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 30 March 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 132 97 163
Rank change year-on-year -35 +66 -56
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 74 56 47
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.35% 1.88% 0.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.48% 2.03% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 45 36
10th Percentile £415 £463 £388
25th Percentile £444 £506 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +9.52% -10.64%
75th Percentile £668 £663 £592
90th Percentile £719 £675 £656
England median daily rate £525 £575 £545
% change year-on-year -8.70% +5.50% -9.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £46.25 - -
Median hourly rate £57.50 - -
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £73.37 £57.50
% change year-on-year -8.00% +27.60% -

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 5,012 2,762 5,231
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.48% 92.72% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,157 1,826 3,171
10th Percentile £300 £245 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% - -
75th Percentile £613 £610 £612
90th Percentile £700 £668 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 454 152 448
10th Percentile £15.33 £16.95 £12.85
25th Percentile £19.35 £22.98 £18.32
Median hourly rate £47.50 £43.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.57% -2.78% -
75th Percentile £81.05 £63.94 £62.12
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £75.57
England median hourly rate £41.26 £34.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +19.58% +6.15% -23.53%

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 30 March 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 30 March 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 30 March 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
Hampshire -17 31 £525 -4.55% 1
Thames Valley -37 26 £450 -29.13% 21
Berkshire -39 20 £425 -33.07% 10
Surrey +2 16 £677 +4.10% 4
Buckinghamshire -19 4 £550 +2.33% 8
Oxfordshire - 2 £525 - 3
Kent -8 1 £600 -3.50%
DevOps Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 30 March 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 74 (100.00%) DevOps
2 41 (55.41%) Azure
2 41 (55.41%) Security Cleared
3 33 (44.59%) CI/CD
3 33 (44.59%) Python
4 29 (39.19%) Agile
4 29 (39.19%) SC Cleared
4 29 (39.19%) Terraform
5 26 (35.14%) Infrastructure as Code
6 25 (33.78%) Kubernetes
7 23 (31.08%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (29.73%) Containerisation
9 21 (28.38%) Bash
10 20 (27.03%) GitHub
10 20 (27.03%) Observability
11 19 (25.68%) Ansible
11 19 (25.68%) AWS
12 18 (24.32%) Grafana
12 18 (24.32%) Prometheus
13 17 (22.97%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (21.62%) Linux
14 16 (21.62%) PowerShell
14 16 (21.62%) Red Hat
15 14 (18.92%) Software Engineering
16 13 (17.57%) GitLab
16 13 (17.57%) Splunk
17 12 (16.22%) DevSecOps
17 12 (16.22%) Docker
17 12 (16.22%) Platform Engineering
17 12 (16.22%) YAML

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 (2.70%) IIS
2 1 (1.35%) Apache
Cloud Services
1 41 (55.41%) Azure
2 23 (31.08%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (27.03%) GitHub
4 19 (25.68%) AWS
5 17 (22.97%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (13.51%) OpenShift
7 9 (12.16%) Azure Monitor
8 7 (9.46%) Entra ID
8 7 (9.46%) Serverless
9 6 (8.11%) Amazon EKS
9 6 (8.11%) Azure Functions
9 6 (8.11%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (6.76%) Azure Key Vault
11 4 (5.41%) Azure AKS
12 3 (4.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 3 (4.05%) Azure API Management
13 2 (2.70%) Amazon EC2
13 2 (2.70%) Amazon ECS
13 2 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
13 2 (2.70%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.41%) Firewall
2 3 (4.05%) DNS
3 2 (2.70%) SSL
3 2 (2.70%) VPN
4 1 (1.35%) DHCP
4 1 (1.35%) HTTP
4 1 (1.35%) Internet
4 1 (1.35%) Network Security
4 1 (1.35%) SAN
4 1 (1.35%) SNMP
4 1 (1.35%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (13.51%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (13.51%) Redis
2 1 (1.35%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.35%) Delta Lake
2 1 (1.35%) Power BI
2 1 (1.35%) Relational Database
2 1 (1.35%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 13 (17.57%) GitLab
2 9 (12.16%) Jenkins
3 7 (9.46%) Git
4 1 (1.35%) Artifactory
4 1 (1.35%) JIRA
4 1 (1.35%) Postman
4 1 (1.35%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (1.35%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.35%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 8 (10.81%) Social Skills
2 6 (8.11%) Public Sector
3 4 (5.41%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (4.05%) Billing
5 2 (2.70%) Retail
6 1 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.35%) Finance
6 1 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.35%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (16.22%) YAML
2 11 (14.86%) Kafka
2 11 (14.86%) Keycloak
3 7 (9.46%) .NET
3 7 (9.46%) REST
4 6 (8.11%) JSON
4 6 (8.11%) XML
5 5 (6.76%) .NET Core
5 5 (6.76%) ARM Templates
5 5 (6.76%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (6.76%) GraphQL
6 3 (4.05%) OAuth
6 3 (4.05%) OAuth2
6 3 (4.05%) OpenID
6 3 (4.05%) SAML
7 2 (2.70%) .NET Framework
7 2 (2.70%) ASP.NET
7 2 (2.70%) Loki
7 2 (2.70%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (1.35%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 7 (9.46%) Cloud Native
2 3 (4.05%) Linux Command Line
3 2 (2.70%) Product Ownership
3 2 (2.70%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (1.35%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.35%) PKI
4 1 (1.35%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 16 (21.62%) Linux
2 9 (12.16%) Windows
3 6 (8.11%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.35%) Ubuntu
4 1 (1.35%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (100.00%) DevOps
2 33 (44.59%) CI/CD
3 29 (39.19%) Agile
4 26 (35.14%) Infrastructure as Code
5 22 (29.73%) Containerisation
6 20 (27.03%) Observability
7 14 (18.92%) Software Engineering
8 12 (16.22%) DevSecOps
8 12 (16.22%) Platform Engineering
9 11 (14.86%) GitOps
10 8 (10.81%) Analytics
10 8 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (10.81%) Root Cause Analysis
10 8 (10.81%) Scrum
11 7 (9.46%) Log Analytics
11 7 (9.46%) Project Management
12 6 (8.11%) AI
12 6 (8.11%) Configuration Management
12 6 (8.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 5 (6.76%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 33 (44.59%) Python
2 21 (28.38%) Bash
3 16 (21.62%) PowerShell
4 9 (12.16%) C#
4 9 (12.16%) Java
5 6 (8.11%) JavaScript
6 5 (6.76%) PHP
7 2 (2.70%) Go
8 1 (1.35%) ABAP
8 1 (1.35%) Bicep
8 1 (1.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 41 (55.41%) Security Cleared
2 29 (39.19%) SC Cleared
3 11 (14.86%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.70%) Degree
5 1 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.35%) OCP
5 1 (1.35%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (6.76%) NCSC
2 3 (4.05%) Data Quality
2 3 (4.05%) QA
3 1 (1.35%) GDPR
3 1 (1.35%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.35%) SLA
System Software
1 12 (16.22%) Docker
2 4 (5.41%) Active Directory
3 3 (4.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.35%) DFS Replication
4 1 (1.35%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 29 (39.19%) Terraform
2 25 (33.78%) Kubernetes
3 19 (25.68%) Ansible
4 18 (24.32%) Grafana
4 18 (24.32%) Prometheus
5 10 (13.51%) Argo
6 6 (8.11%) Istio
6 6 (8.11%) linkerd
7 5 (6.76%) Puppet
8 3 (4.05%) Podman
8 3 (4.05%) Rancher
9 2 (2.70%) Packer
9 2 (2.70%) Progress Chef
10 1 (1.35%) Fluentd
10 1 (1.35%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 16 (21.62%) Red Hat
2 13 (17.57%) Splunk
3 11 (14.86%) VMware
4 9 (12.16%) Microsoft
5 2 (2.70%) Databricks
6 1 (1.35%) Arista
6 1 (1.35%) Checkmarx
6 1 (1.35%) Ericsson
6 1 (1.35%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.35%) Google
6 1 (1.35%) Mavenir
6 1 (1.35%) Oracle
6 1 (1.35%) SAP
6 1 (1.35%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.35%) Tenable
6 1 (1.35%) Zscaler