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 £492, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 September 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 177 105 131
Rank change year-on-year -72 +26 -54
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 52 53 49
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.80% 1.53% 1.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.87% 1.70% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 43 42
10th Percentile £452 £403 £438
25th Percentile £462 £413 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £550 £525 £647
90th Percentile £573 £550 £675
England median daily rate £513 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £66.25 - -
Median hourly rate £67.50 - -
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £82.48 £72.00
% change year-on-year -15.13% +14.56% -1.37%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 6,001 3,116 4,296
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.76% 90.21% 92.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,496 2,009 2,588
10th Percentile £303 £205 £250
25th Percentile £425 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £663 £688
England median daily rate £525 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 750 282 342
10th Percentile £15.36 £13.75 £16.26
25th Percentile £23.00 £15.50 £32.50
Median hourly rate £52.21 £25.15 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +107.60% -56.15% +14.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £75.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £72.85 £80.00
England median hourly rate £42.58 £25.15 £46.18
% change year-on-year +69.28% -45.54% +5.29%

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 4 September 2026.

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 4 September 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
Thames Valley -34 39 £492 +15.76% 17
Buckinghamshire -13 25 £492 -18.00% 3
Berkshire -30 13 £550 +29.41% 7
Surrey - 8 £450 - 9
Hampshire -46 5 £543 +5.85% 11
Oxfordshire -23 1 - - 7
DevOps Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 4 September 2026, 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 52 (100.00%) DevOps
2 37 (71.15%) Azure
3 36 (69.23%) CI/CD
4 31 (59.62%) Security Cleared
5 29 (55.77%) SC Cleared
6 22 (42.31%) Azure DevOps
6 22 (42.31%) Terraform
7 19 (36.54%) Infrastructure as Code
8 16 (30.77%) Agile
9 15 (28.85%) Microsoft
10 14 (26.92%) Kubernetes
11 11 (21.15%) Containerisation
12 10 (19.23%) Cybersecurity
13 8 (15.38%) AWS
13 8 (15.38%) Business Intelligence
13 8 (15.38%) Docker
13 8 (15.38%) Power BI
13 8 (15.38%) Power Platform
13 8 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
13 8 (15.38%) Python
14 7 (13.46%) Virtual Machines
15 6 (11.54%) Ansible
15 6 (11.54%) GitHub
15 6 (11.54%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (11.54%) Software Engineering
16 5 (9.62%) Azure Certification
16 5 (9.62%) Cloud Security
16 5 (9.62%) Continuous Improvement
16 5 (9.62%) GitLab
16 5 (9.62%) Grafana

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:

Cloud Services
1 37 (71.15%) Azure
2 22 (42.31%) Azure DevOps
3 8 (15.38%) AWS
3 8 (15.38%) Power Platform
4 6 (11.54%) GitHub
4 6 (11.54%) GitHub Actions
5 4 (7.69%) Amazon EKS
6 3 (5.77%) OpenShift
7 2 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (3.85%) Amazon ECS
7 2 (3.85%) Azure AI
7 2 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
8 1 (1.92%) Azure AKS
8 1 (1.92%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (1.92%) Azure Functions
8 1 (1.92%) Azure Key Vault
8 1 (1.92%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (1.92%) Azure Pipelines
8 1 (1.92%) Entra ID
8 1 (1.92%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.92%) DNS
1 1 (1.92%) Firewall
1 1 (1.92%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (15.38%) Power BI
2 1 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.92%) Redis
Development Applications
1 5 (9.62%) GitLab
2 3 (5.77%) Git
3 2 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.92%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.92%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 5 (9.62%) Public Sector
2 4 (7.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 4 (7.69%) Social Skills
3 1 (1.92%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (42.31%) Terraform
2 4 (7.69%) ARM Templates
3 3 (5.77%) YAML
4 2 (3.85%) .NET
4 2 (3.85%) GraphQL
4 2 (3.85%) Loki
4 2 (3.85%) Node.js
5 1 (1.92%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.92%) Kafka
5 1 (1.92%) Keycloak
5 1 (1.92%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 6 (11.54%) Cloud Native
2 4 (7.69%) Virtual Team
3 1 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 5 (9.62%) Linux
2 1 (1.92%) CentOS
2 1 (1.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 1 (1.92%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (100.00%) DevOps
2 36 (69.23%) CI/CD
3 19 (36.54%) Infrastructure as Code
4 16 (30.77%) Agile
5 11 (21.15%) Containerisation
6 10 (19.23%) Cybersecurity
7 8 (15.38%) Business Intelligence
7 8 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
8 6 (11.54%) Software Engineering
9 5 (9.62%) Cloud Security
9 5 (9.62%) Continuous Improvement
9 5 (9.62%) Observability
9 5 (9.62%) Test Automation
10 4 (7.69%) Auto-Scaling
10 4 (7.69%) Digital Innovation
10 4 (7.69%) Full-Stack Development
10 4 (7.69%) Incident Response
10 4 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
10 4 (7.69%) SDLC
10 4 (7.69%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 8 (15.38%) Python
2 5 (9.62%) Java
3 4 (7.69%) PowerShell
4 3 (5.77%) Bash
5 2 (3.85%) C#
5 2 (3.85%) JavaScript
5 2 (3.85%) Scala
5 2 (3.85%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.92%) Bicep
6 1 (1.92%) Go
Qualifications
1 31 (59.62%) Security Cleared
2 29 (55.77%) SC Cleared
3 5 (9.62%) Azure Certification
4 4 (7.69%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.92%) AWS Certification
System Software
1 8 (15.38%) Docker
2 7 (13.46%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 14 (26.92%) Kubernetes
2 6 (11.54%) Ansible
3 5 (9.62%) Grafana
3 5 (9.62%) Prometheus
4 2 (3.85%) Argo
4 2 (3.85%) Puppet
5 1 (1.92%) Rancher
Vendors
1 15 (28.85%) Microsoft
2 3 (5.77%) Splunk
3 2 (3.85%) Red Hat
3 2 (3.85%) VMware
4 1 (1.92%) Databricks