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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 14 17
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -6
Contract jobs citing DevOps 3,674 2,836 3,209
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.61% 10.59% 8.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.14% 11.88% 10.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,587 1,949 2,370
10th Percentile £368 £400 £415
25th Percentile £425 £475 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £623 £675 £675
90th Percentile £709 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £524 £563 £563
% change year-on-year -6.89% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 23 81
10th Percentile £44.27 £39.05 £46.18
25th Percentile £45.46 £46.18 £52.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -0.92%
75th Percentile £82.00 £80.38 £70.00
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 27,954 23,866 31,707
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.33% 89.11% 87.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,831 14,651 21,413
10th Percentile £304 £310 £305
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
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 1,737 769 1,474
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.60 £14.23
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.10% -18.82% +21.43%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.79 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -3 1,832 £545 -9.17% 469
North of England +4 655 £490 -2.76% 360
South East 0 393 £525 -12.50% 472
Midlands +22 387 £515 -1.90% 186
Yorkshire 0 342 £500 -0.74% 153
West Midlands +20 315 £525 - 89
North West +7 269 £455 -9.00% 158
South West +6 236 £525 -11.02% 199
East of England +18 99 £550 +8.37% 176
East Midlands +18 72 £425 -10.53% 92
North East -10 45 £475 -17.21% 50
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
1 237 (6.45%) Confluence
2 79 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 75 (2.04%) Apache
4 73 (1.99%) SAS
5 62 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (1.69%) Apache Spark
6 32 (0.87%) OpenStack
7 29 (0.79%) CMS
7 29 (0.79%) nginx
8 21 (0.57%) IIS
9 20 (0.54%) JBoss
10 16 (0.44%) CICS
10 16 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
11 13 (0.35%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.27%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.27%) Mendix
12 10 (0.27%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.24%) iPlanet
13 9 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
14 8 (0.22%) Smallworld
Applications
1 81 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 29 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
5 14 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 12 (0.33%) 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%) Moqups
10 1 (0.027%) Revit
Business Applications
1 54 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.38%) VisionPLUS
4 12 (0.33%) Endur
5 11 (0.30%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.24%) Maximo
7 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
10 4 (0.11%) SAP ERP
11 3 (0.082%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.082%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.082%) SAP CO
11 3 (0.082%) SAP FI/CO
11 3 (0.082%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,833 (49.89%) Azure
2 1,299 (35.36%) AWS
3 980 (26.67%) Azure DevOps
4 683 (18.59%) GitHub
5 548 (14.92%) GCP
6 410 (11.16%) Serverless
7 388 (10.56%) GitHub Actions
8 290 (7.89%) Power Platform
9 203 (5.53%) Amazon S3
10 199 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
11 189 (5.14%) AWS CloudFormation
12 168 (4.57%) Azure Data Factory
13 165 (4.49%) Azure AKS
14 150 (4.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 150 (4.08%) Entra ID
15 145 (3.95%) OpenShift
16 144 (3.92%) Dynamics 365
17 141 (3.84%) SaaS
18 133 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
19 131 (3.57%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 187 (5.09%) Firewall
2 110 (2.99%) DNS
3 76 (2.07%) VPN
4 72 (1.96%) Network Security
5 55 (1.50%) TCP/IP
6 50 (1.36%) SSL
7 37 (1.01%) HTTP
8 28 (0.76%) HTTPS
9 21 (0.57%) WAN
10 20 (0.54%) SSH
11 18 (0.49%) BGP
11 18 (0.49%) FTP
11 18 (0.49%) SMTP
12 17 (0.46%) MPLS
13 16 (0.44%) DHCP
14 15 (0.41%) Kerberos
14 15 (0.41%) SD-WAN
15 13 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
16 11 (0.30%) Internet
17 10 (0.27%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 217 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
2 196 (5.33%) Power BI
3 144 (3.92%) NoSQL
4 138 (3.76%) SQL Server
5 110 (2.99%) Amazon RDS
6 104 (2.83%) Data Lake
7 89 (2.42%) MongoDB
8 87 (2.37%) Relational Database
9 82 (2.23%) Oracle Database
10 81 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
11 71 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
12 54 (1.47%) Elasticsearch
13 52 (1.42%) MySQL
14 51 (1.39%) DynamoDB
14 51 (1.39%) Redis
15 49 (1.33%) Tableau
16 39 (1.06%) Metadata
17 38 (1.03%) Amazon Aurora
17 38 (1.03%) Delta Lake
18 36 (0.98%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 657 (17.88%) Jenkins
2 543 (14.78%) Git
3 537 (14.62%) JIRA
4 468 (12.74%) GitLab
5 111 (3.02%) Selenium
6 80 (2.18%) JUnit
7 73 (1.99%) Postman
8 72 (1.96%) SonarQube
9 64 (1.74%) Sonatype Nexus
10 56 (1.52%) Bitbucket
11 52 (1.42%) Cypress.io
12 48 (1.31%) Cucumber
13 46 (1.25%) Artifactory
14 42 (1.14%) Gradle
15 41 (1.12%) Liquibase
16 40 (1.09%) CircleCI
17 37 (1.01%) Maven
17 37 (1.01%) Oracle APEX
18 29 (0.79%) JMeter
19 28 (0.76%) REST Assured
General
1 1,152 (31.36%) Social Skills
2 666 (18.13%) Finance
3 436 (11.87%) Public Sector
4 330 (8.98%) Banking
5 289 (7.87%) Analytical Skills
6 118 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (1.82%) Financial Institution
8 61 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
9 56 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 55 (1.50%) Marketing
11 49 (1.33%) Investment Banking
12 46 (1.25%) Front Office
13 45 (1.22%) Retail
14 44 (1.20%) Telecoms
15 41 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
16 31 (0.84%) Military
16 31 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
17 26 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
18 24 (0.65%) Back Office
18 24 (0.65%) Law
Job Titles
1 692 (18.84%) DevOps Engineer
2 624 (16.98%) Developer
3 504 (13.72%) Senior
4 310 (8.44%) Architect
5 283 (7.70%) Lead
6 210 (5.72%) Azure Engineer
7 201 (5.47%) AWS Engineer
8 191 (5.20%) Analyst
9 189 (5.14%) Data Engineer
10 157 (4.27%) Software Engineer
11 155 (4.22%) AWS DevOps
12 140 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
13 132 (3.59%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 131 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
15 129 (3.51%) Senior Developer
16 105 (2.86%) Business Analyst
16 105 (2.86%) Senior DevOps
17 102 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
18 99 (2.69%) Consultant
19 96 (2.61%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 417 (11.35%) REST
2 298 (8.11%) .NET
3 224 (6.10%) React
4 221 (6.02%) Node.js
5 215 (5.85%) RESTful
6 212 (5.77%) Kafka
7 170 (4.63%) Spring
8 168 (4.57%) JSON
9 150 (4.08%) Spring Boot
10 126 (3.43%) YAML
11 119 (3.24%) AngularJS
11 119 (3.24%) SOAP
11 119 (3.24%) XML
12 117 (3.18%) Elastic Stack
13 113 (3.08%) OAuth
14 111 (3.02%) HTML
15 90 (2.45%) Playwright
16 84 (2.29%) Middleware
17 81 (2.20%) ARM Templates
18 79 (2.15%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 508 (13.83%) Cloud Native
2 192 (5.23%) Product Ownership
3 136 (3.70%) Distributed Systems
4 100 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 92 (2.50%) Public Cloud
6 77 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 67 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
8 62 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
9 50 (1.36%) Replication
10 45 (1.22%) Management Information System
10 45 (1.22%) Mobile App
11 44 (1.20%) Data Centre
12 43 (1.17%) Security Posture
12 43 (1.17%) Virtual Team
13 41 (1.12%) Private Cloud
14 37 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (0.93%) NHS
16 32 (0.87%) AI Agents
17 30 (0.82%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 430 (11.70%) Linux
2 214 (5.82%) Windows
3 84 (2.29%) Unix
4 52 (1.42%) VMS
5 51 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 50 (1.36%) Windows Server
7 29 (0.79%) Android
7 29 (0.79%) Ubuntu
8 25 (0.68%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.52%) Windows 10
10 16 (0.44%) CentOS
11 15 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
12 10 (0.27%) Solaris
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.16%) zOS
14 2 (0.054%) Debian
14 2 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.027%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.027%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,068 (56.29%) CI/CD
2 1,492 (40.61%) Agile
3 918 (24.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 717 (19.52%) Problem-Solving
5 696 (18.94%) Containerisation
6 560 (15.24%) Test Automation
7 550 (14.97%) Microservices
8 422 (11.49%) Migration
9 421 (11.46%) Analytics
10 416 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
11 405 (11.02%) Scrum
12 364 (9.91%) Observability
13 361 (9.83%) AI
14 359 (9.77%) Software Engineering
15 319 (8.68%) Stakeholder Management
16 287 (7.81%) Mentoring
17 267 (7.27%) Data Modelling
18 256 (6.97%) Business Intelligence
19 252 (6.86%) DevSecOps
19 252 (6.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,146 (31.19%) Python
2 738 (20.09%) SQL
3 482 (13.12%) Java
4 359 (9.77%) JavaScript
5 339 (9.23%) C#
6 324 (8.82%) PowerShell
7 306 (8.33%) Bash
8 253 (6.89%) TypeScript
9 142 (3.86%) Go
10 127 (3.46%) Bicep
11 78 (2.12%) PL/SQL
12 59 (1.61%) Shell Script
13 51 (1.39%) Groovy
14 43 (1.17%) C++
15 42 (1.14%) Ruby
16 40 (1.09%) Scala
17 37 (1.01%) T-SQL
18 33 (0.90%) Perl
19 23 (0.63%) PHP
20 22 (0.60%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,122 (30.54%) Security Cleared
2 930 (25.31%) SC Cleared
3 330 (8.98%) Degree
4 181 (4.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 165 (4.49%) Azure Certification
6 127 (3.46%) DV Cleared
7 108 (2.94%) AWS Certification
8 78 (2.12%) Master's Degree
9 69 (1.88%) CISSP
10 67 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
12 53 (1.44%) CISM
13 36 (0.98%) ISTQB
14 33 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 30 (0.82%) PMI Certification
16 27 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 24 (0.65%) PMP
18 20 (0.54%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 17 (0.46%) IIBA
20 16 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 335 (9.12%) QA
2 148 (4.03%) GDPR
3 124 (3.38%) Data Quality
4 117 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 103 (2.80%) NIST
6 81 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 50 (1.36%) NCSC
8 28 (0.76%) PCI DSS
9 27 (0.73%) WCAG
10 25 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.63%) SLA
12 21 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 17 (0.46%) PMO
14 15 (0.41%) PSD2
15 14 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 14 (0.38%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.30%) SEPA
17 9 (0.24%) HL7
18 8 (0.22%) MiFID
18 8 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 946 (25.75%) Docker
2 159 (4.33%) Active Directory
3 62 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 57 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.76%) vSphere
6 18 (0.49%) DFS Replication
7 15 (0.41%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
9 11 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
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%) Postfix
12 8 (0.22%) GPFS
12 8 (0.22%) Hyper-V
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 1,111 (30.24%) Terraform
2 1,073 (29.21%) Kubernetes
3 479 (13.04%) Ansible
4 264 (7.19%) Grafana
5 246 (6.70%) Prometheus
6 75 (2.04%) Puppet
7 73 (1.99%) Argo
8 46 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
9 42 (1.14%) Progress Chef
10 36 (0.98%) Kibana
11 35 (0.95%) Istio
12 30 (0.82%) Packer
13 24 (0.65%) Podman
14 16 (0.44%) Proxmox
14 16 (0.44%) Rancher
15 14 (0.38%) Data Guard
15 14 (0.38%) Nessus
15 14 (0.38%) NetBackup
15 14 (0.38%) SCCM
16 13 (0.35%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 641 (17.45%) Microsoft
2 293 (7.97%) Oracle
3 212 (5.77%) Google
4 196 (5.33%) Databricks
5 194 (5.28%) Splunk
6 146 (3.97%) ServiceNow
7 119 (3.24%) Red Hat
8 102 (2.78%) VMware
9 93 (2.53%) Salesforce
10 90 (2.45%) SAP
11 64 (1.74%) Dynatrace
12 52 (1.42%) OpenAI
13 46 (1.25%) F5
14 41 (1.12%) CyberArk
14 41 (1.12%) IBM
15 39 (1.06%) Atlassian
15 39 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.03%) Talend
17 35 (0.95%) Denodo
18 32 (0.87%) MuleSoft