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 21 July 2026.

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

 6 months to
21 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 99 138
Rank change year-on-year -62 +39 -58
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 66 58 58
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.00% 1.70% 1.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.88% 1.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 43 50
10th Percentile £450 £345 £425
25th Percentile £462 £413 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £563
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -15.56% -6.25%
75th Percentile £550 £525 £647
90th Percentile £678 £603 £676
England median daily rate £513 £513 £550
% change year-on-year - -6.82% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 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 £74.00
% change year-on-year -15.13% +11.46% +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 6,058 3,081 4,960
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.14% 90.46% 92.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,613 1,991 2,979
10th Percentile £303 £213 £255
25th Percentile £425 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% +3.00%
75th Percentile £623 £600 £630
90th Percentile £713 £663 £689
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 666 243 449
10th Percentile £16.35 £14.20 £13.25
25th Percentile £26.25 £15.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £27.50 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +90.91% -50.72% +11.60%
75th Percentile £77.50 £62.24 £70.39
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
England median hourly rate £45.56 £27.40 £42.50
% change year-on-year +66.26% -35.53% -3.53%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 -27 46 £492 +6.38% 3
Buckinghamshire -11 26 £492 -
Berkshire -37 18 £550 +29.41% 2
Surrey - 15 £589 - 4
Hampshire -48 5 £513 +7.56% 1
Oxfordshire -23 2 £525 - 1
DevOps Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 21 July 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 66 (100.00%) DevOps
2 45 (68.18%) Azure
3 41 (62.12%) CI/CD
4 35 (53.03%) Security Cleared
5 33 (50.00%) SC Cleared
6 27 (40.91%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (37.88%) Terraform
8 22 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
9 21 (31.82%) Agile
10 19 (28.79%) Microsoft
11 16 (24.24%) Kubernetes
12 11 (16.67%) Containerisation
12 11 (16.67%) Cybersecurity
13 10 (15.15%) AWS
13 10 (15.15%) Observability
13 10 (15.15%) Python
14 9 (13.64%) Docker
14 9 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
14 9 (13.64%) Software Engineering
15 8 (12.12%) Business Intelligence
15 8 (12.12%) Grafana
15 8 (12.12%) Java
15 8 (12.12%) Power BI
15 8 (12.12%) Power Platform
15 8 (12.12%) PowerShell
15 8 (12.12%) Prometheus
16 7 (10.61%) Continuous Improvement
16 7 (10.61%) GitHub
16 7 (10.61%) GitHub Actions
16 7 (10.61%) Virtual Machines

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 (1.52%) IIS
Cloud Services
1 45 (68.18%) Azure
2 27 (40.91%) Azure DevOps
3 10 (15.15%) AWS
4 8 (12.12%) Power Platform
5 7 (10.61%) GitHub
5 7 (10.61%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (7.58%) Amazon EKS
6 5 (7.58%) Azure Monitor
7 4 (6.06%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (3.03%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (3.03%) Azure AI
8 2 (3.03%) Entra ID
8 2 (3.03%) OpenShift
9 1 (1.52%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (1.52%) Azure AKS
9 1 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.52%) Azure Functions
9 1 (1.52%) PaaS
9 1 (1.52%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3 (4.55%) Firewall
2 2 (3.03%) VPN
3 1 (1.52%) DNS
3 1 (1.52%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (12.12%) Power BI
2 2 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.03%) Redis
Development Applications
1 5 (7.58%) Git
1 5 (7.58%) GitLab
2 2 (3.03%) SonarQube
3 1 (1.52%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.52%) JIRA
3 1 (1.52%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (1.52%) Visual Studio
3 1 (1.52%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 7 (10.61%) Public Sector
1 7 (10.61%) Social Skills
2 4 (6.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (1.52%) Finance
3 1 (1.52%) Health Technology
3 1 (1.52%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (9.09%) ARM Templates
2 4 (6.06%) YAML
3 2 (3.03%) .NET
3 2 (3.03%) GraphQL
3 2 (3.03%) Kafka
3 2 (3.03%) Keycloak
3 2 (3.03%) Loki
3 2 (3.03%) Node.js
4 1 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.52%) ModSecurity
4 1 (1.52%) OpenTelemetry
4 1 (1.52%) SAP Fiori
4 1 (1.52%) SAP PI
4 1 (1.52%) SAPUI5
Miscellaneous
1 10 (15.15%) Cloud Native
2 5 (7.58%) Virtual Team
3 2 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.52%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 6 (9.09%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (100.00%) DevOps
2 41 (62.12%) CI/CD
3 22 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 21 (31.82%) Agile
5 11 (16.67%) Containerisation
5 11 (16.67%) Cybersecurity
6 10 (15.15%) Observability
7 9 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
7 9 (13.64%) Software Engineering
8 8 (12.12%) Business Intelligence
9 7 (10.61%) Continuous Improvement
10 6 (9.09%) Analytics
10 6 (9.09%) Scrum
10 6 (9.09%) SDLC
11 5 (7.58%) Cloud Security
11 5 (7.58%) Incident Response
11 5 (7.58%) Platform Engineering
11 5 (7.58%) Root Cause Analysis
11 5 (7.58%) Test Automation
12 4 (6.06%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 10 (15.15%) Python
2 8 (12.12%) Java
2 8 (12.12%) PowerShell
3 5 (7.58%) Bash
4 3 (4.55%) C#
5 2 (3.03%) Bicep
5 2 (3.03%) Go
5 2 (3.03%) JavaScript
5 2 (3.03%) Scala
5 2 (3.03%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.52%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 35 (53.03%) Security Cleared
2 33 (50.00%) SC Cleared
3 5 (7.58%) Azure Certification
4 3 (4.55%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.52%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.52%) OCP
5 1 (1.52%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.52%) GDPR
1 1 (1.52%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 9 (13.64%) Docker
2 7 (10.61%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.52%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (37.88%) Terraform
2 16 (24.24%) Kubernetes
3 8 (12.12%) Grafana
3 8 (12.12%) Prometheus
4 6 (9.09%) Ansible
5 3 (4.55%) Argo
5 3 (4.55%) Rancher
6 2 (3.03%) Puppet
7 1 (1.52%) Fluentd
Vendors
1 19 (28.79%) Microsoft
2 4 (6.06%) Splunk
2 4 (6.06%) VMware
3 2 (3.03%) Red Hat
4 1 (1.52%) Arista
4 1 (1.52%) Checkmarx
4 1 (1.52%) Databricks
4 1 (1.52%) Ericsson
4 1 (1.52%) Fortinet
4 1 (1.52%) Mavenir
4 1 (1.52%) Oracle
4 1 (1.52%) SAP
4 1 (1.52%) ServiceNow
24 DevOps Engineer jobs in the South East