Most IT professionals in the U.S. earn at least $100,000 a year in salary, according to a Puppet 2016 DevOps Salary Report issued today.

The report also found that 43 percent of IT managers earn $150,000 or more, which is up 20 percent from last year. The salary report is based on data gathered from more than 4,600 respondents.

For the first time, respondents were asked to report on the number of servers and employees in their various organizations. The data revealed that organizations with more than 10,000 servers pay their employees the highest salaries, typically $150,000 or more.

“The thing that surprised me most this year, when you look at the discrepancy between the high-performing DevOps organizations compared to lower-performing counterparts, [is that] the gap between those is widening faster than ever before,” says Tim Zonca, director of product marketing for Puppet. “Last year, we found that high-performing companies deliver software 60X faster, and this year that number is 200X faster.”

Interestingly, IT managers and practitioners earn a decent chunk more in the U.S. than practitioners in other countries. The most common salary range for managers in the U.S. is $150,000 and more, but in Western Europe, it's between $75,000 and $99,999, and in Asia, it is between $35,000 and $49,999.

The most common salary range for IT practitioners is $100,000 to $125,000 in the U.S., compared with $50,000 to $75,000 in Western Europe, and less than $25,000 in Asia, the report says.

Zonca says that he expects these numbers to increase in coming years. “DevOps engineers are not only delivering value, but their organizations are recognizing this value and want to retain this value with incentives.”

When IT salaries are broken down by industry, the report revealed IT practitioners in the U.S. are more likely to earn $100,000 or more if they work in the industries of media and entertainment; retail, consumer, or e-commerce; or finance. However, U.S. organizations with the most mature DevOps practices are more likely to compensate IT operations employees $100,000 or more annually.

When looking at the respondents from the U.S., a majority of the 50 states were represented. However, only California had more than 200 respondents, with most of them being DevOps engineers. And California respondents in particular had higher salaries than others, with 75 percent earning $100,000 or more, up from 68 percent last year.