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 6 April 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 106 162
Rank change year-on-year -24 +56 -58
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 78 47 46
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.40% 1.57% 0.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.52% 1.70% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 38 39
10th Percentile £416 £449 £388
25th Percentile £462 £467 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £559 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.12% +6.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £643 £663 £609
90th Percentile £719 £679 £675
England median daily rate £525 £565 £543
% change year-on-year -7.08% +4.15% -11.07%
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 5,118 2,763 5,196
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.84% 92.56% 92.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,206 1,826 3,136
10th Percentile £300 £246 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.90% - -
75th Percentile £613 £600 £613
90th Percentile £700 £664 £688
England median daily rate £507 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.52% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 472 149 468
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.38 £12.82
25th Percentile £19.54 £21.00 £18.32
Median hourly rate £47.50 £34.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.68% -27.37% +5.56%
75th Percentile £81.05 £63.75 £62.48
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.10 £76.63
England median hourly rate £42.50 £33.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +28.79% - -24.57%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -32 31 £475 -24.00% 21
Hampshire -21 30 £525 -4.55% 1
Berkshire -31 20 £425 -32.00% 10
Surrey +5 16 £677 +4.10% 4
Buckinghamshire -20 9 £550 +29.41% 8
Oxfordshire - 2 £525 - 3
Kent -11 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 6 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 78 (100.00%) DevOps
2 46 (58.97%) Azure
3 45 (57.69%) Security Cleared
4 37 (47.44%) CI/CD
5 34 (43.59%) SC Cleared
6 33 (42.31%) Python
7 32 (41.03%) Terraform
8 30 (38.46%) Agile
9 29 (37.18%) Infrastructure as Code
10 27 (34.62%) Azure DevOps
11 25 (32.05%) Kubernetes
12 22 (28.21%) Containerisation
13 21 (26.92%) Bash
14 20 (25.64%) AWS
14 20 (25.64%) GitHub
14 20 (25.64%) Observability
15 19 (24.36%) Ansible
16 18 (23.08%) Grafana
16 18 (23.08%) Prometheus
17 17 (21.79%) GitHub Actions
17 17 (21.79%) PowerShell
18 16 (20.51%) Linux
18 16 (20.51%) Red Hat
19 14 (17.95%) Software Engineering
20 13 (16.67%) GitLab
20 13 (16.67%) Splunk
21 12 (15.38%) DevSecOps
21 12 (15.38%) Docker
21 12 (15.38%) Platform Engineering
21 12 (15.38%) 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 (2.56%) IIS
2 1 (1.28%) Apache
Cloud Services
1 46 (58.97%) Azure
2 27 (34.62%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (25.64%) AWS
3 20 (25.64%) GitHub
4 17 (21.79%) GitHub Actions
5 10 (12.82%) OpenShift
6 9 (11.54%) Azure Monitor
7 7 (8.97%) Entra ID
7 7 (8.97%) Serverless
8 6 (7.69%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (7.69%) Azure Functions
8 6 (7.69%) Cloud Computing
9 5 (6.41%) Azure Key Vault
10 4 (5.13%) Azure AKS
11 3 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (3.85%) Azure API Management
12 2 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
12 2 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (2.56%) GCP
12 2 (2.56%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.13%) Firewall
2 3 (3.85%) DNS
3 2 (2.56%) SSL
3 2 (2.56%) VPN
4 1 (1.28%) DHCP
4 1 (1.28%) HTTP
4 1 (1.28%) Internet
4 1 (1.28%) Network Security
4 1 (1.28%) SAN
4 1 (1.28%) SNMP
4 1 (1.28%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (12.82%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (12.82%) Redis
2 2 (2.56%) Power BI
3 1 (1.28%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.28%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.28%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.28%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 13 (16.67%) GitLab
2 9 (11.54%) Jenkins
3 7 (8.97%) Git
4 1 (1.28%) Artifactory
4 1 (1.28%) JIRA
4 1 (1.28%) Postman
4 1 (1.28%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (1.28%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.28%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 8 (10.26%) Social Skills
2 6 (7.69%) Public Sector
3 4 (5.13%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (3.85%) Billing
5 2 (2.56%) Retail
6 1 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.28%) Finance
6 1 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (15.38%) YAML
2 11 (14.10%) Kafka
2 11 (14.10%) Keycloak
3 7 (8.97%) .NET
3 7 (8.97%) REST
4 6 (7.69%) JSON
4 6 (7.69%) XML
5 5 (6.41%) .NET Core
5 5 (6.41%) ARM Templates
5 5 (6.41%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (6.41%) GraphQL
6 3 (3.85%) OAuth
6 3 (3.85%) OAuth2
6 3 (3.85%) OpenID
6 3 (3.85%) SAML
7 2 (2.56%) .NET Framework
7 2 (2.56%) ASP.NET
7 2 (2.56%) Loki
7 2 (2.56%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (1.28%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 10 (12.82%) Cloud Native
2 4 (5.13%) Virtual Team
3 3 (3.85%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.56%) Product Ownership
4 2 (2.56%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.28%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.28%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 16 (20.51%) Linux
2 8 (10.26%) Windows
3 5 (6.41%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.28%) Ubuntu
4 1 (1.28%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (100.00%) DevOps
2 37 (47.44%) CI/CD
3 30 (38.46%) Agile
4 29 (37.18%) Infrastructure as Code
5 22 (28.21%) Containerisation
6 20 (25.64%) Observability
7 14 (17.95%) Software Engineering
8 12 (15.38%) DevSecOps
8 12 (15.38%) Platform Engineering
9 11 (14.10%) GitOps
9 11 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (10.26%) Analytics
10 8 (10.26%) Root Cause Analysis
10 8 (10.26%) Scrum
10 8 (10.26%) SDLC
11 7 (8.97%) Log Analytics
11 7 (8.97%) Test Automation
12 6 (7.69%) AI
12 6 (7.69%) Configuration Management
12 6 (7.69%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 33 (42.31%) Python
2 21 (26.92%) Bash
3 17 (21.79%) PowerShell
4 9 (11.54%) C#
4 9 (11.54%) Java
5 6 (7.69%) JavaScript
6 5 (6.41%) PHP
7 2 (2.56%) Go
8 1 (1.28%) ABAP
8 1 (1.28%) Bicep
8 1 (1.28%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 45 (57.69%) Security Cleared
2 34 (43.59%) SC Cleared
3 11 (14.10%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.56%) Degree
5 1 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.28%) OCP
5 1 (1.28%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (6.41%) NCSC
2 3 (3.85%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.85%) QA
3 1 (1.28%) GDPR
3 1 (1.28%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.28%) SLA
System Software
1 12 (15.38%) Docker
2 4 (5.13%) Active Directory
3 3 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.28%) DFS Replication
4 1 (1.28%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 32 (41.03%) Terraform
2 25 (32.05%) Kubernetes
3 19 (24.36%) Ansible
4 18 (23.08%) Grafana
4 18 (23.08%) Prometheus
5 10 (12.82%) Argo
6 6 (7.69%) Istio
6 6 (7.69%) linkerd
7 5 (6.41%) Puppet
8 3 (3.85%) Podman
8 3 (3.85%) Rancher
9 2 (2.56%) Packer
9 2 (2.56%) Progress Chef
10 1 (1.28%) Fluentd
10 1 (1.28%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 16 (20.51%) Red Hat
2 13 (16.67%) Splunk
3 11 (14.10%) Microsoft
3 11 (14.10%) VMware
4 2 (2.56%) Databricks
5 1 (1.28%) Arista
5 1 (1.28%) Checkmarx
5 1 (1.28%) Ericsson
5 1 (1.28%) Fortinet
5 1 (1.28%) Google
5 1 (1.28%) Mavenir
5 1 (1.28%) Oracle
5 1 (1.28%) SAP
5 1 (1.28%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.28%) Tenable
5 1 (1.28%) Zscaler