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 20 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 14 17
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -6
Contract jobs citing DevOps 3,711 2,797 3,238
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.62% 10.56% 8.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.18% 11.83% 10.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,621 1,918 2,381
10th Percentile £368 £400 £413
25th Percentile £429 £478 £485
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £618 £675 £675
90th Percentile £713 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £564 £563
% change year-on-year -7.80% +0.27% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 22 92
10th Percentile £39.53 £38.78 £46.18
25th Percentile £45.46 £48.70 £54.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -0.92%
75th Percentile £79.75 £80.56 £70.31
90th Percentile £95.00 £80.75 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -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 28,150 23,642 32,326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.12% 89.29% 87.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,007 14,469 21,732
10th Percentile £304 £310 £300
25th Percentile £409 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £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 1,749 768 1,647
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.10
25th Percentile £17.89 £21.00 £17.68
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -12.50% +14.29%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £69.49 £75.00 £75.42
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -14.47% +16.92%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -1 1,857 £538 -10.42% 466
North of England +5 675 £500 -1.96% 385
Midlands +21 390 £515 -1.44% 201
South East 0 388 £525 -10.64% 546
Yorkshire +1 352 £500 -0.74% 157
West Midlands +24 319 £525 - 94
North West +4 277 £455 -9.00% 176
South West +9 236 £525 -12.50% 221
East of England +18 103 £565 +11.33% 217
East Midlands +12 71 £425 -10.53% 103
North East -6 47 £475 -17.03% 54
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
1 233 (6.28%) Confluence
2 80 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 79 (2.13%) Apache
4 76 (2.05%) SAS
5 66 (1.78%) Apache Spark
6 59 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.89%) OpenStack
8 31 (0.84%) nginx
9 29 (0.78%) CMS
10 21 (0.57%) IIS
11 19 (0.51%) JBoss
12 18 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
13 14 (0.38%) CICS
14 13 (0.35%) WebLogic
15 10 (0.27%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.27%) Mendix
15 10 (0.27%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.24%) iPlanet
16 9 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
17 8 (0.22%) Smallworld
Applications
1 84 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 31 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
5 16 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 12 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.24%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.22%) Weka
9 4 (0.11%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.027%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.027%) Moqups
10 1 (0.027%) Revit
Business Applications
1 58 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.35%) VisionPLUS
4 11 (0.30%) Endur
5 10 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.24%) Maximo
7 8 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
10 4 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 4 (0.11%) SAP ERP
11 3 (0.081%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.081%) SAP FI/CO
11 3 (0.081%) Teamcenter
11 3 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,848 (49.80%) Azure
2 1,302 (35.08%) AWS
3 998 (26.89%) Azure DevOps
4 674 (18.16%) GitHub
5 563 (15.17%) GCP
6 414 (11.16%) Serverless
7 373 (10.05%) GitHub Actions
8 299 (8.06%) Power Platform
9 203 (5.47%) Amazon S3
10 201 (5.42%) AWS CloudFormation
11 197 (5.31%) AWS Lambda
12 174 (4.69%) Azure Data Factory
13 166 (4.47%) Azure AKS
14 155 (4.18%) Entra ID
15 148 (3.99%) Dynamics 365
16 147 (3.96%) OpenShift
17 145 (3.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 138 (3.72%) SaaS
19 132 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
20 129 (3.48%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 187 (5.04%) Firewall
2 105 (2.83%) DNS
3 77 (2.07%) VPN
4 74 (1.99%) Network Security
5 53 (1.43%) TCP/IP
6 49 (1.32%) SSL
7 36 (0.97%) HTTP
8 28 (0.75%) HTTPS
9 22 (0.59%) WAN
10 18 (0.49%) BGP
10 18 (0.49%) SSH
11 17 (0.46%) FTP
11 17 (0.46%) MPLS
11 17 (0.46%) SD-WAN
11 17 (0.46%) SMTP
12 15 (0.40%) DHCP
12 15 (0.40%) Kerberos
13 10 (0.27%) Internet
13 10 (0.27%) LAN
14 9 (0.24%) IMAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 211 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
2 202 (5.44%) Power BI
3 144 (3.88%) NoSQL
4 142 (3.83%) SQL Server
5 108 (2.91%) Amazon RDS
6 104 (2.80%) Data Lake
7 89 (2.40%) MongoDB
8 86 (2.32%) Relational Database
9 83 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
10 80 (2.16%) Oracle Database
11 70 (1.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 55 (1.48%) Elasticsearch
13 53 (1.43%) DynamoDB
14 50 (1.35%) Tableau
15 49 (1.32%) MySQL
15 49 (1.32%) Redis
16 41 (1.10%) Delta Lake
17 40 (1.08%) Metadata
18 39 (1.05%) Pentaho
19 35 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 669 (18.03%) Jenkins
2 546 (14.71%) Git
3 535 (14.42%) JIRA
4 479 (12.91%) GitLab
5 111 (2.99%) Selenium
6 85 (2.29%) JUnit
7 76 (2.05%) Postman
8 68 (1.83%) SonarQube
9 65 (1.75%) Sonatype Nexus
10 52 (1.40%) Bitbucket
11 51 (1.37%) Cypress.io
12 47 (1.27%) Cucumber
13 46 (1.24%) Artifactory
14 45 (1.21%) Gradle
15 42 (1.13%) Maven
16 37 (1.00%) Liquibase
17 36 (0.97%) Oracle APEX
18 33 (0.89%) CircleCI
19 31 (0.84%) JMeter
20 29 (0.78%) REST Assured
General
1 1,161 (31.29%) Social Skills
2 668 (18.00%) Finance
3 441 (11.88%) Public Sector
4 328 (8.84%) Banking
5 295 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
6 121 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (1.83%) Financial Institution
8 63 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
9 56 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 55 (1.48%) Marketing
11 45 (1.21%) Front Office
12 44 (1.19%) Investment Banking
12 44 (1.19%) Retail
13 43 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
13 43 (1.16%) Telecoms
14 32 (0.86%) Military
15 31 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
16 26 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
17 24 (0.65%) Back Office
17 24 (0.65%) Law
Job Titles
1 702 (18.92%) DevOps Engineer
2 633 (17.06%) Developer
3 506 (13.64%) Senior
4 326 (8.78%) Architect
5 282 (7.60%) Lead
6 210 (5.66%) Azure Engineer
7 205 (5.52%) AWS Engineer
8 197 (5.31%) Data Engineer
9 193 (5.20%) Analyst
10 159 (4.28%) AWS DevOps
11 148 (3.99%) Software Engineer
12 140 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
13 137 (3.69%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 130 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
15 123 (3.31%) Senior Developer
16 107 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
17 105 (2.83%) Business Analyst
18 103 (2.78%) Senior DevOps
19 100 (2.69%) Consultant
20 95 (2.56%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 424 (11.43%) REST
2 292 (7.87%) .NET
3 225 (6.06%) React
4 224 (6.04%) Node.js
5 218 (5.87%) Kafka
6 216 (5.82%) RESTful
7 186 (5.01%) Spring
8 170 (4.58%) JSON
9 163 (4.39%) Spring Boot
10 126 (3.40%) YAML
11 123 (3.31%) XML
12 120 (3.23%) AngularJS
13 119 (3.21%) SOAP
14 118 (3.18%) Elastic Stack
14 118 (3.18%) OAuth
15 111 (2.99%) HTML
16 93 (2.51%) Playwright
17 84 (2.26%) Middleware
18 81 (2.18%) ARM Templates
18 81 (2.18%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 522 (14.07%) Cloud Native
2 196 (5.28%) Product Ownership
3 139 (3.75%) Distributed Systems
4 103 (2.78%) Onboarding
5 98 (2.64%) Public Cloud
6 72 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
7 68 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
8 64 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
10 49 (1.32%) Management Information System
10 49 (1.32%) Replication
11 45 (1.21%) Data Centre
11 45 (1.21%) Virtual Team
12 44 (1.19%) Mobile App
13 42 (1.13%) Private Cloud
13 42 (1.13%) Security Posture
14 35 (0.94%) NHS
14 35 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
15 32 (0.86%) AI Agents
16 29 (0.78%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 431 (11.61%) Linux
2 216 (5.82%) Windows
3 84 (2.26%) Unix
4 51 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 51 (1.37%) VMS
5 49 (1.32%) Windows Server
6 30 (0.81%) Ubuntu
7 28 (0.75%) Android
8 25 (0.67%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.49%) Windows 10
10 17 (0.46%) CentOS
11 14 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
12 10 (0.27%) Solaris
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.13%) zOS
15 2 (0.054%) Debian
15 2 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.027%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.027%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,097 (56.51%) CI/CD
2 1,495 (40.29%) Agile
3 941 (25.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 724 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
5 711 (19.16%) Containerisation
6 579 (15.60%) Test Automation
7 547 (14.74%) Microservices
8 430 (11.59%) Analytics
8 430 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
9 422 (11.37%) Migration
10 411 (11.08%) Scrum
11 373 (10.05%) Observability
12 360 (9.70%) AI
13 349 (9.40%) Software Engineering
14 328 (8.84%) Stakeholder Management
15 292 (7.87%) Mentoring
16 276 (7.44%) Data Modelling
17 264 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
18 258 (6.95%) Data Pipeline
19 254 (6.84%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,151 (31.02%) Python
2 746 (20.10%) SQL
3 495 (13.34%) Java
4 360 (9.70%) JavaScript
5 333 (8.97%) C#
6 321 (8.65%) PowerShell
7 302 (8.14%) Bash
8 254 (6.84%) TypeScript
9 130 (3.50%) Go
10 126 (3.40%) Bicep
11 73 (1.97%) PL/SQL
12 59 (1.59%) Shell Script
13 49 (1.32%) Groovy
14 44 (1.19%) Scala
15 41 (1.10%) C++
15 41 (1.10%) Ruby
16 38 (1.02%) T-SQL
17 31 (0.84%) Perl
18 20 (0.54%) Rust
19 19 (0.51%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,148 (30.94%) Security Cleared
2 949 (25.57%) SC Cleared
3 331 (8.92%) Degree
4 180 (4.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 169 (4.55%) Azure Certification
6 131 (3.53%) DV Cleared
7 112 (3.02%) AWS Certification
8 77 (2.07%) Master's Degree
9 74 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
10 66 (1.78%) CISSP
11 54 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
12 52 (1.40%) CISM
13 39 (1.05%) ISTQB
14 35 (0.94%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 31 (0.84%) PMI Certification
16 26 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
17 25 (0.67%) PMP
18 21 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 17 (0.46%) IIBA
20 16 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (8.87%) QA
2 147 (3.96%) GDPR
3 131 (3.53%) Data Quality
4 113 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 100 (2.69%) NIST
6 82 (2.21%) Accessibility
7 54 (1.46%) NCSC
8 30 (0.81%) PCI DSS
9 26 (0.70%) WCAG
10 25 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.59%) HIPAA
11 22 (0.59%) SLA
12 17 (0.46%) PSD2
13 16 (0.43%) ISO 20022
13 16 (0.43%) PMO
14 14 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 13 (0.35%) SEPA
16 10 (0.27%) HL7
17 9 (0.24%) NIST 800
18 8 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 953 (25.68%) Docker
2 155 (4.18%) Active Directory
3 62 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 59 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.75%) vSphere
6 17 (0.46%) DFS Replication
7 15 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
9 11 (0.30%) Squid
10 10 (0.27%) Lustre
10 10 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 9 (0.24%) Dovecot
11 9 (0.24%) Hyper-V
11 9 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.24%) Postfix
12 8 (0.22%) GPFS
12 8 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.22%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 7 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 1,130 (30.45%) Terraform
2 1,084 (29.21%) Kubernetes
3 483 (13.02%) Ansible
4 260 (7.01%) Grafana
5 239 (6.44%) Prometheus
6 76 (2.05%) Puppet
7 72 (1.94%) Argo
8 46 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (1.05%) Progress Chef
10 37 (1.00%) Istio
11 35 (0.94%) Kibana
12 32 (0.86%) Packer
13 22 (0.59%) Podman
14 16 (0.43%) Proxmox
14 16 (0.43%) Rancher
15 14 (0.38%) Nessus
15 14 (0.38%) NetBackup
16 13 (0.35%) SCCM
17 12 (0.32%) Data Guard
17 12 (0.32%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 650 (17.52%) Microsoft
2 290 (7.81%) Oracle
3 225 (6.06%) Google
4 203 (5.47%) Databricks
5 197 (5.31%) Splunk
6 142 (3.83%) ServiceNow
7 117 (3.15%) Red Hat
8 102 (2.75%) VMware
9 91 (2.45%) Salesforce
10 90 (2.43%) SAP
11 62 (1.67%) Dynatrace
12 53 (1.43%) OpenAI
13 46 (1.24%) F5
14 43 (1.16%) CyberArk
15 42 (1.13%) Talend
16 41 (1.10%) IBM
17 40 (1.08%) Palo Alto
18 38 (1.02%) Denodo
19 35 (0.94%) Atlassian
20 32 (0.86%) Cisco