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 £506, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 June 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 102 150
Rank change year-on-year -23 +48 -46
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 86 51 54
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.42% 1.71% 0.95%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.55% 1.88% 1.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 37 46
10th Percentile £450 £413 £394
25th Percentile £462 £418 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -4.76% -12.50%
75th Percentile £563 £600 £622
90th Percentile £688 £675 £675
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.33% -12.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £46.25 - -
Median hourly rate £67.50 - -
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile £70.08 - -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £82.48 £66.00
% change year-on-year -18.16% +24.97% -9.59%

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 5,533 2,711 5,241
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.56% 91.10% 92.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,381 1,803 3,082
10th Percentile £303 £220 £234
25th Percentile £415 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -
75th Percentile £613 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £656 £688
England median daily rate £520 £514 £525
% change year-on-year +1.17% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 177 543
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.20 £12.88
25th Percentile £24.25 £16.95 £18.43
Median hourly rate £50.24 £32.05 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.76% -35.90% -
75th Percentile £81.05 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
England median hourly rate £45.56 £29.33 £39.50
% change year-on-year +55.32% -25.75% -12.22%

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 9 June 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 9 June 2026.

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 9 June 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 -32 46 £492 -1.60% 6
Buckinghamshire -14 25 £492 -
Surrey - 21 £675 - 7
Berkshire -39 19 £550 +10.00% 3
Hampshire -22 18 £513 - 4
Oxfordshire - 2 £525 - 3
Kent -3 1 £600 +5.54%
DevOps Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 9 June 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 86 (100.00%) DevOps
2 52 (60.47%) Azure
3 49 (56.98%) Security Cleared
4 45 (52.33%) CI/CD
5 44 (51.16%) SC Cleared
6 30 (34.88%) Terraform
7 29 (33.72%) Azure DevOps
8 28 (32.56%) Infrastructure as Code
9 24 (27.91%) Agile
9 24 (27.91%) Kubernetes
10 22 (25.58%) Python
11 19 (22.09%) Containerisation
12 16 (18.60%) Grafana
12 16 (18.60%) Microsoft
12 16 (18.60%) Observability
12 16 (18.60%) Prometheus
13 15 (17.44%) AWS
14 14 (16.28%) Software Engineering
15 13 (15.12%) Ansible
15 13 (15.12%) Bash
15 13 (15.12%) GitHub
15 13 (15.12%) Linux
16 12 (13.95%) Cybersecurity
16 12 (13.95%) GitHub Actions
17 11 (12.79%) Red Hat
18 10 (11.63%) GitLab
18 10 (11.63%) PowerShell
18 10 (11.63%) Problem-Solving
19 9 (10.47%) Argo
19 9 (10.47%) Docker

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 2 (2.33%) IIS
2 1 (1.16%) Apache
Cloud Services
1 52 (60.47%) Azure
2 29 (33.72%) Azure DevOps
3 15 (17.44%) AWS
4 13 (15.12%) GitHub
5 12 (13.95%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (9.30%) OpenShift
6 8 (9.30%) Power Platform
7 7 (8.14%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (5.81%) Azure Monitor
9 4 (4.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (4.65%) Amazon ECS
9 4 (4.65%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (4.65%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (2.33%) Entra ID
11 1 (1.16%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 1 (1.16%) Azure AKS
11 1 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
11 1 (1.16%) Azure Pipelines
11 1 (1.16%) IaaS
11 1 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.49%) Firewall
2 1 (1.16%) DHCP
2 1 (1.16%) DNS
2 1 (1.16%) SAN
2 1 (1.16%) SNMP
2 1 (1.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.30%) Power BI
2 7 (8.14%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (8.14%) Redis
3 1 (1.16%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.16%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (11.63%) GitLab
2 4 (4.65%) Git
3 2 (2.33%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.33%) SonarQube
3 2 (2.33%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (1.16%) Artifactory
4 1 (1.16%) JIRA
4 1 (1.16%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 8 (9.30%) Social Skills
2 7 (8.14%) Public Sector
3 4 (4.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (1.16%) Finance
4 1 (1.16%) Health Technology
4 1 (1.16%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (9.30%) YAML
2 7 (8.14%) Kafka
2 7 (8.14%) Keycloak
3 6 (6.98%) ARM Templates
4 4 (4.65%) JSON
4 4 (4.65%) Loki
4 4 (4.65%) XML
5 3 (3.49%) Elastic Stack
6 2 (2.33%) .NET
6 2 (2.33%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.33%) Node.js
6 2 (2.33%) REST
7 1 (1.16%) AngularJS
7 1 (1.16%) Apache NiFi
7 1 (1.16%) ModSecurity
7 1 (1.16%) React
7 1 (1.16%) SAP Fiori
7 1 (1.16%) SAP PI
7 1 (1.16%) SAPUI5
7 1 (1.16%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 10 (11.63%) Cloud Native
2 5 (5.81%) Virtual Team
3 1 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
3 1 (1.16%) Onboarding
3 1 (1.16%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 13 (15.12%) Linux
2 6 (6.98%) Windows
3 3 (3.49%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.16%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (100.00%) DevOps
2 45 (52.33%) CI/CD
3 28 (32.56%) Infrastructure as Code
4 24 (27.91%) Agile
5 19 (22.09%) Containerisation
6 16 (18.60%) Observability
7 14 (16.28%) Software Engineering
8 12 (13.95%) Cybersecurity
9 10 (11.63%) Problem-Solving
10 9 (10.47%) GitOps
11 8 (9.30%) Business Intelligence
11 8 (9.30%) Platform Engineering
12 7 (8.14%) Continuous Improvement
12 7 (8.14%) Root Cause Analysis
13 6 (6.98%) Configuration Management
13 6 (6.98%) Scrum
13 6 (6.98%) SDLC
13 6 (6.98%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 5 (5.81%) Incident Response
14 5 (5.81%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 22 (25.58%) Python
2 13 (15.12%) Bash
3 10 (11.63%) PowerShell
4 9 (10.47%) Java
5 4 (4.65%) C#
6 3 (3.49%) JavaScript
7 2 (2.33%) Go
7 2 (2.33%) Scala
7 2 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.16%) ABAP
8 1 (1.16%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 49 (56.98%) Security Cleared
2 44 (51.16%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.81%) DV Cleared
4 4 (4.65%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.16%) Degree
5 1 (1.16%) OCP
5 1 (1.16%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.49%) NCSC
1 3 (3.49%) QA
2 1 (1.16%) GDPR
2 1 (1.16%) PCI DSS
2 1 (1.16%) SLA
System Software
1 9 (10.47%) Docker
2 7 (8.14%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (4.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (2.33%) Active Directory
5 1 (1.16%) DFS Replication
5 1 (1.16%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 30 (34.88%) Terraform
2 24 (27.91%) Kubernetes
3 16 (18.60%) Grafana
3 16 (18.60%) Prometheus
4 13 (15.12%) Ansible
5 9 (10.47%) Argo
6 4 (4.65%) Istio
6 4 (4.65%) linkerd
6 4 (4.65%) Puppet
7 3 (3.49%) Rancher
8 1 (1.16%) Fluentd
8 1 (1.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 16 (18.60%) Microsoft
2 11 (12.79%) Red Hat
3 9 (10.47%) Splunk
3 9 (10.47%) VMware
4 1 (1.16%) Arista
4 1 (1.16%) Checkmarx
4 1 (1.16%) Databricks
4 1 (1.16%) Ericsson
4 1 (1.16%) Fortinet
4 1 (1.16%) Mavenir
4 1 (1.16%) Oracle
4 1 (1.16%) SAP
4 1 (1.16%) ServiceNow