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 18 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
18 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 178 111 131
Rank change year-on-year -67 +20 -52
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 59 51 53
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.88% 1.44% 1.10%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.95% 1.59% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 39 45
10th Percentile £450 £371 £425
25th Percentile £462 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £550 £525 £650
90th Percentile £568 £553 £675
England median daily rate £513 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 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 6,209 3,208 4,462
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 90.49% 92.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,655 2,069 2,741
10th Percentile £303 £208 £250
25th Percentile £425 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £635
90th Percentile £714 £663 £688
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 754 272 369
10th Percentile £15.83 £13.75 £16.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £15.50 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -56.15% +15.01%
75th Percentile £73.06 £57.50 £73.75
90th Percentile £86.61 £75.00 £80.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +8.43%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 -24 44 £492 +15.76% 2
Buckinghamshire -15 26 £492 -18.00%
Berkshire -29 16 £550 +29.41% 2
Surrey - 9 £450 - 3
Hampshire -34 6 £528 +11.05% 5
Oxfordshire -24 2 £525 -
DevOps Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 18 August 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 59 (100.00%) DevOps
2 42 (71.19%) Azure
3 40 (67.80%) CI/CD
4 32 (54.24%) Security Cleared
5 30 (50.85%) SC Cleared
6 25 (42.37%) Terraform
7 24 (40.68%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (37.29%) Infrastructure as Code
9 18 (30.51%) Agile
10 17 (28.81%) Kubernetes
10 17 (28.81%) Microsoft
11 13 (22.03%) Containerisation
12 11 (18.64%) Cybersecurity
12 11 (18.64%) Python
13 10 (16.95%) AWS
13 10 (16.95%) Docker
14 9 (15.25%) Problem-Solving
15 8 (13.56%) Business Intelligence
15 8 (13.56%) Power BI
15 8 (13.56%) Power Platform
16 7 (11.86%) Ansible
16 7 (11.86%) GitHub
16 7 (11.86%) GitHub Actions
16 7 (11.86%) Grafana
16 7 (11.86%) Linux
16 7 (11.86%) Observability
16 7 (11.86%) Prometheus
16 7 (11.86%) Software Engineering
16 7 (11.86%) Virtual Machines
17 6 (10.17%) Analytics

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 (1.69%) IIS
Cloud Services
1 42 (71.19%) Azure
2 24 (40.68%) Azure DevOps
3 10 (16.95%) AWS
4 8 (13.56%) Power Platform
5 7 (11.86%) GitHub
5 7 (11.86%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (8.47%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (5.08%) Azure Monitor
7 3 (5.08%) OpenShift
8 2 (3.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (3.39%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (3.39%) Azure AI
8 2 (3.39%) Azure AKS
8 2 (3.39%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (3.39%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.69%) Azure Functions
9 1 (1.69%) Azure Logic Apps
9 1 (1.69%) Azure Pipelines
9 1 (1.69%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.39%) Firewall
1 2 (3.39%) VPN
2 1 (1.69%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (13.56%) Power BI
2 2 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.39%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (10.17%) GitLab
2 4 (6.78%) Git
3 2 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.69%) JIRA
4 1 (1.69%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.69%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (1.69%) Visual Studio
General
1 7 (11.86%) Social Skills
2 6 (10.17%) Public Sector
3 4 (6.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (1.69%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.78%) ARM Templates
1 4 (6.78%) YAML
2 2 (3.39%) .NET
2 2 (3.39%) GraphQL
2 2 (3.39%) Kafka
2 2 (3.39%) Keycloak
2 2 (3.39%) Loki
2 2 (3.39%) Node.js
3 1 (1.69%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (1.69%) ModSecurity
3 1 (1.69%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 7 (11.86%) Cloud Native
2 5 (8.47%) Virtual Team
3 2 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 7 (11.86%) Linux
2 1 (1.69%) CentOS
2 1 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 1 (1.69%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (100.00%) DevOps
2 40 (67.80%) CI/CD
3 22 (37.29%) Infrastructure as Code
4 18 (30.51%) Agile
5 13 (22.03%) Containerisation
6 11 (18.64%) Cybersecurity
7 9 (15.25%) Problem-Solving
8 8 (13.56%) Business Intelligence
9 7 (11.86%) Observability
9 7 (11.86%) Software Engineering
10 6 (10.17%) Analytics
10 6 (10.17%) Continuous Improvement
11 5 (8.47%) Cloud Security
11 5 (8.47%) Incident Response
11 5 (8.47%) Platform Engineering
11 5 (8.47%) Test Automation
12 4 (6.78%) Digital Innovation
12 4 (6.78%) Full-Stack Development
12 4 (6.78%) Machine Learning
12 4 (6.78%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 11 (18.64%) Python
2 6 (10.17%) Java
2 6 (10.17%) PowerShell
3 4 (6.78%) Bash
4 3 (5.08%) C#
5 2 (3.39%) Bicep
5 2 (3.39%) Go
5 2 (3.39%) JavaScript
5 2 (3.39%) Scala
5 2 (3.39%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 32 (54.24%) Security Cleared
2 30 (50.85%) SC Cleared
3 5 (8.47%) Azure Certification
4 4 (6.78%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.69%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.69%) GDPR
1 1 (1.69%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 10 (16.95%) Docker
2 7 (11.86%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (5.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.69%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (42.37%) Terraform
2 17 (28.81%) Kubernetes
3 7 (11.86%) Ansible
3 7 (11.86%) Grafana
3 7 (11.86%) Prometheus
4 3 (5.08%) Argo
4 3 (5.08%) Rancher
5 2 (3.39%) Puppet
Vendors
1 17 (28.81%) Microsoft
2 4 (6.78%) Splunk
3 3 (5.08%) VMware
4 2 (3.39%) Red Hat
5 1 (1.69%) Databricks
5 1 (1.69%) ServiceNow
22 DevOps Engineer jobs in the South East