparison

Kochi DevOps salaries are typically 15-20% below Bengaluru for the same role and experience. However, Kochi's cost of living is proportionally lower, and many cloud/DevOps roles in Kochi companies are remote-first — meaning Bengaluru or global compensation with Kochi living costs. The salary gap is narrowing as Infopark and SmartCity companies compete for cloud talent.

What moves you to the top of the salary range

• Multi-cloud experience (AWS + Azure or AWS + GCP) over single-cloud
• Kubernetes and Terraform depth over surface-level exposure
• AI tools integration: MLOps, AI-assisted IaC, cloud AI services
• AWS Solutions Architect Associate or Professional certification
• Demonstrable production experience: systems you built and ran, not labs you completed