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 22 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 10 13
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 272 210 230
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 8.44% 12.64% 10.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.54% 13.79% 12.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 124 167
10th Percentile £363 £351 £450
25th Percentile £431 £413 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £500 £605
Median % change year-on-year +2.75% -17.36% +0.83%
75th Percentile £600 £550 £650
90th Percentile £675 £625 £688
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £595
% change year-on-year +5.00% -15.97% -0.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 2 8
10th Percentile £66.52 £35.98 £75.71
25th Percentile £71.00 £44.56 £81.85
Median hourly rate £81.50 £60.75 £87.46
Median % change year-on-year +34.16% -30.54% +15.58%
75th Percentile £94.42 £77.56 -
90th Percentile £104.00 £86.53 -
South East median hourly rate £67.25 £60.75 £87.46
% change year-on-year +10.70% -30.54% +15.58%

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 2,581 1,523 1,895
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 80.11% 91.69% 84.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,653 910 1,073
10th Percentile £325 £300 £263
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -0.49%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £701 £688 £688
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% +0.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 251 110 106
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £25.81 £15.12 £23.37
Median hourly rate £63.48 £24.58 £55.44
Median % change year-on-year +158.31% -55.67% +10.88%
75th Percentile £87.16 £46.30 £66.75
90th Percentile £103.50 £77.75 £85.45
South East median hourly rate £53.95 £24.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +124.79% -58.15% +14.70%

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 22 August 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 22 August 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 22 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
Berkshire -8 197 £521 +4.25% 41
Buckinghamshire -6 69 £492 +24.95% 14
Oxfordshire -28 6 £800 +45.45% 18
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 8 (2.94%) Confluence
2 5 (1.84%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.84%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.84%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.47%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.47%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (1.10%) IIS
5 2 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.74%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.74%) JBoss
5 2 (0.74%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.74%) Smallworld
5 2 (0.74%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.37%) Apache
6 1 (0.37%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.37%) CIMPLICITY
6 1 (0.37%) CMS
6 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.37%) Predix
Applications
1 7 (2.57%) CPLEX
2 6 (2.21%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.10%) 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
1 211 (77.57%) Azure
2 119 (43.75%) Azure DevOps
3 77 (28.31%) AWS
4 40 (14.71%) GCP
5 27 (9.93%) Power Platform
6 26 (9.56%) GitHub
7 25 (9.19%) Entra ID
8 24 (8.82%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (8.09%) Azure Monitor
10 21 (7.72%) OpenShift
11 12 (4.41%) Azure AKS
11 12 (4.41%) Azure Sentinel
12 11 (4.04%) Azure Key Vault
13 10 (3.68%) SaaS
14 8 (2.94%) Azure Logic Apps
15 7 (2.57%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (2.57%) Azure App Service
15 7 (2.57%) IaaS
15 7 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
15 7 (2.57%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (9.19%) Firewall
2 21 (7.72%) DNS
3 15 (5.51%) TCP/IP
3 15 (5.51%) VPN
4 13 (4.78%) Network Security
5 12 (4.41%) DHCP
5 12 (4.41%) LAN
5 12 (4.41%) WAN
6 9 (3.31%) BGP
7 8 (2.94%) MPLS
8 6 (2.21%) SD-WAN
9 5 (1.84%) SSH
10 4 (1.47%) OSPF
11 3 (1.10%) HTTP
11 3 (1.10%) SSL
12 2 (0.74%) Internet
12 2 (0.74%) Software-Defined Networking
12 2 (0.74%) VXLAN
13 1 (0.37%) 5G
13 1 (0.37%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.62%) NoSQL
2 16 (5.88%) Power BI
3 10 (3.68%) SQL Server
4 9 (3.31%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (2.57%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (2.57%) MongoDB
7 6 (2.21%) Metadata
7 6 (2.21%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.84%) Big Data
9 4 (1.47%) DocumentDB
10 3 (1.10%) Tableau
11 2 (0.74%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.74%) Hadoop
11 2 (0.74%) Parquet
11 2 (0.74%) Spark SQL
12 1 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
12 1 (0.37%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.37%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 35 (12.87%) Git
2 30 (11.03%) Jenkins
3 21 (7.72%) GitLab
3 21 (7.72%) JIRA
4 5 (1.84%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.47%) NUnit
5 4 (1.47%) Selenium
6 3 (1.10%) Jaeger
6 3 (1.10%) JMeter
6 3 (1.10%) SpecFlow
6 3 (1.10%) TeamCity
6 3 (1.10%) WebDriver
7 2 (0.74%) Introscope
7 2 (0.74%) LoadRunner
7 2 (0.74%) MSTest
7 2 (0.74%) NeoLoad
7 2 (0.74%) Postman
7 2 (0.74%) tSQLt
7 2 (0.74%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.37%) HP UFT
General
1 76 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 34 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
3 27 (9.93%) Finance
4 26 (9.56%) Aerospace
5 19 (6.99%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.78%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (3.31%) Billing
8 7 (2.57%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (2.21%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.47%) Military
10 4 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (1.10%) Manufacturing
11 3 (1.10%) Publishing
12 2 (0.74%) Legal
12 2 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.37%) Health Technology
13 1 (0.37%) Local Government
13 1 (0.37%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 44 (16.18%) DevOps Engineer
2 42 (15.44%) Senior
3 38 (13.97%) Developer
4 36 (13.24%) Azure Engineer
5 31 (11.40%) Architect
6 27 (9.93%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 23 (8.46%) Lead
8 20 (7.35%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (5.51%) Platform Engineer
10 14 (5.15%) Analyst
10 14 (5.15%) Data Engineer
11 13 (4.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (4.04%) Project Manager
13 10 (3.68%) .NET Developer
14 9 (3.31%) Consultant
14 9 (3.31%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 8 (2.94%) Business Analyst
15 8 (2.94%) Senior Manager
15 8 (2.94%) Senior Project Manager
15 8 (2.94%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (25.37%) Terraform
2 28 (10.29%) REST
3 27 (9.93%) .NET
4 17 (6.25%) RESTful
5 16 (5.88%) OAuth
6 15 (5.51%) ARM Templates
7 13 (4.78%) React
8 12 (4.41%) SAML
9 11 (4.04%) .NET Framework
9 11 (4.04%) Swagger
10 10 (3.68%) Entity Framework
10 10 (3.68%) OpenAPI
11 9 (3.31%) .NET Core
11 9 (3.31%) Kafka
11 9 (3.31%) LDAP
11 9 (3.31%) RabbitMQ
12 8 (2.94%) Flask
12 8 (2.94%) Pandas
12 8 (2.94%) pytest
12 8 (2.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 33 (12.13%) Cloud Native
2 30 (11.03%) Hybrid Cloud
3 16 (5.88%) Onboarding
4 14 (5.15%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.31%) Data Structures
7 7 (2.57%) Algorithms
7 7 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (2.21%) Management Information System
8 6 (2.21%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.21%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.84%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.84%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.47%) ARM Cortex
10 4 (1.47%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.47%) Operational Technology
11 3 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
11 3 (1.10%) Distributed Architecture
11 3 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 32 (11.76%) Linux
2 23 (8.46%) Windows
3 12 (4.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 12 (4.41%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.74%) Oracle Linux
4 2 (0.74%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 2 (0.74%) Unix
5 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (52.21%) CI/CD
2 97 (35.66%) Agile
3 70 (25.74%) Infrastructure as Code
4 53 (19.49%) Problem-Solving
5 51 (18.75%) Analytics
6 45 (16.54%) Cybersecurity
7 42 (15.44%) Stakeholder Management
8 39 (14.34%) Containerisation
9 35 (12.87%) Continuous Improvement
10 34 (12.50%) Platform Engineering
11 33 (12.13%) Test Automation
12 32 (11.76%) ITIL
12 32 (11.76%) Validation
13 30 (11.03%) DevSecOps
14 27 (9.93%) Deployment Automation
14 27 (9.93%) SIEM
15 26 (9.56%) Microservices
15 26 (9.56%) Observability
16 25 (9.19%) Data Modelling
16 25 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 85 (31.25%) Python
2 55 (20.22%) PowerShell
3 51 (18.75%) SQL
4 35 (12.87%) Bash
5 23 (8.46%) Bicep
5 23 (8.46%) C#
6 19 (6.99%) JavaScript
7 15 (5.51%) Java
8 9 (3.31%) TypeScript
9 7 (2.57%) Kusto Query Language
10 6 (2.21%) Go
11 5 (1.84%) X++
12 4 (1.47%) Perl
13 3 (1.10%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.74%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.74%) BeanShell
14 2 (0.74%) Jython
14 2 (0.74%) Magik
14 2 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.37%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 138 (50.74%) Security Cleared
2 115 (42.28%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.72%) Degree
4 19 (6.99%) CISSP
5 17 (6.25%) Azure Certification
5 17 (6.25%) Cisco Certification
5 17 (6.25%) DV Cleared
6 13 (4.78%) AWS Certification
7 10 (3.68%) CISM
8 8 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (2.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 7 (2.57%) CCIE
9 7 (2.57%) RHCE
10 5 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.84%) CCNP
10 5 (1.84%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (1.84%) JNCIE
10 5 (1.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.84%) PMP
11 4 (1.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.72%) NIST
2 20 (7.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (6.62%) QA
4 15 (5.51%) Data Quality
4 15 (5.51%) GDPR
5 11 (4.04%) NCSC
6 7 (2.57%) GRC
7 5 (1.84%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (1.10%) Accessibility
9 3 (1.10%) SLA
10 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.37%) OpenSCAP
10 1 (0.37%) PMO
10 1 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 35 (12.87%) Docker
2 26 (9.56%) Active Directory
3 9 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (2.57%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (2.21%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.74%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 62 (22.79%) Kubernetes
2 38 (13.97%) Ansible
3 11 (4.04%) Grafana
4 7 (2.57%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.21%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (1.84%) Istio
7 4 (1.47%) SCCM
7 4 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (1.10%) Rancher
9 2 (0.74%) CA Wily
9 2 (0.74%) CASB
9 2 (0.74%) SCOM
9 2 (0.74%) Tivoli
10 1 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 1 (0.37%) Packer
10 1 (0.37%) QRadar
10 1 (0.37%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 85 (31.25%) Microsoft
2 15 (5.51%) Google
2 15 (5.51%) Oracle
2 15 (5.51%) Red Hat
2 15 (5.51%) ServiceNow
3 13 (4.78%) VMware
4 12 (4.41%) Databricks
5 9 (3.31%) CyberArk
6 7 (2.57%) BeyondTrust
7 6 (2.21%) AppDynamics
7 6 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 6 (2.21%) Splunk
8 5 (1.84%) Cisco
8 5 (1.84%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.47%) CrowdStrike
9 4 (1.47%) IBM
9 4 (1.47%) SAP
10 3 (1.10%) MuleSoft
11 2 (0.74%) Adobe
11 2 (0.74%) Citrix