DevOps Contract Job Trends in England

DevOps
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring DevOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 14 17
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -6
Contract jobs citing DevOps 3,800 2,801 3,289
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.49% 10.56% 8.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.09% 11.80% 9.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,660 1,928 2,415
10th Percentile £375 £400 £413
25th Percentile £438 £480 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £569
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +1.05% -5.17%
75th Percentile £619 £675 £675
90th Percentile £724 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £560 £555
% change year-on-year -7.14% +0.90% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 20 101
10th Percentile - £38.23 £46.18
25th Percentile £45.46 £53.73 £56.65
Median hourly rate £50.00 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +3.85% -0.92%
75th Percentile £79.75 £80.75 £71.25
90th Percentile £95.00 £81.43 £81.25
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £70.36 £65.00
% change year-on-year -21.83% +8.25% -0.76%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

DevOps falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 29,029 23,736 33,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.78% 89.47% 87.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,558 14,524 22,275
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £643 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,797 756 1,886
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.75 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.31 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year -26.69% -5.80% +4.05%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.88
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.96
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.62% +12.38%

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DevOps relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

DevOps job vacancy trend in England

DevOps
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DevOps.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DevOps

DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps in England over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps in England

DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DevOps.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DevOps

DevOps
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps in England over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in England

DevOps
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DevOps within the England region over the 6 months to 31 January 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -2 1,904 £538 -10.42% 475
North of England +4 682 £500 -2.44% 272
South East +2 406 £525 -8.70% 348
Midlands +27 397 £515 +3.00% 107
Yorkshire 0 345 £500 -0.74% 90
West Midlands +23 320 £525 +2.54% 72
North West +4 289 £465 -10.27% 153
South West +6 244 £525 -12.50% 121
East of England +21 110 £575 +9.26% 65
East Midlands +16 77 £425 -12.82% 34
North East -6 50 £475 -15.93% 30
DevOps
UK

DevOps
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 239 (6.29%) Confluence
2 81 (2.13%) Apache
3 80 (2.11%) SharePoint
4 77 (2.03%) Apache Spark
5 76 (2.00%) SAS
6 59 (1.55%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (1.03%) OpenStack
8 36 (0.95%) nginx
9 33 (0.87%) CMS
10 22 (0.58%) IIS
11 19 (0.50%) JBoss
11 19 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
12 11 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.29%) CICS
12 11 (0.29%) WebLogic
13 10 (0.26%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.26%) Mendix
13 10 (0.26%) Sitecore CMS
13 10 (0.26%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 92 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 32 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 29 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
5 18 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 12 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.21%) Weka
8 7 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 3 (0.079%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Revit
Business Applications
1 61 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.29%) Endur
4 10 (0.26%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.26%) VisionPLUS
5 9 (0.24%) Maximo
5 9 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.21%) NEC Housing
7 5 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 5 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 4 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.079%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.079%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.079%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.079%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.079%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.079%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.079%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,929 (50.76%) Azure
2 1,324 (34.84%) AWS
3 1,037 (27.29%) Azure DevOps
4 699 (18.39%) GitHub
5 563 (14.82%) GCP
6 428 (11.26%) Serverless
7 381 (10.03%) GitHub Actions
8 310 (8.16%) Power Platform
9 209 (5.50%) AWS Lambda
10 204 (5.37%) AWS CloudFormation
11 203 (5.34%) Amazon S3
12 182 (4.79%) Azure Data Factory
13 168 (4.42%) Azure AKS
14 163 (4.29%) Entra ID
15 161 (4.24%) OpenShift
16 150 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
17 144 (3.79%) SaaS
18 142 (3.74%) Amazon EKS
19 139 (3.66%) Azure Monitor
20 134 (3.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 185 (4.87%) Firewall
2 104 (2.74%) DNS
3 80 (2.11%) Network Security
4 77 (2.03%) VPN
5 54 (1.42%) TCP/IP
6 42 (1.11%) SSL
7 31 (0.82%) HTTP
8 28 (0.74%) HTTPS
9 23 (0.61%) WAN
10 19 (0.50%) DHCP
11 17 (0.45%) BGP
12 16 (0.42%) Kerberos
12 16 (0.42%) MPLS
12 16 (0.42%) SD-WAN
13 14 (0.37%) SSH
14 13 (0.34%) FTP
14 13 (0.34%) LAN
14 13 (0.34%) SMTP
15 10 (0.26%) Internet
16 9 (0.24%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 211 (5.55%) PostgreSQL
2 204 (5.37%) Power BI
3 145 (3.82%) SQL Server
4 142 (3.74%) NoSQL
5 110 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
6 109 (2.87%) Data Lake
7 98 (2.58%) Relational Database
8 86 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
8 86 (2.26%) MongoDB
9 77 (2.03%) Oracle Database
10 73 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
11 68 (1.79%) Elasticsearch
12 55 (1.45%) DynamoDB
13 51 (1.34%) Redis
13 51 (1.34%) Tableau
14 48 (1.26%) MySQL
15 46 (1.21%) Metadata
16 45 (1.18%) Delta Lake
17 39 (1.03%) Pentaho
18 37 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 668 (17.58%) Jenkins
2 537 (14.13%) JIRA
3 532 (14.00%) Git
4 487 (12.82%) GitLab
5 110 (2.89%) Selenium
6 83 (2.18%) JUnit
6 83 (2.18%) Postman
7 68 (1.79%) SonarQube
8 63 (1.66%) Sonatype Nexus
9 56 (1.47%) Bitbucket
10 48 (1.26%) Cypress.io
11 47 (1.24%) Artifactory
11 47 (1.24%) Cucumber
12 44 (1.16%) Maven
13 41 (1.08%) Gradle
14 36 (0.95%) Oracle APEX
14 36 (0.95%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.87%) CircleCI
16 32 (0.84%) Liquibase
17 31 (0.82%) JMeter
General
1 1,197 (31.50%) Social Skills
2 704 (18.53%) Finance
3 451 (11.87%) Public Sector
4 323 (8.50%) Analytical Skills
5 318 (8.37%) Banking
6 144 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
8 65 (1.71%) Financial Institution
9 59 (1.55%) Marketing
10 58 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 47 (1.24%) Retail
12 46 (1.21%) Front Office
13 44 (1.16%) Investment Banking
14 43 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 42 (1.11%) Telecoms
16 32 (0.84%) Military
17 27 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
18 26 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
19 25 (0.66%) Law
20 24 (0.63%) Legal
Job Titles
1 710 (18.68%) DevOps Engineer
2 638 (16.79%) Developer
3 509 (13.39%) Senior
4 368 (9.68%) Architect
5 287 (7.55%) Lead
6 227 (5.97%) Azure Engineer
7 206 (5.42%) AWS Engineer
8 203 (5.34%) Analyst
9 202 (5.32%) Data Engineer
10 157 (4.13%) AWS DevOps
11 142 (3.74%) Cloud Engineer
11 142 (3.74%) Software Engineer
12 136 (3.58%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 132 (3.47%) Platform Engineer
14 127 (3.34%) Senior Developer
15 117 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
16 115 (3.03%) Business Analyst
17 101 (2.66%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 101 (2.66%) Senior DevOps
18 95 (2.50%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 440 (11.58%) REST
2 304 (8.00%) .NET
3 248 (6.53%) React
4 243 (6.39%) Node.js
5 218 (5.74%) Kafka
6 205 (5.39%) RESTful
7 195 (5.13%) Spring
8 178 (4.68%) Spring Boot
9 165 (4.34%) JSON
10 125 (3.29%) XML
10 125 (3.29%) YAML
11 123 (3.24%) AngularJS
12 121 (3.18%) Elastic Stack
12 121 (3.18%) OAuth
13 116 (3.05%) HTML
13 116 (3.05%) SOAP
14 101 (2.66%) Playwright
15 94 (2.47%) Middleware
16 90 (2.37%) CSS
17 87 (2.29%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 536 (14.11%) Cloud Native
2 210 (5.53%) Product Ownership
3 137 (3.61%) Distributed Systems
4 106 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 103 (2.71%) Public Cloud
6 74 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
7 68 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
8 66 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
10 49 (1.29%) Management Information System
10 49 (1.29%) Virtual Team
11 46 (1.21%) Private Cloud
11 46 (1.21%) Replication
11 46 (1.21%) Security Posture
12 39 (1.03%) Data Centre
12 39 (1.03%) Mobile App
13 36 (0.95%) NHS
14 34 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
15 33 (0.87%) AI Agents
16 29 (0.76%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 429 (11.29%) Linux
2 221 (5.82%) Windows
3 82 (2.16%) Unix
4 51 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 51 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 47 (1.24%) VMS
6 30 (0.79%) Ubuntu
7 21 (0.55%) Android
8 19 (0.50%) Apple iOS
8 19 (0.50%) Windows 10
9 17 (0.45%) CentOS
10 10 (0.26%) Amazon Linux
11 9 (0.24%) Solaris
12 8 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.11%) zOS
15 2 (0.053%) Debian
16 1 (0.026%) Embedded Linux
16 1 (0.026%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,167 (57.03%) CI/CD
2 1,498 (39.42%) Agile
3 961 (25.29%) Infrastructure as Code
4 753 (19.82%) Problem-Solving
5 726 (19.11%) Containerisation
6 586 (15.42%) Test Automation
7 551 (14.50%) Microservices
8 459 (12.08%) Analytics
9 448 (11.79%) Continuous Improvement
10 443 (11.66%) Migration
11 417 (10.97%) Scrum
12 390 (10.26%) Observability
13 384 (10.11%) AI
14 365 (9.61%) Stakeholder Management
15 344 (9.05%) Software Engineering
16 306 (8.05%) Mentoring
17 299 (7.87%) Data Modelling
18 271 (7.13%) Business Intelligence
19 264 (6.95%) Data Pipeline
20 261 (6.87%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,144 (30.11%) Python
2 775 (20.39%) SQL
3 494 (13.00%) Java
4 360 (9.47%) JavaScript
5 351 (9.24%) C#
6 325 (8.55%) PowerShell
7 297 (7.82%) Bash
8 262 (6.89%) TypeScript
9 126 (3.32%) Go
10 125 (3.29%) Bicep
11 73 (1.92%) PL/SQL
12 54 (1.42%) Scala
13 51 (1.34%) Shell Script
14 47 (1.24%) Groovy
15 41 (1.08%) T-SQL
16 39 (1.03%) Ruby
17 38 (1.00%) C++
18 25 (0.66%) Perl
19 21 (0.55%) PHP
19 21 (0.55%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,200 (31.58%) Security Cleared
2 989 (26.03%) SC Cleared
3 340 (8.95%) Degree
4 180 (4.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 178 (4.68%) Azure Certification
6 133 (3.50%) DV Cleared
7 114 (3.00%) AWS Certification
8 80 (2.11%) Master's Degree
9 78 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
10 68 (1.79%) CISSP
11 57 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
12 54 (1.42%) CISM
13 38 (1.00%) ISTQB
14 35 (0.92%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 32 (0.84%) PMI Certification
16 29 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
17 25 (0.66%) PMP
18 24 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 22 (0.58%) IIBA
20 18 (0.47%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (8.47%) QA
2 157 (4.13%) GDPR
3 140 (3.68%) Data Quality
4 125 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 115 (3.03%) NIST
6 92 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 67 (1.76%) NCSC
8 31 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 28 (0.74%) WCAG
10 25 (0.66%) HIPAA
10 25 (0.66%) SLA
11 24 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.53%) PSD2
13 19 (0.50%) PMO
14 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.45%) SOC 2
16 16 (0.42%) SEPA
17 10 (0.26%) NIST 800
18 8 (0.21%) HL7
19 7 (0.18%) MiFID
System Software
1 957 (25.18%) Docker
2 162 (4.26%) Active Directory
3 66 (1.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 63 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (0.84%) vSphere
6 17 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.45%) VMware NSX
7 14 (0.37%) Squid
8 13 (0.34%) DFS Replication
9 11 (0.29%) Lustre
9 11 (0.29%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 9 (0.24%) GPFS
10 9 (0.24%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.21%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 7 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 7 (0.18%) Firmware
12 7 (0.18%) NFS
12 7 (0.18%) Postfix
12 7 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 1,140 (30.00%) Terraform
2 1,109 (29.18%) Kubernetes
3 468 (12.32%) Ansible
4 265 (6.97%) Grafana
5 242 (6.37%) Prometheus
6 78 (2.05%) Argo
7 72 (1.89%) Puppet
8 55 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.97%) Istio
9 37 (0.97%) Kibana
10 36 (0.95%) Progress Chef
11 31 (0.82%) Packer
12 21 (0.55%) Podman
13 16 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 16 (0.42%) Rancher
13 16 (0.42%) SCCM
14 15 (0.39%) Consul
14 15 (0.39%) logstash
14 15 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
15 14 (0.37%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 668 (17.58%) Microsoft
2 289 (7.61%) Oracle
3 217 (5.71%) Databricks
3 217 (5.71%) Google
4 207 (5.45%) Splunk
5 137 (3.61%) ServiceNow
6 124 (3.26%) Red Hat
7 111 (2.92%) VMware
8 96 (2.53%) Salesforce
9 93 (2.45%) SAP
10 65 (1.71%) OpenAI
11 60 (1.58%) Dynatrace
12 55 (1.45%) CyberArk
13 43 (1.13%) F5
14 42 (1.11%) Talend
15 41 (1.08%) IBM
16 40 (1.05%) Atlassian
17 38 (1.00%) Denodo
18 35 (0.92%) Palo Alto
19 31 (0.82%) MuleSoft