DevOps Engineer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Development Operations Engineer
England > South East

The median Development Operations Engineer daily rate in the South East is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 November 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 119 120 81
Rank change year-on-year +1 -39 +39
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 59 59 142
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.41% 1.46% 2.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.57% 1.57% 2.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 50 116
10th Percentile £396 £498 £463
25th Percentile £413 £525 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £585 £573
Median % change year-on-year -14.53% +2.18% -4.58%
75th Percentile £550 £652 £638
90th Percentile £628 £671 £738
England median daily rate £505 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -12.17% +4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £62.63
Median hourly rate - - £67.27
75th Percentile - - £71.90
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate - £74.00 £71.13
% change year-on-year - +4.03% +30.52%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the South East with a recognized job title 3,760 3,760 4,974
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.91% 92.86% 94.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,403 2,282 3,246
10th Percentile £210 £243 £208
25th Percentile £393 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -0.49% +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £675 £687 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -3.81% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 381 191 252
10th Percentile £13.75 £17.63 £16.03
25th Percentile £16.17 £24.18 £24.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £54.00 £51.24
Median % change year-on-year -53.70% +5.39% +36.63%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.16 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.32 £39.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -35.08% -13.33% +38.46%

DevOps Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'DevOps Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

DevOps Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

DevOps Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the South East

DevOps Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 29 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps Engineer in the South East

DevOps Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the South East

DevOps Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DevOps Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 29 November 2025. 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
Hampshire +6 28 £525 -8.70% 9
Thames Valley -10 27 £425 -30.33% 10
Berkshire -9 22 £425 -31.45% 3
Buckinghamshire 0 3 £575 -8.00% 1
East Sussex +4 2 £319 -44.57%
Oxfordshire -8 2 £525 +16.67% 6
Surrey +3 1 - -
Kent - 1 £569 - 2
DevOps Engineer
England

DevOps Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 29 November 2025, DevOps Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring DevOps Engineer in the job title.

1 59 (100.00%) DevOps
2 41 (69.49%) CI/CD
3 30 (50.85%) Kubernetes
4 28 (47.46%) Azure
4 28 (47.46%) Terraform
5 27 (45.76%) Agile
5 27 (45.76%) Security Cleared
6 26 (44.07%) Python
7 25 (42.37%) Infrastructure as Code
8 24 (40.68%) Ansible
9 23 (38.98%) Containerisation
10 20 (33.90%) AWS
10 20 (33.90%) GitHub
11 19 (32.20%) Bash
11 19 (32.20%) Linux
11 19 (32.20%) Problem-Solving
12 16 (27.12%) Azure DevOps
12 16 (27.12%) Docker
13 15 (25.42%) SC Cleared
14 13 (22.03%) Grafana
14 13 (22.03%) Platform Engineering
15 12 (20.34%) Kafka
15 12 (20.34%) Observability
15 12 (20.34%) PowerShell
15 12 (20.34%) Red Hat
16 11 (18.64%) DV Cleared
16 11 (18.64%) Prometheus
16 11 (18.64%) Windows
17 10 (16.95%) Jenkins
17 10 (16.95%) Keycloak

DevOps Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 1 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (1.69%) Apache Spark
1 1 (1.69%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 28 (47.46%) Azure
2 20 (33.90%) AWS
2 20 (33.90%) GitHub
3 16 (27.12%) Azure DevOps
4 9 (15.25%) GitHub Actions
4 9 (15.25%) IaaS
4 9 (15.25%) OpenShift
5 8 (13.56%) Azure AKS
5 8 (13.56%) GCP
5 8 (13.56%) PaaS
5 8 (13.56%) Serverless
6 6 (10.17%) Azure Functions
6 6 (10.17%) Entra ID
7 5 (8.47%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (8.47%) Azure Data Factory
7 5 (8.47%) Azure Storage
8 3 (5.08%) Azure API Management
8 3 (5.08%) Azure Monitor
9 2 (3.39%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (3.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 7 (11.86%) Firewall
2 4 (6.78%) DNS
2 4 (6.78%) SSL
3 2 (3.39%) TCP/IP
3 2 (3.39%) VPN
4 1 (1.69%) 3GPP
4 1 (1.69%) 5G
4 1 (1.69%) DHCP
4 1 (1.69%) HTTP
4 1 (1.69%) HTTPS
4 1 (1.69%) Internet
4 1 (1.69%) Network Security
4 1 (1.69%) SAN
4 1 (1.69%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (16.95%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (15.25%) Redis
3 5 (8.47%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (8.47%) NoSQL
4 2 (3.39%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (3.39%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.69%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (1.69%) Big Data
5 1 (1.69%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.69%) Hadoop
5 1 (1.69%) Metadata
5 1 (1.69%) MongoDB
5 1 (1.69%) Parquet
5 1 (1.69%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.69%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (16.95%) Jenkins
2 9 (15.25%) Git
3 7 (11.86%) GitLab
4 3 (5.08%) JIRA
5 1 (1.69%) MLflow
5 1 (1.69%) Poetry
5 1 (1.69%) PyCharm
5 1 (1.69%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.69%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 13 (22.03%) Social Skills
2 8 (13.56%) Public Sector
3 7 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (5.08%) Billing
5 2 (3.39%) Retail
5 2 (3.39%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.69%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (20.34%) Kafka
2 10 (16.95%) Keycloak
3 9 (15.25%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (11.86%) YAML
5 6 (10.17%) ADO
6 5 (8.47%) .NET
6 5 (8.47%) .NET Core
6 5 (8.47%) GraphQL
6 5 (8.47%) REST
7 3 (5.08%) ARM Templates
7 3 (5.08%) OAuth
7 3 (5.08%) OAuth2
7 3 (5.08%) OpenID
7 3 (5.08%) SAML
8 2 (3.39%) .NET Framework
8 2 (3.39%) ASP.NET
8 2 (3.39%) CSS
8 2 (3.39%) HTML
8 2 (3.39%) Jinja
8 2 (3.39%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 4 (6.78%) Linux Command Line
2 2 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
2 2 (3.39%) Public Cloud
3 1 (1.69%) Cloud Native
3 1 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (1.69%) PKI
3 1 (1.69%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 19 (32.20%) Linux
2 11 (18.64%) Windows
3 8 (13.56%) Windows 10
4 2 (3.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (1.69%) Ubuntu
5 1 (1.69%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (100.00%) DevOps
2 41 (69.49%) CI/CD
3 27 (45.76%) Agile
4 25 (42.37%) Infrastructure as Code
5 23 (38.98%) Containerisation
6 19 (32.20%) Problem-Solving
7 13 (22.03%) Platform Engineering
8 12 (20.34%) Observability
9 9 (15.25%) DevSecOps
9 9 (15.25%) Test Automation
10 8 (13.56%) Infrastructure Automation
10 8 (13.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 7 (11.86%) RBAC
11 7 (11.86%) Scrum
12 6 (10.17%) AI
12 6 (10.17%) Immutable Infrastructure
12 6 (10.17%) Validation
13 5 (8.47%) Analytical Thinking
13 5 (8.47%) Identity Management
13 5 (8.47%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 26 (44.07%) Python
2 19 (32.20%) Bash
3 12 (20.34%) PowerShell
4 10 (16.95%) SQL
5 7 (11.86%) JavaScript
6 5 (8.47%) C#
6 5 (8.47%) Java
6 5 (8.47%) PHP
7 2 (3.39%) Kotlin
7 2 (3.39%) Shell Script
8 1 (1.69%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 27 (45.76%) Security Cleared
2 15 (25.42%) SC Cleared
3 11 (18.64%) DV Cleared
4 5 (8.47%) AWS Certification
5 3 (5.08%) CCNA
5 3 (5.08%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (5.08%) Network+ Certification
6 2 (3.39%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.69%) CCNP
7 1 (1.69%) Degree
7 1 (1.69%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (8.47%) QA
2 3 (5.08%) Data Quality
3 2 (3.39%) NCSC
4 1 (1.69%) GDPR
4 1 (1.69%) HIPAA
4 1 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.69%) NIST
4 1 (1.69%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.69%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (27.12%) Docker
2 6 (10.17%) Active Directory
3 2 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.69%) DFS Replication
4 1 (1.69%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 30 (50.85%) Kubernetes
2 28 (47.46%) Terraform
3 24 (40.68%) Ansible
4 13 (22.03%) Grafana
5 11 (18.64%) Prometheus
6 6 (10.17%) Packer
7 5 (8.47%) Puppet
8 4 (6.78%) Argo
9 3 (5.08%) Istio
9 3 (5.08%) Podman
9 3 (5.08%) Progress Chef
10 2 (3.39%) linkerd
10 2 (3.39%) logstash
10 2 (3.39%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (1.69%) Proxmox
11 1 (1.69%) Rancher
11 1 (1.69%) Rsyslog
11 1 (1.69%) SCOM
Vendors
1 12 (20.34%) Red Hat
2 10 (16.95%) Splunk
3 5 (8.47%) VMware
4 4 (6.78%) Microsoft
5 3 (5.08%) Google
6 2 (3.39%) Oracle
7 1 (1.69%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.69%) Databricks
7 1 (1.69%) Ericsson
7 1 (1.69%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.69%) Tenable
7 1 (1.69%) UiPath
7 1 (1.69%) Zscaler