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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 14 17
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -6
Contract jobs citing DevOps 3,696 2,857 3,209
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.61% 10.60% 8.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.15% 11.89% 10.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,603 1,964 2,364
10th Percentile £368 £400 £416
25th Percentile £427 £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 £713 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £563 £563
% change year-on-year -7.56% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 23 83
10th Percentile £39.53 £39.05 £46.18
25th Percentile £45.46 £46.18 £53.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -0.92%
75th Percentile £79.75 £80.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £80.75 £77.90
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 28,110 24,036 31,774
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.29% 89.17% 87.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,964 14,778 21,397
10th Percentile £304 £309 £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 £649 £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 1,739 771 1,493
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.63 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -17.65% +21.43%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.38 £75.00 £76.91
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 1,848 £540 -9.24% 453
North of England +5 664 £492 -3.77% 320
South East 0 390 £525 -12.50% 444
Midlands +22 388 £515 -1.67% 165
Yorkshire +1 345 £500 -1.96% 128
West Midlands +20 317 £525 - 90
North West +5 274 £455 -9.00% 149
South West +9 236 £525 -11.02% 168
East of England +17 101 £558 +9.85% 156
East Midlands +14 71 £425 -10.53% 72
North East -9 46 £475 -17.21% 44
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 (6.47%) Confluence
2 81 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 77 (2.08%) Apache
4 75 (2.03%) SAS
5 62 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (1.68%) Apache Spark
6 33 (0.89%) OpenStack
7 30 (0.81%) CMS
8 29 (0.78%) nginx
9 21 (0.57%) IIS
10 19 (0.51%) JBoss
11 18 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.43%) CICS
13 13 (0.35%) WebLogic
14 10 (0.27%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.27%) Mendix
14 10 (0.27%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.24%) iPlanet
15 9 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
16 8 (0.22%) Smallworld
Applications
1 84 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 29 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 22 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.41%) 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 54 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.38%) VisionPLUS
4 12 (0.32%) Endur
5 11 (0.30%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.24%) Maximo
7 8 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.19%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.14%) 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 CO
11 3 (0.081%) SAP FI/CO
11 3 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,847 (49.97%) Azure
2 1,310 (35.44%) AWS
3 986 (26.68%) Azure DevOps
4 686 (18.56%) GitHub
5 559 (15.12%) GCP
6 408 (11.04%) Serverless
7 388 (10.50%) GitHub Actions
8 295 (7.98%) Power Platform
9 203 (5.49%) Amazon S3
10 197 (5.33%) AWS Lambda
11 193 (5.22%) AWS CloudFormation
12 172 (4.65%) Azure Data Factory
13 166 (4.49%) Azure AKS
14 155 (4.19%) Entra ID
15 148 (4.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 145 (3.92%) OpenShift
17 144 (3.90%) Dynamics 365
18 142 (3.84%) SaaS
19 133 (3.60%) Azure Monitor
20 131 (3.54%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 187 (5.06%) Firewall
2 105 (2.84%) DNS
3 76 (2.06%) VPN
4 74 (2.00%) Network Security
5 53 (1.43%) TCP/IP
6 48 (1.30%) SSL
7 35 (0.95%) HTTP
8 28 (0.76%) HTTPS
9 21 (0.57%) 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%) SMTP
12 15 (0.41%) DHCP
12 15 (0.41%) Kerberos
12 15 (0.41%) SD-WAN
13 13 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
14 10 (0.27%) Internet
14 10 (0.27%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 214 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
2 201 (5.44%) Power BI
3 145 (3.92%) NoSQL
4 143 (3.87%) SQL Server
5 107 (2.90%) Amazon RDS
6 104 (2.81%) Data Lake
7 89 (2.41%) MongoDB
8 86 (2.33%) Relational Database
9 81 (2.19%) Data Warehouse
10 79 (2.14%) Oracle Database
11 70 (1.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 52 (1.41%) DynamoDB
12 52 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
13 51 (1.38%) Tableau
14 50 (1.35%) MySQL
14 50 (1.35%) Redis
15 41 (1.11%) Metadata
16 39 (1.06%) Delta Lake
17 38 (1.03%) Pentaho
18 36 (0.97%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 666 (18.02%) Jenkins
2 541 (14.64%) Git
3 539 (14.58%) JIRA
4 481 (13.01%) GitLab
5 112 (3.03%) Selenium
6 80 (2.16%) JUnit
7 78 (2.11%) Postman
8 67 (1.81%) SonarQube
9 65 (1.76%) Sonatype Nexus
10 54 (1.46%) Bitbucket
11 52 (1.41%) Cypress.io
12 47 (1.27%) Artifactory
12 47 (1.27%) Cucumber
13 42 (1.14%) Gradle
14 41 (1.11%) Liquibase
15 39 (1.06%) CircleCI
16 38 (1.03%) Maven
17 36 (0.97%) Oracle APEX
18 31 (0.84%) JMeter
19 28 (0.76%) REST Assured
General
1 1,157 (31.30%) Social Skills
2 671 (18.15%) Finance
3 433 (11.72%) Public Sector
4 334 (9.04%) Banking
5 291 (7.87%) Analytical Skills
6 119 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (1.84%) Financial Institution
8 60 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
9 58 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 54 (1.46%) Marketing
11 46 (1.24%) Front Office
11 46 (1.24%) Investment Banking
11 46 (1.24%) Retail
12 43 (1.16%) Telecoms
13 42 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 33 (0.89%) 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
1 696 (18.83%) DevOps Engineer
2 626 (16.94%) Developer
3 508 (13.74%) Senior
4 320 (8.66%) Architect
5 287 (7.77%) Lead
6 207 (5.60%) Azure Engineer
7 199 (5.38%) AWS Engineer
8 192 (5.19%) Analyst
8 192 (5.19%) Data Engineer
9 153 (4.14%) AWS DevOps
9 153 (4.14%) Software Engineer
10 141 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
11 130 (3.52%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 130 (3.52%) Platform Engineer
12 126 (3.41%) Senior Developer
13 106 (2.87%) Business Analyst
13 106 (2.87%) Solutions Architect
14 105 (2.84%) Senior DevOps
15 100 (2.71%) Consultant
16 96 (2.60%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 421 (11.39%) REST
2 298 (8.06%) .NET
3 222 (6.01%) Node.js
4 221 (5.98%) React
5 216 (5.84%) RESTful
6 214 (5.79%) Kafka
7 177 (4.79%) Spring
8 170 (4.60%) JSON
9 157 (4.25%) Spring Boot
10 127 (3.44%) YAML
11 122 (3.30%) XML
12 120 (3.25%) SOAP
13 119 (3.22%) AngularJS
14 118 (3.19%) OAuth
15 116 (3.14%) Elastic Stack
16 113 (3.06%) HTML
17 94 (2.54%) Playwright
18 85 (2.30%) Middleware
19 83 (2.25%) CSS
20 81 (2.19%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 521 (14.10%) Cloud Native
2 195 (5.28%) Product Ownership
3 137 (3.71%) Distributed Systems
4 100 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 96 (2.60%) Public Cloud
6 76 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
7 69 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
8 66 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
9 49 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
9 49 (1.33%) Replication
10 48 (1.30%) Management Information System
11 46 (1.24%) Data Centre
12 45 (1.22%) Virtual Team
13 44 (1.19%) Mobile App
14 43 (1.16%) Security Posture
15 41 (1.11%) Private Cloud
16 36 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
17 34 (0.92%) NHS
18 32 (0.87%) AI Agents
19 29 (0.78%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 430 (11.63%) Linux
2 215 (5.82%) Windows
3 84 (2.27%) Unix
4 50 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 50 (1.35%) Windows Server
5 49 (1.33%) VMS
6 29 (0.78%) Android
6 29 (0.78%) Ubuntu
7 25 (0.68%) Apple iOS
8 19 (0.51%) Windows 10
9 16 (0.43%) CentOS
10 14 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
11 10 (0.27%) Solaris
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.16%) zOS
13 2 (0.054%) Debian
13 2 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.027%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.027%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,099 (56.79%) CI/CD
2 1,500 (40.58%) Agile
3 937 (25.35%) Infrastructure as Code
4 721 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
5 711 (19.24%) Containerisation
6 569 (15.40%) Test Automation
7 548 (14.83%) Microservices
8 427 (11.55%) Migration
9 426 (11.53%) Analytics
10 425 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 412 (11.15%) Scrum
12 365 (9.88%) Observability
13 361 (9.77%) AI
14 354 (9.58%) Software Engineering
15 325 (8.79%) Stakeholder Management
16 290 (7.85%) Mentoring
17 270 (7.31%) Data Modelling
18 264 (7.14%) Business Intelligence
19 257 (6.95%) DevSecOps
20 255 (6.90%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,148 (31.06%) Python
2 739 (19.99%) SQL
3 490 (13.26%) Java
4 361 (9.77%) JavaScript
5 335 (9.06%) C#
6 323 (8.74%) PowerShell
7 305 (8.25%) Bash
8 253 (6.85%) TypeScript
9 141 (3.81%) Go
10 128 (3.46%) Bicep
11 74 (2.00%) PL/SQL
12 59 (1.60%) Shell Script
13 48 (1.30%) Groovy
14 44 (1.19%) C++
15 41 (1.11%) Ruby
15 41 (1.11%) Scala
16 37 (1.00%) T-SQL
17 31 (0.84%) Perl
18 21 (0.57%) PHP
19 20 (0.54%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,132 (30.63%) Security Cleared
2 937 (25.35%) SC Cleared
3 331 (8.96%) Degree
4 181 (4.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 166 (4.49%) Azure Certification
6 130 (3.52%) DV Cleared
7 108 (2.92%) AWS Certification
8 77 (2.08%) Master's Degree
9 70 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
10 68 (1.84%) CISSP
11 55 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
12 53 (1.43%) CISM
13 36 (0.97%) ISTQB
14 33 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 30 (0.81%) PMI Certification
16 27 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 24 (0.65%) PMP
18 19 (0.51%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 17 (0.46%) IIBA
20 16 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 335 (9.06%) QA
2 149 (4.03%) GDPR
3 129 (3.49%) Data Quality
4 119 (3.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 104 (2.81%) NIST
6 82 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 51 (1.38%) NCSC
8 30 (0.81%) PCI DSS
9 25 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 25 (0.68%) WCAG
10 23 (0.62%) SLA
11 22 (0.60%) HIPAA
12 17 (0.46%) PMO
12 17 (0.46%) PSD2
13 16 (0.43%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.41%) SOC 2
15 13 (0.35%) SEPA
16 9 (0.24%) HL7
17 8 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
17 8 (0.22%) MiFID
System Software
1 957 (25.89%) Docker
2 160 (4.33%) Active Directory
3 62 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 56 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.76%) vSphere
6 17 (0.46%) DFS Replication
7 15 (0.41%) 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 1,124 (30.41%) Terraform
2 1,095 (29.63%) Kubernetes
3 485 (13.12%) Ansible
4 263 (7.12%) Grafana
5 245 (6.63%) Prometheus
6 73 (1.98%) Puppet
7 72 (1.95%) Argo
8 47 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (1.06%) Progress Chef
10 35 (0.95%) Istio
10 35 (0.95%) Kibana
11 30 (0.81%) Packer
12 24 (0.65%) Podman
13 16 (0.43%) Proxmox
13 16 (0.43%) Rancher
14 14 (0.38%) Nessus
14 14 (0.38%) NetBackup
14 14 (0.38%) SCCM
15 12 (0.32%) CA Endevor
15 12 (0.32%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 644 (17.42%) Microsoft
2 292 (7.90%) Oracle
3 220 (5.95%) Google
4 199 (5.38%) Databricks
5 194 (5.25%) Splunk
6 145 (3.92%) ServiceNow
7 115 (3.11%) Red Hat
8 103 (2.79%) VMware
9 93 (2.52%) Salesforce
10 90 (2.44%) SAP
11 63 (1.70%) Dynatrace
12 53 (1.43%) OpenAI
13 46 (1.24%) F5
14 41 (1.11%) CyberArk
14 41 (1.11%) IBM
14 41 (1.11%) Talend
15 39 (1.06%) Atlassian
15 39 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.00%) Denodo
17 32 (0.87%) MuleSoft