DevOps Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

DevOps
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the Thames Valley requiring DevOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 +5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 247 178 283
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 9.67% 11.16% 10.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.38% 12.02% 11.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 125 198
10th Percentile £381 £400 £425
25th Percentile £417 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £594
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% -3.20% +8.00%
75th Percentile £598 £650 £663
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
South East median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 22
10th Percentile £74.36 - £56.65
25th Percentile £77.88 £87.50 £57.89
Median hourly rate £82.00 £90.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% +12.50% +1.03%
75th Percentile £89.38 £92.50 £86.66
90th Percentile £99.20 - £87.53
South East median hourly rate £67.50 £90.00 £76.53
% change year-on-year -25.00% +17.60% +16.62%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Thames Valley

DevOps falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,170 1,481 2,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 85.00% 92.85% 89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,422 876 1,440
10th Percentile £272 £266 £213
25th Percentile £400 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £620 £600
90th Percentile £650 £670 £663
South East median daily rate £500 £505 £500
% change year-on-year -0.89% +0.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 49 164
10th Percentile £15.91 £18.66 £16.04
25th Percentile £19.35 £29.00 £20.12
Median hourly rate £36.00 £56.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.56% +26.10% +11.91%
75th Percentile £84.00 £64.73 £62.54
90th Percentile £96.25 £77.75 £79.78
South East median hourly rate £25.77 £45.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -42.73% - -

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DevOps relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

DevOps job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

DevOps
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing DevOps.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing DevOps

DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 4 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps in the Thames Valley

DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing DevOps.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing DevOps

DevOps
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 4 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in the Thames Valley

DevOps
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DevOps within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 4 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
Berkshire -2 210 £496 -13.74% 109
Buckinghamshire -4 29 £550 -2.22% 46
Oxfordshire -9 8 £513 - 24
DevOps
South East

DevOps
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 13 (5.26%) SharePoint
2 10 (4.05%) Confluence
3 8 (3.24%) GeoServer
3 8 (3.24%) Smallworld
4 4 (1.62%) Palantir Foundry
5 3 (1.21%) Anypoint
5 3 (1.21%) ArcGIS
5 3 (1.21%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.81%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.81%) CMS
6 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.40%) Apache
7 1 (0.40%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.40%) IIS
Applications
1 10 (4.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.40%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.62%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.40%) Maximo
2 1 (0.40%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 189 (76.52%) Azure
2 105 (42.51%) Azure DevOps
3 80 (32.39%) AWS
4 50 (20.24%) GCP
5 30 (12.15%) GitHub
6 27 (10.93%) Entra ID
7 25 (10.12%) Power Platform
8 22 (8.91%) SaaS
9 20 (8.10%) Azure Monitor
10 18 (7.29%) IaaS
11 16 (6.48%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (6.48%) OCI
12 14 (5.67%) Azure AKS
12 14 (5.67%) Microsoft 365
12 14 (5.67%) OpenShift
12 14 (5.67%) Serverless
13 12 (4.86%) Azure Key Vault
13 12 (4.86%) PaaS
14 11 (4.45%) Azure Functions
15 7 (2.83%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.64%) DNS
2 8 (3.24%) Firewall
3 5 (2.02%) Network Security
4 4 (1.62%) IPsec
4 4 (1.62%) MQTT
4 4 (1.62%) SD-WAN
5 3 (1.21%) BGP
5 3 (1.21%) LAN
5 3 (1.21%) MPLS
5 3 (1.21%) VPN
5 3 (1.21%) WAN
6 2 (0.81%) 2G
6 2 (0.81%) 5G
6 2 (0.81%) LTE
6 2 (0.81%) Mobile Backhaul
6 2 (0.81%) SSL
6 2 (0.81%) VoIP
7 1 (0.40%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (8.50%) Power BI
2 9 (3.64%) GIS
2 9 (3.64%) Oracle Reports
3 8 (3.24%) Azure SQL Database
3 8 (3.24%) Geospatial Data
3 8 (3.24%) NoSQL
3 8 (3.24%) Oracle BI Publisher
3 8 (3.24%) QGIS
4 6 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.02%) Metadata
5 5 (2.02%) Tableau
6 4 (1.62%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.21%) Delta Lake
7 3 (1.21%) MySQL
7 3 (1.21%) Oracle Database
7 3 (1.21%) Parquet
7 3 (1.21%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.81%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.81%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 30 (12.15%) Jenkins
2 26 (10.53%) Git
2 26 (10.53%) JIRA
3 8 (3.24%) GitLab
4 5 (2.02%) Bitbucket
4 5 (2.02%) HP UFT
4 5 (2.02%) JUnit
5 4 (1.62%) Selenium
5 4 (1.62%) Storybook
6 3 (1.21%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.21%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.81%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.81%) Jaeger
7 2 (0.81%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.40%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.40%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.40%) Mockito
8 1 (0.40%) Postman
8 1 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.40%) SonarQube
General
1 94 (38.06%) Social Skills
2 37 (14.98%) Analytical Skills
3 28 (11.34%) Documentation Skills
4 22 (8.91%) Public Sector
5 13 (5.26%) Organisational Skills
6 9 (3.64%) Finance
7 8 (3.24%) Billing
7 8 (3.24%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (2.83%) Marketing
8 7 (2.83%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.62%) Retail
10 3 (1.21%) Electronics
10 3 (1.21%) Law
10 3 (1.21%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.40%) Advertising
12 1 (0.40%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.40%) Health Technology
12 1 (0.40%) Legal
Job Titles
1 38 (15.38%) Architect
2 36 (14.57%) Analyst
3 27 (10.93%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (9.72%) Azure Engineer
5 22 (8.91%) Senior
6 21 (8.50%) Developer
7 17 (6.88%) Test Analyst
8 15 (6.07%) Lead
9 13 (5.26%) Cloud Engineer
10 12 (4.86%) Solutions Architect
11 11 (4.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 10 (4.05%) Oracle Analyst
13 9 (3.64%) Senior DevOps
13 9 (3.64%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 8 (3.24%) Business Analyst
14 8 (3.24%) Platform Engineer
15 7 (2.83%) Full-Stack Developer
16 6 (2.43%) Data Analyst
16 6 (2.43%) GIS Architect
16 6 (2.43%) Integration Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.72%) REST
2 23 (9.31%) ADO
2 23 (9.31%) LDAP
3 15 (6.07%) .NET
4 11 (4.45%) ARM Templates
4 11 (4.45%) OAuth
4 11 (4.45%) React
4 11 (4.45%) SOAP
5 10 (4.05%) CSS
6 8 (3.24%) HTML
6 8 (3.24%) RESTful
7 7 (2.83%) .NET Core
7 7 (2.83%) JSON
8 6 (2.43%) .NET Framework
8 6 (2.43%) Middleware
8 6 (2.43%) SailPoint
8 6 (2.43%) SAML
9 5 (2.02%) OpenID
9 5 (2.02%) Spring
9 5 (2.02%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 27 (10.93%) Cloud Native
2 10 (4.05%) Product Ownership
3 8 (3.24%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
4 7 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (2.83%) Security Posture
5 5 (2.02%) Data Centre
5 5 (2.02%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.02%) PKI
6 4 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.62%) Linux Command Line
6 4 (1.62%) Operational Technology
7 3 (1.21%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.21%) Replication
8 2 (0.81%) IoT
8 2 (0.81%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.81%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.40%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 34 (13.77%) Linux
2 14 (5.67%) Windows
3 5 (2.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.40%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (49.80%) CI/CD
2 77 (31.17%) Agile
3 70 (28.34%) Problem-Solving
4 39 (15.79%) Infrastructure as Code
5 38 (15.38%) Analytics
6 36 (14.57%) Cybersecurity
6 36 (14.57%) DevSecOps
7 31 (12.55%) Containerisation
8 27 (10.93%) Root Cause Analysis
8 27 (10.93%) SIEM
9 26 (10.53%) Microservices
9 26 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
10 25 (10.12%) AI
11 24 (9.72%) Business Intelligence
11 24 (9.72%) Test Automation
12 21 (8.50%) Machine Learning
12 21 (8.50%) Migration
12 21 (8.50%) Scrum
13 20 (8.10%) RBAC
13 20 (8.10%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 84 (34.01%) Python
2 58 (23.48%) PowerShell
3 37 (14.98%) SQL
4 29 (11.74%) JavaScript
5 27 (10.93%) Bash
6 20 (8.10%) Java
7 17 (6.88%) C#
8 11 (4.45%) Bicep
9 10 (4.05%) TypeScript
10 6 (2.43%) BeanShell
11 5 (2.02%) PHP
11 5 (2.02%) Shell Script
11 5 (2.02%) VBScript
12 3 (1.21%) DataWeave
12 3 (1.21%) Go
12 3 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.81%) C++
13 2 (0.81%) Groovy
13 2 (0.81%) R
14 1 (0.40%) Jython
Qualifications
1 78 (31.58%) Security Cleared
2 59 (23.89%) SC Cleared
3 24 (9.72%) CISSP
4 22 (8.91%) CISM
5 14 (5.67%) Degree
6 10 (4.05%) Azure Certification
7 8 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (3.24%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.83%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (2.83%) RHCE
9 4 (1.62%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.62%) CCNP
9 4 (1.62%) Master's Degree
9 4 (1.62%) OCP
9 4 (1.62%) Oracle Certification
10 3 (1.21%) CCIE
10 3 (1.21%) ISTQB
10 3 (1.21%) MCSE
10 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (1.21%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (13.77%) NIST
2 32 (12.96%) GDPR
3 26 (10.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (7.69%) QA
5 14 (5.67%) Data Quality
6 12 (4.86%) NCSC
7 4 (1.62%) NIST 800
7 4 (1.62%) PCI DSS
7 4 (1.62%) PMO
8 2 (0.81%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.81%) GRC
8 2 (0.81%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.40%) SOC 2
System Software
1 45 (18.22%) Active Directory
2 28 (11.34%) Docker
3 6 (2.43%) VMware NSX
3 6 (2.43%) vSphere
4 5 (2.02%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (2.02%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 49 (19.84%) Terraform
2 43 (17.41%) Kubernetes
3 24 (9.72%) Ansible
4 11 (4.45%) Grafana
4 11 (4.45%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.43%) Argo
5 6 (2.43%) vCenter Server
6 3 (1.21%) CloudHub
6 3 (1.21%) Data Guard
6 3 (1.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (1.21%) Oracle RMAN
6 3 (1.21%) Podman
6 3 (1.21%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.21%) Rancher
6 3 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.81%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.81%) Istio
7 2 (0.81%) logstash
7 2 (0.81%) systemd
8 1 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 28 (11.34%) Microsoft
1 28 (11.34%) Oracle
2 23 (9.31%) BeyondTrust
2 23 (9.31%) CyberArk
3 17 (6.88%) Red Hat
4 12 (4.86%) Databricks
5 11 (4.45%) VMware
6 9 (3.64%) ESRI
6 9 (3.64%) ServiceNow
7 8 (3.24%) Intergraph
7 8 (3.24%) MuleSoft
7 8 (3.24%) Splunk
8 7 (2.83%) Salesforce
9 6 (2.43%) Pure Storage
10 5 (2.02%) Google
11 4 (1.62%) AppDynamics
11 4 (1.62%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.62%) Foundry
11 4 (1.62%) Palantir
11 4 (1.62%) Zscaler