DevOps Engineer Contract Job Trends

Development Operations Engineer
UK

The median Development Operations Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 July 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 117 141 117
Rank change year-on-year +24 -24 -39
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Engineer 1,140 648 842
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.16% 2.00% 1.96%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.33% 2.17% 2.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 843 492 642
10th Percentile £400 £390 £400
25th Percentile £449 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -4.60% -10.42%
75th Percentile £613 £588 £625
90th Percentile £705 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £533
% change year-on-year - -6.19% -9.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 2 15
10th Percentile - £82.10 £49.53
25th Percentile £65.00 £82.24 £60.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £82.48 £73.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.13% +12.22% +0.68%
75th Percentile £77.50 £82.72 £74.22
90th Percentile - £82.86 £74.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £82.48 £74.00
% change year-on-year -15.13% +11.46% +1.37%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 UK with a recognized job title 48,916 29,817 39,992
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,647 19,017 25,745
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £401 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,278 1,379 2,732
10th Percentile £15.92 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.31 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.25 £26.50 £39.53
Median % change year-on-year +63.21% -32.95% -8.08%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.97
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.07%

DevOps Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'DevOps Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

DevOps Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

DevOps Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the UK

DevOps Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps Engineer over the 6 months to 11 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps Engineer in the UK

DevOps Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for DevOps Engineer job vacancies in the UK

DevOps Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps Engineer over the 6 months to 11 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps Engineer in the UK

DevOps Engineer
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 11 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
England +30 923 £513 +0.15% 151
UK excluding London +23 491 £500 - 108
London +15 472 £525 - 61
Work from Home -8 301 £525 +1.16% 74
North of England +24 201 £500 - 43
Yorkshire +2 106 £525 +3.45% 6
South West +25 89 £500 -9.09% 23
South East -51 67 £492 +3.58% 20
North West -16 58 £550 +36.82% 20
Midlands -43 57 £488 +2.63% 10
Scotland +11 52 £513 +2.50% 5
West Midlands -59 41 £571 +20.21% 4
North East -2 37 £425 -10.05% 17
East of England -13 20 £475 -5.71% 3
East Midlands -12 15 £488 +8.33% 6
Wales -12 7 £750 +185.71% 3
Northern Ireland - 6 £275 - 2

DevOps Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 11 July 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 featuring DevOps Engineer in the job title.

1 1,140 (100.00%) DevOps
2 744 (65.26%) CI/CD
3 643 (56.40%) Terraform
4 536 (47.02%) AWS
5 523 (45.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 512 (44.91%) Security Cleared
7 487 (42.72%) Kubernetes
8 472 (41.40%) SC Cleared
9 416 (36.49%) Azure
10 332 (29.12%) Python
11 312 (27.37%) Docker
12 309 (27.11%) Containerisation
13 245 (21.49%) Azure DevOps
14 230 (20.18%) Platform Engineering
15 223 (19.56%) GitLab
16 221 (19.39%) GitHub
17 211 (18.51%) Agile
17 211 (18.51%) Ansible
18 207 (18.16%) Jenkins
19 195 (17.11%) Linux
20 185 (16.23%) Observability
21 161 (14.12%) Bash
22 156 (13.68%) GitHub Actions
23 147 (12.89%) Prometheus
24 141 (12.37%) Grafana
25 140 (12.28%) GCP
26 118 (10.35%) Amazon EKS
26 118 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
26 118 (10.35%) Git
27 108 (9.47%) Test Automation

DevOps Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 25 (2.19%) Confluence
2 20 (1.75%) Apache
2 20 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (1.49%) Apache Spark
4 16 (1.40%) Jupyter
5 12 (1.05%) nginx
6 5 (0.44%) WebSphere
7 4 (0.35%) IIS
8 3 (0.26%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.088%) JBoss
9 1 (0.088%) SAS
9 1 (0.088%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.088%) Maya
Business Applications
1 1 (0.088%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.088%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.088%) Maximo
1 1 (0.088%) PeopleSoft HCM
1 1 (0.088%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 536 (47.02%) AWS
2 416 (36.49%) Azure
3 245 (21.49%) Azure DevOps
4 221 (19.39%) GitHub
5 156 (13.68%) GitHub Actions
6 140 (12.28%) GCP
7 118 (10.35%) Amazon EKS
8 102 (8.95%) AWS CloudFormation
9 79 (6.93%) Serverless
10 72 (6.32%) Azure AKS
11 65 (5.70%) Amazon S3
12 60 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
13 59 (5.18%) Amazon EC2
14 50 (4.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 45 (3.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 41 (3.60%) Amazon ECS
17 39 (3.42%) Azure Monitor
18 37 (3.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 35 (3.07%) OpenShift
20 30 (2.63%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.77%) Firewall
2 41 (3.60%) DNS
3 37 (3.25%) VPN
4 19 (1.67%) Network Security
5 5 (0.44%) SSL
6 4 (0.35%) HTTP
7 3 (0.26%) BGP
7 3 (0.26%) OpenLDAP
7 3 (0.26%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.18%) AMQP
8 2 (0.18%) DHCP
8 2 (0.18%) WAN
9 1 (0.088%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.088%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 1 (0.088%) Internet
9 1 (0.088%) IPsec
9 1 (0.088%) OSPF
9 1 (0.088%) SNMP
9 1 (0.088%) SSH
9 1 (0.088%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
2 31 (2.72%) Amazon RDS
3 24 (2.11%) MongoDB
4 18 (1.58%) Power BI
5 17 (1.49%) Metadata
6 15 (1.32%) DynamoDB
7 14 (1.23%) Redis
7 14 (1.23%) SQL Server
8 12 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
8 12 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
8 12 (1.05%) Elasticsearch
8 12 (1.05%) MySQL
9 11 (0.96%) Amazon Aurora
10 9 (0.79%) Relational Database
11 8 (0.70%) Data Lake
12 7 (0.61%) Ataccama
12 7 (0.61%) Big Data
13 6 (0.53%) Neo4j
14 5 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
14 5 (0.44%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 223 (19.56%) GitLab
2 207 (18.16%) Jenkins
3 118 (10.35%) Git
4 44 (3.86%) JIRA
5 35 (3.07%) SonarQube
6 18 (1.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (1.32%) Artifactory
8 13 (1.14%) Maven
9 11 (0.96%) Bitbucket
10 10 (0.88%) Snyk
11 9 (0.79%) CircleCI
12 8 (0.70%) Terragrunt
13 7 (0.61%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.61%) Selenium
14 5 (0.44%) Ant
14 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 5 (0.44%) Gatling
14 5 (0.44%) Visual Studio
15 4 (0.35%) MSBuild
15 4 (0.35%) Postman
General
1 191 (16.75%) Public Sector
2 128 (11.23%) Social Skills
3 102 (8.95%) Finance
4 48 (4.21%) Banking
5 24 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 20 (1.75%) Analytical Skills
7 15 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
8 12 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
9 10 (0.88%) Publishing
10 8 (0.70%) Financial Institution
11 7 (0.61%) Law
11 7 (0.61%) Legal
12 5 (0.44%) Retail
13 4 (0.35%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.26%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.26%) Military
14 3 (0.26%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.26%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.26%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.26%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (3.77%) Kafka
2 41 (3.60%) Elastic Stack
3 37 (3.25%) YAML
4 33 (2.89%) ARM Templates
5 26 (2.28%) .NET
6 25 (2.19%) Node.js
7 22 (1.93%) Keycloak
8 19 (1.67%) REST
9 18 (1.58%) React
10 16 (1.40%) JSON
11 15 (1.32%) OpenTelemetry
11 15 (1.32%) Spring
12 12 (1.05%) ADO
12 12 (1.05%) AWS CDK
12 12 (1.05%) Playwright
13 11 (0.96%) OAuth
13 11 (0.96%) Spring Boot
14 10 (0.88%) SLSA
15 8 (0.70%) RabbitMQ
16 7 (0.61%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 198 (17.37%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.02%) Public Cloud
3 21 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
4 16 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
4 16 (1.40%) Onboarding
5 15 (1.32%) Private Cloud
6 13 (1.14%) Enterprise Cloud
6 13 (1.14%) PKI
7 12 (1.05%) Replication
7 12 (1.05%) Security Posture
8 11 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (0.88%) Data Centre
9 10 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
10 9 (0.79%) Linux Command Line
10 9 (0.79%) Virtual Team
11 7 (0.61%) NHS
12 5 (0.44%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 195 (17.11%) Linux
2 55 (4.82%) Windows
3 30 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (1.14%) Unix
5 11 (0.96%) Windows Server
6 8 (0.70%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.61%) VMS
8 5 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
9 2 (0.18%) Solaris
9 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.088%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.088%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,140 (100.00%) DevOps
2 744 (65.26%) CI/CD
3 523 (45.88%) Infrastructure as Code
4 309 (27.11%) Containerisation
5 230 (20.18%) Platform Engineering
6 211 (18.51%) Agile
7 185 (16.23%) Observability
8 118 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
9 108 (9.47%) Test Automation
10 100 (8.77%) Deployment Automation
11 97 (8.51%) Infrastructure Automation
12 96 (8.42%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 90 (7.89%) Problem-Solving
14 87 (7.63%) Software Engineering
15 81 (7.11%) AI
16 80 (7.02%) DevSecOps
17 72 (6.32%) High Availability
18 71 (6.23%) Secrets Management
19 68 (5.96%) Microservices
20 67 (5.88%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 332 (29.12%) Python
2 161 (14.12%) Bash
3 88 (7.72%) PowerShell
4 78 (6.84%) Java
5 58 (5.09%) Bicep
6 46 (4.04%) Go
7 35 (3.07%) SQL
8 30 (2.63%) Groovy
9 27 (2.37%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.75%) TypeScript
11 19 (1.67%) C#
12 12 (1.05%) Shell Script
13 6 (0.53%) Scala
14 5 (0.44%) Apex Code
14 5 (0.44%) Perl
15 3 (0.26%) C
16 2 (0.18%) PHP
17 1 (0.088%) ABAP
17 1 (0.088%) JCL
17 1 (0.088%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 512 (44.91%) Security Cleared
2 472 (41.40%) SC Cleared
3 49 (4.30%) DV Cleared
4 38 (3.33%) AWS Certification
4 38 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 37 (3.25%) Azure Certification
6 16 (1.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 15 (1.32%) Degree
8 8 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.26%) CCNA
12 3 (0.26%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.26%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.18%) CCNP
14 1 (0.088%) CCIE
14 1 (0.088%) DBS Check
14 1 (0.088%) OCP
14 1 (0.088%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (2.46%) QA
2 9 (0.79%) SLA
3 5 (0.44%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.35%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.26%) GDPR
5 3 (0.26%) HL7
5 3 (0.26%) NCSC
5 3 (0.26%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.18%) NIST
6 2 (0.18%) WCAG
7 1 (0.088%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.088%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 312 (27.37%) Docker
2 36 (3.16%) Virtual Machines
3 22 (1.93%) Active Directory
4 10 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.44%) Corosync
6 4 (0.35%) Squid
7 2 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.088%) HDFS
8 1 (0.088%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.088%) NLBS
8 1 (0.088%) zsh
Systems Management
1 643 (56.40%) Terraform
2 487 (42.72%) Kubernetes
3 211 (18.51%) Ansible
4 147 (12.89%) Prometheus
5 141 (12.37%) Grafana
6 52 (4.56%) Argo
7 25 (2.19%) Puppet
8 23 (2.02%) Istio
9 22 (1.93%) Packer
10 11 (0.96%) Progress Chef
11 9 (0.79%) Kustomize
11 9 (0.79%) Rancher
12 5 (0.44%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.44%) Karpenter
12 5 (0.44%) Pacemaker
12 5 (0.44%) Podman
12 5 (0.44%) vRealize
13 4 (0.35%) Consul
13 4 (0.35%) linkerd
13 4 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 106 (9.30%) Microsoft
2 41 (3.60%) Splunk
3 37 (3.25%) Google
4 33 (2.89%) Dynatrace
5 30 (2.63%) Salesforce
6 24 (2.11%) Databricks
7 20 (1.75%) Red Hat
8 18 (1.58%) VMware
9 16 (1.40%) ServiceNow
10 12 (1.05%) AppDynamics
11 11 (0.96%) Oracle
12 10 (0.88%) Sonatype
12 10 (0.88%) Trend Micro
13 9 (0.79%) Fortinet
14 8 (0.70%) Cisco
14 8 (0.70%) OpenAI
15 7 (0.61%) IBM
15 7 (0.61%) SAP
16 6 (0.53%) New Relic
17 4 (0.35%) InterSystems