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 25 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 11 10
Rank change year-on-year -10 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 269 207 273
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 8.25% 12.45% 11.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.18% 13.49% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 128 184
10th Percentile £357 £325 £456
25th Percentile £424 £411 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £600
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -17.08% -
75th Percentile £600 £564 £650
90th Percentile £651 £625 £688
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £580
% change year-on-year +5.00% -13.79% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 2 17
10th Percentile £80.35 £35.98 £61.60
25th Percentile £80.75 £44.56 £81.75
Median hourly rate £85.00 £60.75 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +39.92% -27.48% +10.70%
75th Percentile £102.50 £77.56 £87.46
90th Percentile £104.00 £86.53 £87.53
South East median hourly rate £67.50 £60.75 £83.77
% change year-on-year +11.11% -27.48% +10.70%

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 2,643 1,534 2,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 81.07% 92.30% 84.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,697 914 1,172
10th Percentile £312 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -0.20% -2.24%
75th Percentile £600 £593 £613
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% +0.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 107 132
10th Percentile £16.35 £14.20 £13.56
25th Percentile £31.25 £14.94 £20.42
Median hourly rate £81.50 £25.15 £54.02
Median % change year-on-year +224.06% -53.44% +8.03%
75th Percentile £88.00 £54.38 £67.58
90th Percentile £104.00 £81.20 £85.65
South East median hourly rate £57.25 £22.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +154.44% -59.09% +10.00%

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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 -9 188 £500 - 45
Buckinghamshire -6 74 £492 +31.20% 18
Oxfordshire -18 7 £775 +65.33% 27
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 12 (4.46%) Confluence
2 6 (2.23%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.86%) OpenStack
3 5 (1.86%) SharePoint
4 4 (1.49%) WebSphere
4 4 (1.49%) WebSphere Application Server
5 3 (1.12%) IIS
6 2 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.74%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.74%) JBoss
6 2 (0.74%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.74%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.37%) ArcGIS
7 1 (0.37%) CIMPLICITY
7 1 (0.37%) CMS
7 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.37%) Predix
Applications
1 8 (2.97%) CPLEX
1 8 (2.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.12%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 207 (76.95%) Azure
2 123 (45.72%) Azure DevOps
3 74 (27.51%) AWS
4 39 (14.50%) GCP
5 29 (10.78%) Power Platform
6 26 (9.67%) Entra ID
7 25 (9.29%) Azure Monitor
8 20 (7.43%) GitHub
9 18 (6.69%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (5.58%) Azure Key Vault
11 14 (5.20%) Azure AKS
12 11 (4.09%) OCI
13 10 (3.72%) OpenShift
13 10 (3.72%) SaaS
14 8 (2.97%) Azure App Service
14 8 (2.97%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (2.97%) IaaS
14 8 (2.97%) PaaS
15 6 (2.23%) Azure API Management
15 6 (2.23%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 20 (7.43%) Firewall
2 15 (5.58%) DNS
3 14 (5.20%) Network Security
4 11 (4.09%) LAN
4 11 (4.09%) WAN
5 10 (3.72%) TCP/IP
5 10 (3.72%) VPN
6 9 (3.35%) BGP
7 8 (2.97%) MPLS
8 7 (2.60%) DHCP
8 7 (2.60%) SD-WAN
9 5 (1.86%) SSH
10 4 (1.49%) OSPF
11 3 (1.12%) HTTP
11 3 (1.12%) SSL
12 2 (0.74%) Internet
12 2 (0.74%) VXLAN
13 1 (0.37%) 5G
13 1 (0.37%) NGFW
13 1 (0.37%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (7.81%) NoSQL
2 18 (6.69%) Power BI
3 11 (4.09%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (3.72%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.97%) MongoDB
5 8 (2.97%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.23%) Tableau
7 5 (1.86%) Big Data
7 5 (1.86%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.49%) DocumentDB
8 4 (1.49%) Parquet
9 3 (1.12%) Metadata
9 3 (1.12%) Spark SQL
10 2 (0.74%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.74%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.37%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.37%) Delta Lake
11 1 (0.37%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 39 (14.50%) Git
2 23 (8.55%) JIRA
3 21 (7.81%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.83%) GitLab
5 5 (1.86%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.49%) Jaeger
6 4 (1.49%) NUnit
7 3 (1.12%) JUnit
7 3 (1.12%) Selenium
7 3 (1.12%) SpecFlow
7 3 (1.12%) TeamCity
7 3 (1.12%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.74%) Balsamiq
8 2 (0.74%) Introscope
8 2 (0.74%) JMeter
8 2 (0.74%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.74%) Mockito
8 2 (0.74%) MSTest
8 2 (0.74%) NeoLoad
8 2 (0.74%) Visual Studio
General
1 72 (26.77%) Social Skills
2 28 (10.41%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (8.92%) Finance
4 23 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 17 (6.32%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (5.20%) Aerospace
7 9 (3.35%) Billing
8 8 (2.97%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (2.23%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.49%) Military
12 3 (1.12%) Publishing
13 2 (0.74%) Legal
13 2 (0.74%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.37%) Advertising
14 1 (0.37%) Health Technology
14 1 (0.37%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 46 (17.10%) DevOps Engineer
2 45 (16.73%) Developer
3 36 (13.38%) Azure Engineer
4 34 (12.64%) Architect
5 31 (11.52%) Senior
6 28 (10.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 26 (9.67%) Analyst
8 20 (7.43%) Lead
9 18 (6.69%) Cloud Engineer
10 15 (5.58%) Platform Engineer
11 12 (4.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (4.09%) .NET Developer
12 11 (4.09%) Project Manager
12 11 (4.09%) Technical Architect
13 10 (3.72%) Business Analyst
13 10 (3.72%) Test Analyst
14 9 (3.35%) Full-Stack Developer
14 9 (3.35%) Oracle Analyst
15 8 (2.97%) Python Developer
15 8 (2.97%) Senior Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (12.64%) REST
2 30 (11.15%) .NET
3 20 (7.43%) OAuth
4 19 (7.06%) RESTful
5 15 (5.58%) React
6 14 (5.20%) SAML
7 13 (4.83%) .NET Framework
7 13 (4.83%) ARM Templates
8 12 (4.46%) Entity Framework
8 12 (4.46%) LDAP
8 12 (4.46%) Swagger
9 11 (4.09%) .NET Core
9 11 (4.09%) Kafka
9 11 (4.09%) OpenAPI
9 11 (4.09%) SOAP
10 10 (3.72%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (3.35%) Flask
11 9 (3.35%) OpenID
11 9 (3.35%) Pandas
11 9 (3.35%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 33 (12.27%) Cloud Native
2 18 (6.69%) Hybrid Cloud
3 13 (4.83%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (4.83%) Enterprise Software
4 11 (4.09%) Onboarding
5 8 (2.97%) Algorithms
5 8 (2.97%) Data Structures
6 7 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (2.60%) Public Cloud
6 7 (2.60%) Security Posture
7 6 (2.23%) Product Ownership
8 5 (1.86%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.86%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.86%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.49%) ARM Cortex
9 4 (1.49%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (1.12%) IoT
10 3 (1.12%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.12%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 26 (9.67%) Linux
2 18 (6.69%) Windows
3 11 (4.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (2.23%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.74%) Oracle Linux
5 2 (0.74%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
5 2 (0.74%) Unix
6 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (49.44%) CI/CD
2 94 (34.94%) Agile
3 56 (20.82%) Infrastructure as Code
4 52 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
5 47 (17.47%) Analytics
6 40 (14.87%) Cybersecurity
7 36 (13.38%) Stakeholder Management
8 35 (13.01%) Containerisation
9 29 (10.78%) ITIL
9 29 (10.78%) Microservices
10 28 (10.41%) Validation
11 27 (10.04%) Data Modelling
11 27 (10.04%) Root Cause Analysis
12 26 (9.67%) Test Automation
13 25 (9.29%) Platform Engineering
14 24 (8.92%) DevSecOps
15 23 (8.55%) Scrum
16 22 (8.18%) Migration
16 22 (8.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 21 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 75 (27.88%) Python
2 49 (18.22%) SQL
3 46 (17.10%) PowerShell
4 27 (10.04%) Bash
5 25 (9.29%) C#
6 22 (8.18%) JavaScript
7 19 (7.06%) Bicep
8 16 (5.95%) Java
9 10 (3.72%) TypeScript
10 7 (2.60%) Go
11 5 (1.86%) X++
12 4 (1.49%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (1.49%) Perl
13 2 (0.74%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.74%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.74%) Jython
13 2 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.37%) C++
14 1 (0.37%) SOQL
14 1 (0.37%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 124 (46.10%) Security Cleared
2 100 (37.17%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.06%) DV Cleared
4 17 (6.32%) Degree
5 16 (5.95%) CISSP
6 15 (5.58%) Cisco Certification
7 14 (5.20%) Azure Certification
8 13 (4.83%) CISM
9 8 (2.97%) CCNP
9 8 (2.97%) RHCE
10 7 (2.60%) AWS Certification
10 7 (2.60%) CCIE
11 6 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 5 (1.86%) JNCIE
12 5 (1.86%) MCSE
12 5 (1.86%) PMP
13 4 (1.49%) PMI Certification
14 3 (1.12%) GIAC
15 2 (0.74%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (8.55%) NIST
2 18 (6.69%) GDPR
3 17 (6.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (6.32%) QA
4 10 (3.72%) NCSC
5 8 (2.97%) Data Quality
5 8 (2.97%) GRC
6 6 (2.23%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.12%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.37%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.37%) OpenSCAP
8 1 (0.37%) PMO
8 1 (0.37%) SLA
System Software
1 31 (11.52%) Active Directory
1 31 (11.52%) Docker
2 7 (2.60%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.74%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 56 (20.82%) Terraform
2 45 (16.73%) Kubernetes
3 20 (7.43%) Ansible
4 7 (2.60%) Grafana
4 7 (2.60%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.86%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (1.49%) Istio
6 4 (1.49%) Rancher
6 4 (1.49%) SCCM
6 4 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.74%) CA Wily
7 2 (0.74%) CASB
7 2 (0.74%) Tivoli
8 1 (0.37%) Packer
8 1 (0.37%) QRadar
8 1 (0.37%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (0.37%) SCOM
Vendors
1 64 (23.79%) Microsoft
2 22 (8.18%) Oracle
3 17 (6.32%) ServiceNow
4 13 (4.83%) Red Hat
5 10 (3.72%) BeyondTrust
5 10 (3.72%) CyberArk
5 10 (3.72%) VMware
6 9 (3.35%) Databricks
7 8 (2.97%) Google
8 5 (1.86%) Cisco
9 4 (1.49%) AppDynamics
9 4 (1.49%) CrowdStrike
9 4 (1.49%) IBM
9 4 (1.49%) SAP
10 3 (1.12%) MuleSoft
10 3 (1.12%) Splunk
11 2 (0.74%) Adobe
11 2 (0.74%) Citrix
11 2 (0.74%) Dynatrace
11 2 (0.74%) Palo Alto