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 £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 December 2025.

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

6 months to
28 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 115 120 123
Rank change year-on-year +5 +3 +6
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 73 53 92
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.65% 1.46% 1.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.83% 1.58% 1.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 46 71
10th Percentile £413 £506 £450
25th Percentile £417 £528 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £586 £538
Median % change year-on-year -10.45% +9.07% -10.42%
75th Percentile £600 £662 £625
90th Percentile £671 £675 £700
England median daily rate £523 £588 £550
% change year-on-year -11.06% +6.82% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £46.25 - £62.63
Median hourly rate £47.50 - £67.27
75th Percentile £48.75 - £71.90
90th Percentile £62.05 - -
England median hourly rate £47.50 £68.89 £71.13
% change year-on-year -31.05% -3.15% +30.52%

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 3,997 3,359 4,692
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.51% 92.76% 93.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,599 2,109 3,047
10th Percentile £221 £239 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £504 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.79% +0.80% -
75th Percentile £600 £620 £608
90th Percentile £676 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -3.81% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 125 252
10th Percentile £13.75 £18.58 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.50 £24.18 £26.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -22.73% +46.67%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.69 £66.06
90th Percentile £84.50 £71.64 £76.53
England median hourly rate £27.00 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.86% -22.22% +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 28 December 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 28 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps Engineer 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 28 December 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 +5 40 £525 -8.70% 30
Thames Valley -17 26 £425 -31.73% 44
Berkshire -18 22 £425 -32.00% 21
Surrey -3 6 £675 +3.85% 16
Buckinghamshire +1 2 £575 -4.17% 15
Oxfordshire - 2 £525 - 8
Kent - 1 £600 - 9
DevOps Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 28 December 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 73 (100.00%) DevOps
2 45 (61.64%) Security Cleared
3 40 (54.79%) CI/CD
4 36 (49.32%) Python
5 33 (45.21%) Azure
5 33 (45.21%) Kubernetes
6 31 (42.47%) Terraform
7 28 (38.36%) SC Cleared
8 27 (36.99%) Agile
8 27 (36.99%) Ansible
9 25 (34.25%) Containerisation
9 25 (34.25%) Infrastructure as Code
10 23 (31.51%) AWS
11 22 (30.14%) Bash
11 22 (30.14%) Linux
12 21 (28.77%) GitHub
13 19 (26.03%) Azure DevOps
13 19 (26.03%) Red Hat
14 17 (23.29%) Docker
15 16 (21.92%) DV Cleared
16 15 (20.55%) GitHub Actions
16 15 (20.55%) Observability
16 15 (20.55%) Windows
17 14 (19.18%) PowerShell
17 14 (19.18%) Problem-Solving
18 13 (17.81%) Grafana
18 13 (17.81%) Prometheus
19 12 (16.44%) DevSecOps
19 12 (16.44%) GitLab
19 12 (16.44%) Kafka

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 (1.37%) Apache
1 1 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (1.37%) Apache Spark
1 1 (1.37%) IIS
Cloud Services
1 33 (45.21%) Azure
2 23 (31.51%) AWS
3 21 (28.77%) GitHub
4 19 (26.03%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (20.55%) GitHub Actions
6 9 (12.33%) OpenShift
7 8 (10.96%) IaaS
8 7 (9.59%) Amazon EKS
8 7 (9.59%) Azure AKS
8 7 (9.59%) PaaS
8 7 (9.59%) Serverless
9 6 (8.22%) Azure Functions
9 6 (8.22%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (8.22%) Entra ID
9 6 (8.22%) GCP
10 4 (5.48%) Amazon ECS
10 4 (5.48%) Azure Data Factory
10 4 (5.48%) Azure Monitor
10 4 (5.48%) Azure Storage
11 3 (4.11%) Azure API Management
Communications & Networking
1 5 (6.85%) Firewall
2 4 (5.48%) DNS
2 4 (5.48%) SSL
3 2 (2.74%) TCP/IP
3 2 (2.74%) VPN
4 1 (1.37%) 3GPP
4 1 (1.37%) 5G
4 1 (1.37%) DHCP
4 1 (1.37%) HTTP
4 1 (1.37%) HTTPS
4 1 (1.37%) Internet
4 1 (1.37%) Network Security
4 1 (1.37%) SAN
4 1 (1.37%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (13.70%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (12.33%) Redis
3 4 (5.48%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (4.11%) NoSQL
5 2 (2.74%) Delta Lake
5 2 (2.74%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (1.37%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (1.37%) Big Data
6 1 (1.37%) Hadoop
6 1 (1.37%) Parquet
6 1 (1.37%) Relational Database
6 1 (1.37%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 12 (16.44%) GitLab
2 11 (15.07%) Jenkins
3 8 (10.96%) Git
4 2 (2.74%) JIRA
5 1 (1.37%) Artifactory
5 1 (1.37%) MLflow
5 1 (1.37%) Poetry
5 1 (1.37%) Postman
5 1 (1.37%) PyCharm
5 1 (1.37%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.37%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 8 (10.96%) Public Sector
2 7 (9.59%) Social Skills
3 6 (8.22%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (4.11%) Billing
5 2 (2.74%) Retail
6 1 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.37%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (16.44%) Kafka
2 10 (13.70%) Keycloak
2 10 (13.70%) YAML
3 7 (9.59%) REST
4 6 (8.22%) JSON
4 6 (8.22%) XML
5 5 (6.85%) .NET
5 5 (6.85%) .NET Core
5 5 (6.85%) ADO
5 5 (6.85%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (6.85%) GraphQL
6 3 (4.11%) ARM Templates
6 3 (4.11%) OAuth
6 3 (4.11%) OAuth2
6 3 (4.11%) OpenID
6 3 (4.11%) SAML
7 2 (2.74%) .NET Framework
7 2 (2.74%) ASP.NET
7 2 (2.74%) Jinja
7 2 (2.74%) Loki
Miscellaneous
1 4 (5.48%) Linux Command Line
2 2 (2.74%) Public Cloud
3 1 (1.37%) Cloud Native
3 1 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (1.37%) PKI
3 1 (1.37%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 22 (30.14%) Linux
2 15 (20.55%) Windows
3 11 (15.07%) Windows 10
4 2 (2.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.74%) Ubuntu
5 1 (1.37%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (100.00%) DevOps
2 40 (54.79%) CI/CD
3 27 (36.99%) Agile
4 25 (34.25%) Containerisation
4 25 (34.25%) Infrastructure as Code
5 15 (20.55%) Observability
6 14 (19.18%) Problem-Solving
7 12 (16.44%) DevSecOps
7 12 (16.44%) Platform Engineering
8 10 (13.70%) Project Management
9 9 (12.33%) GitOps
9 9 (12.33%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 9 (12.33%) Software Engineering
10 7 (9.59%) RBAC
10 7 (9.59%) Test Automation
11 6 (8.22%) AI
11 6 (8.22%) Configuration Management
11 6 (8.22%) Infrastructure Automation
12 5 (6.85%) Identity Management
12 5 (6.85%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 36 (49.32%) Python
2 22 (30.14%) Bash
3 14 (19.18%) PowerShell
4 8 (10.96%) SQL
5 6 (8.22%) C#
5 6 (8.22%) JavaScript
6 5 (6.85%) PHP
7 4 (5.48%) Java
8 3 (4.11%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.37%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 45 (61.64%) Security Cleared
2 28 (38.36%) SC Cleared
3 16 (21.92%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.74%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.74%) Degree
5 1 (1.37%) CCNA
5 1 (1.37%) CCNP
5 1 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
5 1 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.37%) JNCIP
5 1 (1.37%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (9.59%) QA
2 5 (6.85%) NCSC
3 3 (4.11%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.37%) NIST
4 1 (1.37%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (23.29%) Docker
2 6 (8.22%) Active Directory
3 2 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.37%) DFS Replication
4 1 (1.37%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (45.21%) Kubernetes
2 31 (42.47%) Terraform
3 27 (36.99%) Ansible
4 13 (17.81%) Grafana
4 13 (17.81%) Prometheus
5 10 (13.70%) Argo
6 7 (9.59%) Istio
6 7 (9.59%) Puppet
7 6 (8.22%) linkerd
8 4 (5.48%) Podman
9 3 (4.11%) Progress Chef
10 2 (2.74%) logstash
10 2 (2.74%) Packer
10 2 (2.74%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (1.37%) Proxmox
11 1 (1.37%) Rancher
11 1 (1.37%) Rsyslog
11 1 (1.37%) SCOM
Vendors
1 19 (26.03%) Red Hat
2 10 (13.70%) Splunk
3 9 (12.33%) VMware
4 4 (5.48%) Microsoft
5 3 (4.11%) Google
6 2 (2.74%) Databricks
7 1 (1.37%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.37%) Ericsson
7 1 (1.37%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.37%) Tenable
7 1 (1.37%) Zscaler