DevOps Contract Job Trends

DevOps
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring DevOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,943 3,118 3,912
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.68% 10.59% 9.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.59% 11.67% 10.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,454 2,301 2,700
10th Percentile £381 £394 £400
25th Percentile £436 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.63% -1.82% -6.14%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £708 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £530
% change year-on-year -2.44% -3.30% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 21 100
10th Percentile £39.53 £35.00 £55.90
25th Percentile £45.46 £66.25 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £77.50 £82.96 £79.22
90th Percentile £91.10 £87.50 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.96% +7.69% -0.76%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend

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

DevOps job vacancy trend in the UK

DevOps
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DevOps

DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps over the 6 months to 21 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps in the UK

DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DevOps

DevOps
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps over the 6 months to 21 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in the UK

DevOps
Top 18 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 within the UK over the 6 months to 21 April 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 +3 4,241 £525 -4.55% 1,441
UK excluding London +9 2,171 £500 -2.44% 1,093
London 0 2,166 £538 -6.43% 548
Work from Home -5 1,330 £523 -2.06% 758
North of England +6 743 £500 -4.76% 330
South East -1 447 £513 -6.82% 279
Yorkshire +1 404 £500 -4.76% 82
Midlands +3 394 £492 -1.60% 135
West Midlands +5 303 £500 -3.47% 72
South West +12 295 £500 -12.28% 151
North West +5 282 £500 -3.26% 182
Scotland +1 170 £475 +1.33% 61
East of England +22 122 £525 +1.94% 87
East Midlands +1 88 £463 -2.63% 63
North East +7 64 £475 -9.52% 67
Wales +10 36 £425 +47.70% 32
Northern Ireland -3 11 £475 +13.77% 37
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

DevOps
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
1 294 (5.95%) Confluence
2 128 (2.59%) Apache Spark
3 113 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 91 (1.84%) Apache
5 80 (1.62%) SAS
6 72 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.77%) nginx
8 37 (0.75%) CMS
9 32 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
10 27 (0.55%) OpenStack
11 22 (0.45%) IIS
12 15 (0.30%) Mendix
13 11 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
14 10 (0.20%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.18%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.16%) Camunda
17 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 77 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 54 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
5 25 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.10%) Trello
7 5 (0.10%) Weka
8 3 (0.061%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 76 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 5 (0.10%) Endur
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.081%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.061%) Findur
9 3 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.061%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.061%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.061%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.061%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 3 (0.061%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,680 (54.22%) Azure
2 1,682 (34.03%) AWS
3 1,487 (30.08%) Azure DevOps
4 871 (17.62%) GitHub
5 633 (12.81%) GCP
6 533 (10.78%) Serverless
7 499 (10.10%) GitHub Actions
8 413 (8.36%) Power Platform
9 285 (5.77%) AWS CloudFormation
10 272 (5.50%) Amazon S3
11 266 (5.38%) AWS Lambda
12 235 (4.75%) Entra ID
13 233 (4.71%) Azure AKS
13 233 (4.71%) Azure Data Factory
14 206 (4.17%) Amazon EKS
15 179 (3.62%) OpenShift
16 177 (3.58%) Azure Monitor
17 165 (3.34%) PaaS
18 155 (3.14%) Dynamics 365
19 152 (3.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.23%) Firewall
2 111 (2.25%) DNS
3 98 (1.98%) Network Security
4 87 (1.76%) VPN
5 41 (0.83%) TCP/IP
6 30 (0.61%) HTTP
7 25 (0.51%) WAN
8 24 (0.49%) SSL
9 23 (0.47%) DHCP
9 23 (0.47%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.42%) SAN
11 20 (0.40%) BGP
12 18 (0.36%) IPsec
13 17 (0.34%) MPLS
14 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
15 12 (0.24%) Internet
15 12 (0.24%) LAN
15 12 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 11 (0.22%) 5G
16 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (5.32%) Power BI
2 261 (5.28%) PostgreSQL
3 241 (4.88%) SQL Server
4 187 (3.78%) NoSQL
5 169 (3.42%) Data Lake
6 145 (2.93%) Relational Database
7 134 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 118 (2.39%) Azure SQL Database
9 116 (2.35%) MongoDB
10 106 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
11 100 (2.02%) DynamoDB
12 95 (1.92%) Metadata
13 85 (1.72%) Delta Lake
14 73 (1.48%) Big Data
15 71 (1.44%) Elasticsearch
16 70 (1.42%) Oracle Database
17 62 (1.25%) Amazon Athena
18 55 (1.11%) MySQL
18 55 (1.11%) Tableau
19 51 (1.03%) Redis
Development Applications
1 719 (14.55%) Jenkins
2 634 (12.83%) JIRA
3 624 (12.62%) Git
4 492 (9.95%) GitLab
5 113 (2.29%) Selenium
6 96 (1.94%) Postman
7 95 (1.92%) JUnit
8 80 (1.62%) SonarQube
9 76 (1.54%) Bitbucket
10 57 (1.15%) Cucumber
10 57 (1.15%) Maven
11 53 (1.07%) Cypress.io
11 53 (1.07%) REST Assured
12 52 (1.05%) Artifactory
13 48 (0.97%) JMeter
14 40 (0.81%) Mockito
15 37 (0.75%) Gatling
16 36 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
17 33 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
18 32 (0.65%) TestRail
General
1 1,302 (26.34%) Social Skills
2 899 (18.19%) Finance
3 636 (12.87%) Public Sector
4 400 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
5 331 (6.70%) Banking
6 161 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
7 70 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
8 67 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 60 (1.21%) Retail
10 57 (1.15%) Marketing
11 53 (1.07%) Legal
12 51 (1.03%) Financial Institution
13 49 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 48 (0.97%) Front Office
15 44 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 42 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 39 (0.79%) Telecoms
18 33 (0.67%) Military
19 26 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
20 24 (0.49%) Law
Job Titles
1 963 (19.48%) DevOps Engineer
2 764 (15.46%) Developer
3 688 (13.92%) Senior
4 554 (11.21%) Architect
5 413 (8.36%) Lead
6 333 (6.74%) Azure Engineer
7 292 (5.91%) Data Engineer
8 282 (5.71%) Analyst
9 245 (4.96%) AWS Engineer
10 193 (3.90%) AWS DevOps
11 177 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
12 176 (3.56%) Platform Engineer
13 174 (3.52%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 167 (3.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 159 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
16 153 (3.10%) Software Engineer
17 146 (2.95%) Senior DevOps
18 144 (2.91%) Business Analyst
19 138 (2.79%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 136 (2.75%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (9.49%) REST
2 438 (8.86%) .NET
3 300 (6.07%) Node.js
4 296 (5.99%) React
5 281 (5.68%) Kafka
6 275 (5.56%) Spring
7 261 (5.28%) RESTful
8 258 (5.22%) Spring Boot
9 176 (3.56%) AngularJS
10 153 (3.10%) OAuth
11 152 (3.08%) Playwright
12 148 (2.99%) JSON
13 146 (2.95%) PySpark
14 140 (2.83%) YAML
15 121 (2.45%) HTML
16 110 (2.23%) Middleware
17 109 (2.21%) SOAP
18 102 (2.06%) CSS
19 100 (2.02%) .NET Core
20 96 (1.94%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 753 (15.23%) Cloud Native
2 316 (6.39%) Product Ownership
3 178 (3.60%) Distributed Systems
4 125 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 112 (2.27%) Public Cloud
6 104 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
7 100 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
8 91 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
9 73 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.25%) Virtual Team
11 56 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 52 (1.05%) Data Centre
13 50 (1.01%) Private Cloud
14 48 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
15 46 (0.93%) NHS
16 41 (0.83%) Data Structures
16 41 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
17 40 (0.81%) AI Agents
18 38 (0.77%) Security Posture
19 37 (0.75%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 446 (9.02%) Linux
2 250 (5.06%) Windows
3 84 (1.70%) Unix
4 77 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (0.89%) VMS
5 44 (0.89%) Windows Server
6 23 (0.47%) Ubuntu
7 12 (0.24%) Android
7 12 (0.24%) CentOS
8 11 (0.22%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.12%) Solaris
13 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.081%) Amazon Linux
14 4 (0.081%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.081%) Windows Server 2008
15 3 (0.061%) Debian
15 3 (0.061%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,781 (56.26%) CI/CD
2 1,876 (37.95%) Agile
3 1,238 (25.05%) Infrastructure as Code
4 830 (16.79%) Containerisation
5 821 (16.61%) Problem-Solving
6 735 (14.87%) Microservices
7 699 (14.14%) Test Automation
8 662 (13.39%) Continuous Improvement
9 603 (12.20%) Migration
10 601 (12.16%) Analytics
11 550 (11.13%) Observability
12 545 (11.03%) Scrum
13 516 (10.44%) AI
14 513 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
15 459 (9.29%) Data Modelling
16 454 (9.18%) Software Engineering
17 404 (8.17%) Platform Engineering
18 395 (7.99%) Mentoring
19 376 (7.61%) Data Pipeline
20 370 (7.49%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,402 (28.36%) Python
2 1,029 (20.82%) SQL
3 644 (13.03%) Java
4 505 (10.22%) C#
5 409 (8.27%) JavaScript
6 350 (7.08%) PowerShell
7 325 (6.57%) Bash
8 287 (5.81%) TypeScript
9 168 (3.40%) Bicep
10 110 (2.23%) Go
11 87 (1.76%) PL/SQL
12 76 (1.54%) Scala
13 60 (1.21%) Shell Script
14 44 (0.89%) T-SQL
15 42 (0.85%) Groovy
16 39 (0.79%) C++
17 37 (0.75%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.73%) Ruby
19 29 (0.59%) Perl
20 22 (0.45%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,553 (31.42%) Security Cleared
2 1,294 (26.18%) SC Cleared
3 341 (6.90%) Degree
4 212 (4.29%) Azure Certification
5 157 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 145 (2.93%) DV Cleared
8 140 (2.83%) AWS Certification
9 78 (1.58%) CISSP
10 58 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 57 (1.15%) CISM
12 56 (1.13%) ISTQB
12 56 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 50 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.85%) PMP
16 37 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
17 31 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 25 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
19 23 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (8.72%) QA
2 229 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 180 (3.64%) GDPR
4 139 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 125 (2.53%) Accessibility
6 124 (2.51%) NIST
7 65 (1.31%) NCSC
8 42 (0.85%) WCAG
9 40 (0.81%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.71%) PMO
11 31 (0.63%) SLA
12 29 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.38%) HIPAA
14 16 (0.32%) GRC
15 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 14 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.24%) PSD2
18 10 (0.20%) HL7
18 10 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,017 (20.57%) Docker
2 179 (3.62%) Active Directory
3 76 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (0.73%) vSphere
6 31 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 13 (0.26%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) Postfix
11 11 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) HDFS
12 8 (0.16%) Lustre
12 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.12%) Ceph
13 6 (0.12%) GPFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.10%) Corosync
14 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,407 (28.46%) Terraform
2 1,311 (26.52%) Kubernetes
3 466 (9.43%) Ansible
4 321 (6.49%) Grafana
5 265 (5.36%) Prometheus
6 103 (2.08%) Argo
7 71 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
8 67 (1.36%) Puppet
9 64 (1.29%) Istio
10 31 (0.63%) Packer
11 27 (0.55%) vCenter Server
12 26 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
12 26 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 22 (0.45%) Kibana
14 21 (0.42%) HP ALM
15 20 (0.40%) Rancher
16 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 18 (0.36%) FortiGate
18 16 (0.32%) Consul
19 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 875 (17.70%) Microsoft
2 317 (6.41%) Oracle
3 289 (5.85%) Databricks
4 234 (4.73%) Google
5 189 (3.82%) Splunk
6 176 (3.56%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.91%) Salesforce
8 141 (2.85%) Red Hat
9 128 (2.59%) VMware
10 111 (2.25%) SAP
11 83 (1.68%) OpenAI
12 77 (1.56%) Dynatrace
13 64 (1.29%) Atlassian
14 57 (1.15%) CyberArk
15 47 (0.95%) IBM
16 45 (0.91%) Cisco
17 36 (0.73%) Foundry
17 36 (0.73%) Talend
18 34 (0.69%) Informatica
19 33 (0.67%) AppDynamics