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 13 April 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 112 159
Rank change year-on-year -14 +47 -56
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 84 48 44
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.48% 1.60% 0.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.61% 1.74% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 57 39 37
10th Percentile £416 £454 £388
25th Percentile £462 £470 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £569 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.65% +8.29% -12.50%
75th Percentile £600 £663 £625
90th Percentile £700 £678 £675
England median daily rate £521 £564 £545
% change year-on-year -7.54% +3.44% -10.66%
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 £82.96 £57.50
% change year-on-year -18.64% +44.28% -

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 5,214 2,762 5,199
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.93% 92.25% 92.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,270 1,827 3,131
10th Percentile £300 £250 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% - -
75th Percentile £613 £600 £613
90th Percentile £706 £663 £688
England median daily rate £508 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.24% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 478 154 470
10th Percentile £15.43 £14.23 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.73 £20.43 £18.32
Median hourly rate £48.61 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +49.57% -31.58% +5.56%
75th Percentile £81.05 £63.75 £62.35
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.35 £76.86
England median hourly rate £44.00 £32.50 £34.21
% change year-on-year +35.38% -5.00% -21.47%

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 13 April 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 13 April 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 13 April 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 38 £475 -24.00% 21
Hampshire -16 30 £525 -4.55% 4
Berkshire -29 20 £425 -32.00% 12
Surrey +2 15 £677 +4.10% 5
Buckinghamshire - 15 £492 - 7
Oxfordshire - 3 £525 - 2
Kent -8 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 13 April 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 84 (100.00%) DevOps
2 53 (63.10%) Azure
3 50 (59.52%) Security Cleared
4 42 (50.00%) CI/CD
5 40 (47.62%) SC Cleared
6 35 (41.67%) Terraform
7 34 (40.48%) Python
8 32 (38.10%) Azure DevOps
8 32 (38.10%) Infrastructure as Code
9 29 (34.52%) Agile
10 27 (32.14%) Kubernetes
11 23 (27.38%) Containerisation
12 22 (26.19%) Observability
13 21 (25.00%) AWS
13 21 (25.00%) Bash
14 20 (23.81%) Ansible
14 20 (23.81%) GitHub
15 19 (22.62%) Grafana
15 19 (22.62%) PowerShell
15 19 (22.62%) Prometheus
16 17 (20.24%) GitHub Actions
16 17 (20.24%) Linux
17 16 (19.05%) Red Hat
18 15 (17.86%) Microsoft
19 14 (16.67%) GitLab
19 14 (16.67%) Platform Engineering
19 14 (16.67%) Software Engineering
19 14 (16.67%) Splunk
20 13 (15.48%) Docker
21 12 (14.29%) DevSecOps

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 (2.38%) IIS
2 1 (1.19%) Apache
Cloud Services
1 53 (63.10%) Azure
2 32 (38.10%) Azure DevOps
3 21 (25.00%) AWS
4 20 (23.81%) GitHub
5 17 (20.24%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (11.90%) OpenShift
7 9 (10.71%) Azure Monitor
8 7 (8.33%) Amazon EKS
8 7 (8.33%) Entra ID
8 7 (8.33%) Serverless
9 6 (7.14%) Azure Functions
9 6 (7.14%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (5.95%) Azure Key Vault
10 5 (5.95%) Power Platform
11 4 (4.76%) Azure AKS
12 3 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 3 (3.57%) Azure API Management
13 2 (2.38%) Amazon ECS
13 2 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
13 2 (2.38%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.76%) Firewall
2 3 (3.57%) DNS
3 2 (2.38%) SSL
3 2 (2.38%) VPN
4 1 (1.19%) DHCP
4 1 (1.19%) HTTP
4 1 (1.19%) Internet
4 1 (1.19%) Network Security
4 1 (1.19%) SAN
4 1 (1.19%) SNMP
4 1 (1.19%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (13.10%) PostgreSQL
1 11 (13.10%) Redis
2 5 (5.95%) Power BI
3 1 (1.19%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.19%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.19%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.19%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 14 (16.67%) GitLab
2 9 (10.71%) Jenkins
3 7 (8.33%) Git
4 1 (1.19%) Artifactory
4 1 (1.19%) JIRA
4 1 (1.19%) Postman
4 1 (1.19%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (1.19%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.19%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 8 (9.52%) Social Skills
2 7 (8.33%) Public Sector
3 4 (4.76%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (3.57%) Billing
5 2 (2.38%) Retail
6 1 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.19%) Finance
6 1 (1.19%) Health Technology
6 1 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.19%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (14.29%) Keycloak
1 12 (14.29%) YAML
2 11 (13.10%) Kafka
3 7 (8.33%) .NET
3 7 (8.33%) REST
4 6 (7.14%) JSON
4 6 (7.14%) XML
5 5 (5.95%) .NET Core
5 5 (5.95%) ARM Templates
5 5 (5.95%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (5.95%) GraphQL
6 3 (3.57%) OAuth
6 3 (3.57%) OAuth2
6 3 (3.57%) OpenID
6 3 (3.57%) SAML
7 2 (2.38%) .NET Framework
7 2 (2.38%) ASP.NET
7 2 (2.38%) Loki
7 2 (2.38%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (1.19%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 11 (13.10%) Cloud Native
2 5 (5.95%) Virtual Team
3 3 (3.57%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.38%) Product Ownership
4 2 (2.38%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.19%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.19%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 17 (20.24%) Linux
2 7 (8.33%) Windows
3 4 (4.76%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.19%) Ubuntu
4 1 (1.19%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (100.00%) DevOps
2 42 (50.00%) CI/CD
3 32 (38.10%) Infrastructure as Code
4 29 (34.52%) Agile
5 23 (27.38%) Containerisation
6 22 (26.19%) Observability
7 14 (16.67%) Platform Engineering
7 14 (16.67%) Software Engineering
8 12 (14.29%) DevSecOps
8 12 (14.29%) GitOps
8 12 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
9 9 (10.71%) SDLC
10 8 (9.52%) Analytics
10 8 (9.52%) Root Cause Analysis
10 8 (9.52%) Scrum
10 8 (9.52%) Test Automation
11 7 (8.33%) Incident Response
11 7 (8.33%) Log Analytics
11 7 (8.33%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 6 (7.14%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 34 (40.48%) Python
2 21 (25.00%) Bash
3 19 (22.62%) PowerShell
4 9 (10.71%) C#
5 8 (9.52%) Java
6 6 (7.14%) JavaScript
7 5 (5.95%) PHP
8 2 (2.38%) Go
9 1 (1.19%) ABAP
9 1 (1.19%) Bicep
9 1 (1.19%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 50 (59.52%) Security Cleared
2 40 (47.62%) SC Cleared
3 11 (13.10%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.38%) Degree
5 1 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.19%) OCP
5 1 (1.19%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.95%) NCSC
2 3 (3.57%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.57%) QA
3 1 (1.19%) GDPR
3 1 (1.19%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.19%) SLA
System Software
1 13 (15.48%) Docker
2 4 (4.76%) Active Directory
2 4 (4.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.19%) DFS Replication
3 1 (1.19%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 35 (41.67%) Terraform
2 27 (32.14%) Kubernetes
3 20 (23.81%) Ansible
4 19 (22.62%) Grafana
4 19 (22.62%) Prometheus
5 11 (13.10%) Argo
6 6 (7.14%) Istio
6 6 (7.14%) linkerd
7 5 (5.95%) Puppet
8 4 (4.76%) Rancher
9 3 (3.57%) Podman
10 2 (2.38%) Packer
10 2 (2.38%) Progress Chef
11 1 (1.19%) Fluentd
11 1 (1.19%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 16 (19.05%) Red Hat
2 15 (17.86%) Microsoft
3 14 (16.67%) Splunk
4 12 (14.29%) VMware
5 2 (2.38%) Databricks
6 1 (1.19%) Arista
6 1 (1.19%) Checkmarx
6 1 (1.19%) Ericsson
6 1 (1.19%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.19%) Google
6 1 (1.19%) Mavenir
6 1 (1.19%) Oracle
6 1 (1.19%) SAP
6 1 (1.19%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.19%) Tenable
6 1 (1.19%) Zscaler