It’s been 16 years since the initial release of Puppet by Puppet Incorporated, which was founded by Luke Kanies in the year 2005, and going by its current popularity, this open-source configuration tool is here to stay. System professionals and administrators around the globe use Puppet to manage the configuration of Unix and Windows-based systems.

Puppet has strong cross-platform capabilities, making it highly diverse to utilise in any development environment. Furthermore, it has support for operating systems like Ubuntu, Debian, Oracle Linus and SUSE. Moreover, the overall number of job listings has also increased over the years, making Puppet one of the fastest-growing skills in the DevOps industry. 

The reason why Puppet is gaining so much popularity over the recent couple of years is because organisations are liking the way how the platform is making their overall infrastructure effortless to manage. Thus, companies are more interested in hiring Puppet certified professionals and paying out good salaries, so that they can make their company infrastructures much more efficient. To assist you in knowing more about Puppet certified professional salary, we have created this comprehensive guide that you should go through in its entirety. 

The average salary of a Puppet Certified Professional

Based on Pay Scale, which is one of the most renowned platforms for learning the salary of various professionals around the globe, the current salary of a Puppet Certified Professional is around $90,000 per year. 

However, it should be realised that the aforementioned salary number can vary based on the candidate’s experience, place of work and type/size of organisation. 

The most popular designations as a Puppet Certified Professional

The ideal designations that help the Puppet Certified Professionals earn the most are:

• Development Operations (DevOps) Engineer
• Senior Development Operations (DevOps) Engineer
• Linux System Administrator
• Systems Engineer (Computer Networking / IT)
• Senior Systems Engineer
• Senior Systems Administrator
• Systems Engineer, Infrastructure
• Technical Architect
• Information Technology (IT) Architect
• Information Technology (IT) Director
• Principal Software Engineer
• Security Engineer, Information Systems
• Staff Software Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer
• Senior Database Administrator (DBA)

The salaries for the above-mentioned designations are as follows:

Some essential FAQs

1. What do you mean by Puppet?

Puppet is currently one of the most popular and matured configuration management tools in the DevOps industry. It runs on open source and can also be utilised for server provisioning. Puppet is also one of the widely used and oldest DevOps tools. 

It should be known that even though Puppet is open source, the Enterprise-level Puppet isn’t free to use. Moreover, due to Puppet’s open-source nature, it’s readily customisable and modifiable. 

You must also remember that Puppet is an automation tool and the language in which Puppet is written is known as Ruby.

2. What is the purpose for which Puppet is used and which companies use Puppet?

Puppet is used as an open-source automation tool for software deployment and configuration. It’s also used for automating infrastructure management and provisioning. 

The various use cases of Puppet are:

• Functions as a bridge between different components present in IaaS Cloud. 
• Assists in cloud automation.
• Assists in configuration management via desired state configuration management.
• Helps in enabling IaC or Infrastructure as a Code.
• Helps in tracking inventory and assets of an organisation. 

Additionally, the companies that utilise Puppet include 42 per cent of all companies that implement DevOps. Some names include AT&T, Citrix, Northrop Grumman, Bank of America, Zynga and Atlassian.

2. Why should you learn Puppet?

To excel in this age of rapid technological competition and innovation, every organisation out there wants the following set of perks:

• Accelerated returns
• Enhanced IT infrastructure for better availability
• Improved performance

Therefore, in a nutshell, companies are on the lookout for a IT configuration management tool or system which will configure, deploy as well as manage their servers. And Puppet is currently the best tool out there which will fulfil the aforementioned needs. 

Puppet saves time by lowering the need of manual labour and thereby increases productivity. It can specifically manage the configuration of operating systems such as Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac OS, while also managing, configuring and deploying servers. With Puppet, it’s easy for businesses to define infrastructure codes, making the system configuration stronger and administering multiple servers together. 

Apart from providing the above-mentioned benefits, Puppet is also quite easy to maintain because developers can enable hardware/software without knowing the inner workings of either of them. 

Since Puppet is utilised by multiple startups, companies including some Fortune 100 ones, it’s safe to say that the demand for Puppet is enhancing day by day. It has also been confirmed by DevOps reports that Puppet certifications are in high demand and certified professionals are obtaining better salaries per year. 

Thus, in a nutshell, it’s extremely worthy to learn Puppet for career improvements in the IT and DevOps space. 

3. What are the benefits of being a Puppet Certified Professional?

A Puppet Certified Professional can enjoy the following set of benefits:

• Offers a thorough understanding of IaC or Infrastructure as a Code. 
   
• Being a Puppet Certified Professional, you can learn the various ways you can automate all IT infrastructures.
   
• Obtain roles such as DevOps Engineer or Puppet Specialist, with a more sound knowledge on the subject over time. 
   
• Since Puppet has a wide-range support across cloud and DevOps systems, you can easily enhance your overall marketability in the IT industry.
   
• Enhance career opportunities as a systems administrator because Puppet aids in improving efficiency & consistency, while lowering the down times. 

4. Who should be pursuing the Puppet Certification?

The following set of professionals should highly pursue the Puppet certification:

• Candidates who would like to work in Quality Assurance departments and would like to automate the test environment setups. 
   
• Candidates working as System Operations Personnel and would like to manage infrastructure at scale. 
   
• Candidates who would like to be a DevOps professional.
   
• Candidates working as developers who would like to use automation for setting up consistent environments for software delivery. 
   
• Candidates who are interested to learn & write IaC or Infrastructure as a Code. 

5. What is the best way to learn Puppet?

To start things off, you have to get yourself acquainted with the Ruby language, so that you can get a proper head start. Then you have to know the various Linux Command line operations and thereby experience the process of installing & configuring applications. 

Furthermore, you can also opt for online tutorials or choose to go with a more formal training so that you can obtain a better idea of the Puppet software. 

6. Puppet Vs Chef – what are the differences and which is the better choice?

In case you’re unaware, then you must know that Chef and Puppet are two of the most well-known configuration management tools. The differences between them are as follows:

• Puppet is mainly written in Ruby. On the other hand, Chef is written in Erlang and Ruby.
   
• Puppet has been designed to be easy to use and simple, while Chef has been designed with the objective of fulfilling Cloud Automation.
   
• Compared to Chef, Puppet is a lot more declarative as a program.

There are no clear-cut answers as to which is the better choice because preferences vary from one candidate to another. However, since Puppet is based only on Ruby, it’s much easier to learn than Chef, which is based on both Ruby as well as Erlang.

7. What is the future scope of being a Puppet Certified Professional?

Over time, DevOps practice will continue to gain acceptance and momentum, thereby opening up various career opportunities to use Puppet as an automation tool in the web application and DevOps space. Moreover, Puppet also assists in CD or Continuous Delivery, leading to faster turnaround times in the market. 

Hence, the future for Puppet is extremely bright and interested candidates can opt for the same without any doubts.   

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Conclusion

As of the current date, more than 35,000 enterprises worldwide use Puppet. Thus, the demand for developers, engineers, managers, administrators and architects having Puppet experience is extremely crucial. 

The Puppet certification program tests the interested candidates whether they have macro-level knowledge of Puppet IT automation software. Once a candidate passes the certification exam, he or she would be allowed to operate the system infrastructure of an organization utilising Puppet. 

The certification process is truly worth the effort and will help any DevOps specialist to make the most out of his or her career.