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 16 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 15 10
Rank change year-on-year 0 -5 +4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 275 149 293
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 9.17% 10.03% 11.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.22% 10.80% 12.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 94 191
10th Percentile £358 £361 £450
25th Percentile £413 £413 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -16.67% +4.35%
75th Percentile £596 £600 £675
90th Percentile £653 £663 £688
South East median daily rate £513 £501 £550
% change year-on-year +2.40% -9.00% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 2 28
10th Percentile - £35.98 £56.65
25th Percentile £80.75 £44.56 £61.60
Median hourly rate £86.25 £60.75 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +41.98% -27.48% +5.78%
75th Percentile £104.00 £77.56 £87.46
90th Percentile £104.75 £86.53 £87.53
South East median hourly rate £63.73 £60.75 £83.77
% change year-on-year +4.91% -27.48% +5.78%

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 2,452 1,379 2,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 81.76% 92.86% 87.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,616 847 1,259
10th Percentile £303 £300 £213
25th Percentile £402 £408 £370
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% - -
75th Percentile £600 £601 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
South East median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 57 167
10th Percentile £16.35 - £14.17
25th Percentile £28.56 £14.20 £19.25
Median hourly rate £81.50 £31.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +158.73% -30.00% -12.20%
75th Percentile £88.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £100.08 £78.31 £85.65
South East median hourly rate £55.00 £27.76 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.13% -41.56% -4.04%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 +2 199 £500 - 68
Buckinghamshire +6 69 £492 +31.20% 18
Oxfordshire -17 7 £513 - 33
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 14 (5.09%) SharePoint
2 11 (4.00%) Confluence
3 4 (1.45%) IIS
3 4 (1.45%) OpenStack
3 4 (1.45%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.45%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (1.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (1.09%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.09%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.73%) CMS
5 2 (0.73%) GeoServer
5 2 (0.73%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.73%) JBoss
5 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.73%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.73%) Smallworld
5 2 (0.73%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.36%) Apache
Applications
1 9 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.45%) CPLEX
2 4 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Oracle EBS
1 4 (1.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 218 (79.27%) Azure
2 128 (46.55%) Azure DevOps
3 81 (29.45%) AWS
4 45 (16.36%) GCP
5 40 (14.55%) Power Platform
6 25 (9.09%) GitHub
7 24 (8.73%) Entra ID
8 20 (7.27%) Azure Monitor
9 18 (6.55%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (5.82%) SaaS
11 15 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
12 13 (4.73%) Azure Key Vault
12 13 (4.73%) OCI
13 12 (4.36%) Azure AKS
13 12 (4.36%) OpenShift
14 11 (4.00%) PaaS
14 11 (4.00%) Serverless
15 9 (3.27%) IaaS
16 8 (2.91%) Azure Functions
17 7 (2.55%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.91%) Firewall
2 10 (3.64%) LAN
2 10 (3.64%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.64%) WAN
3 8 (2.91%) BGP
4 7 (2.55%) DNS
4 7 (2.55%) MPLS
4 7 (2.55%) Network Security
5 6 (2.18%) VPN
6 5 (1.82%) TCP/IP
7 4 (1.45%) IPsec
7 4 (1.45%) MQTT
7 4 (1.45%) OSPF
8 3 (1.09%) DHCP
8 3 (1.09%) SSL
9 2 (0.73%) HTTP
9 2 (0.73%) Internet
9 2 (0.73%) VXLAN
10 1 (0.36%) 5G
10 1 (0.36%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (11.64%) Power BI
2 11 (4.00%) NoSQL
3 9 (3.27%) SQL Server
4 8 (2.91%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 8 (2.91%) Oracle Reports
5 7 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (2.18%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (2.18%) Tableau
7 4 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.45%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.09%) Delta Lake
8 3 (1.09%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.09%) GIS
8 3 (1.09%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.09%) Parquet
8 3 (1.09%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.73%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 34 (12.36%) Git
2 31 (11.27%) JIRA
3 26 (9.45%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.73%) GitLab
5 7 (2.55%) Bitbucket
6 5 (1.82%) HP UFT
7 4 (1.45%) Jaeger
7 4 (1.45%) NUnit
7 4 (1.45%) Visual Studio
8 3 (1.09%) JUnit
8 3 (1.09%) Postman
8 3 (1.09%) Selenium
8 3 (1.09%) SpecFlow
8 3 (1.09%) TeamCity
8 3 (1.09%) WebDriver
9 2 (0.73%) Balsamiq
9 2 (0.73%) Introscope
9 2 (0.73%) Mockito
9 2 (0.73%) MSTest
9 2 (0.73%) ScriptRunner
General
1 79 (28.73%) Social Skills
2 34 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
3 27 (9.82%) Documentation Skills
4 23 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 17 (6.18%) Finance
6 12 (4.36%) Aerospace
7 10 (3.64%) Influencing Skills
7 10 (3.64%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (1.09%) Billing
8 3 (1.09%) Marketing
8 3 (1.09%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.73%) Legal
9 2 (0.73%) Military
10 1 (0.36%) Advertising
10 1 (0.36%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.36%) Law
10 1 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 48 (17.45%) DevOps Engineer
2 39 (14.18%) Azure Engineer
3 35 (12.73%) Architect
4 32 (11.64%) Analyst
4 32 (11.64%) Developer
5 29 (10.55%) Senior
6 26 (9.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 22 (8.00%) Cloud Engineer
8 17 (6.18%) Lead
9 13 (4.73%) Platform Engineer
9 13 (4.73%) Test Analyst
10 11 (4.00%) Test Engineer
11 10 (3.64%) Business Analyst
11 10 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
12 9 (3.27%) Data Engineer
12 9 (3.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (3.27%) Oracle Analyst
12 9 (3.27%) Project Manager
13 8 (2.91%) Senior DevOps
13 8 (2.91%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (8.36%) .NET
2 21 (7.64%) REST
3 19 (6.91%) LDAP
4 16 (5.82%) ADO
4 16 (5.82%) React
5 10 (3.64%) RESTful
6 9 (3.27%) Middleware
6 9 (3.27%) OAuth
7 8 (2.91%) .NET Framework
7 8 (2.91%) ARM Templates
7 8 (2.91%) CSS
8 7 (2.55%) .NET Core
8 7 (2.55%) Entity Framework
8 7 (2.55%) Kafka
8 7 (2.55%) SOAP
9 6 (2.18%) JSON
9 6 (2.18%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (2.18%) Swagger
10 5 (1.82%) Flask
10 5 (1.82%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 34 (12.36%) Cloud Native
2 11 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
3 10 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (2.55%) Onboarding
4 7 (2.55%) Product Ownership
4 7 (2.55%) Public Cloud
5 6 (2.18%) Operational Technology
5 6 (2.18%) Security Posture
6 5 (1.82%) Data Centre
6 5 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (1.82%) PKI
6 5 (1.82%) Virtual Team
7 4 (1.45%) Algorithms
7 4 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.45%) Data Structures
8 3 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.73%) Clustering
9 2 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 30 (10.91%) Linux
2 20 (7.27%) Windows
3 11 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.73%) Oracle Linux
4 2 (0.73%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 2 (0.73%) Unix
5 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.36%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (48.73%) CI/CD
2 90 (32.73%) Agile
3 63 (22.91%) Problem-Solving
4 52 (18.91%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (17.09%) Cybersecurity
6 33 (12.00%) Analytics
7 32 (11.64%) Business Intelligence
8 31 (11.27%) Containerisation
9 30 (10.91%) DevSecOps
9 30 (10.91%) Stakeholder Management
10 29 (10.55%) Root Cause Analysis
11 27 (9.82%) ITIL
11 27 (9.82%) Microservices
12 24 (8.73%) Platform Engineering
12 24 (8.73%) Scrum
13 23 (8.36%) Observability
13 23 (8.36%) SIEM
14 22 (8.00%) Migration
15 21 (7.64%) Data Modelling
15 21 (7.64%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 73 (26.55%) Python
2 50 (18.18%) PowerShell
3 40 (14.55%) SQL
4 26 (9.45%) JavaScript
5 24 (8.73%) Bash
6 22 (8.00%) C#
7 16 (5.82%) Bicep
8 13 (4.73%) TypeScript
9 12 (4.36%) Java
10 7 (2.55%) Go
11 5 (1.82%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.82%) VBScript
12 4 (1.45%) Perl
13 2 (0.73%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.73%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.73%) C++
13 2 (0.73%) Jython
13 2 (0.73%) PHP
13 2 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.73%) X++
Qualifications
1 124 (45.09%) Security Cleared
2 105 (38.18%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.00%) CISSP
4 21 (7.64%) CISM
5 15 (5.45%) DV Cleared
6 13 (4.73%) Azure Certification
7 11 (4.00%) Cisco Certification
7 11 (4.00%) Degree
8 10 (3.64%) RHCE
9 7 (2.55%) CCNP
10 6 (2.18%) CCIE
11 5 (1.82%) MCSE
11 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (1.82%) PMP
12 4 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
12 4 (1.45%) JNCIE
12 4 (1.45%) OCP
12 4 (1.45%) Oracle Certification
12 4 (1.45%) PMI Certification
13 3 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (11.64%) NIST
2 28 (10.18%) GDPR
3 25 (9.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (6.18%) QA
5 16 (5.82%) NCSC
6 7 (2.55%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.82%) GRC
7 5 (1.82%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.45%) Accessibility
8 4 (1.45%) NIST 800
8 4 (1.45%) PMO
9 1 (0.36%) OpenSCAP
9 1 (0.36%) SLA
System Software
1 36 (13.09%) Active Directory
2 29 (10.55%) Docker
3 8 (2.91%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.73%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 52 (18.91%) Terraform
2 46 (16.73%) Kubernetes
3 22 (8.00%) Ansible
4 14 (5.09%) Grafana
4 14 (5.09%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.45%) Istio
5 4 (1.45%) Rancher
5 4 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (1.09%) Data Guard
6 3 (1.09%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (1.09%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.73%) CA Wily
7 2 (0.73%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.73%) systemd
7 2 (0.73%) Tivoli
8 1 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (0.36%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.36%) Packer
8 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (0.36%) SCOM
Vendors
1 47 (17.09%) Microsoft
2 31 (11.27%) Oracle
3 19 (6.91%) BeyondTrust
3 19 (6.91%) CyberArk
3 19 (6.91%) Red Hat
4 17 (6.18%) ServiceNow
5 10 (3.64%) Databricks
5 10 (3.64%) VMware
6 6 (2.18%) AppDynamics
6 6 (2.18%) Splunk
7 5 (1.82%) BiZZdesign
8 4 (1.45%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.45%) Google
8 4 (1.45%) IBM
8 4 (1.45%) SAP
9 3 (1.09%) Adobe
9 3 (1.09%) Cisco
9 3 (1.09%) ESRI
9 3 (1.09%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.09%) HP