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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,990 3,071 3,939
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.70% 10.40% 9.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.63% 11.46% 10.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,497 2,258 2,710
10th Percentile £381 £392 £400
25th Percentile £431 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.28% -2.18% -5.98%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £703 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £512 £530
% change year-on-year -2.34% -3.40% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 21 102
10th Percentile £39.53 £35.00 £56.03
25th Percentile £45.46 £56.25 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £76.75 £82.96 £77.50
90th Percentile £89.70 £87.50 £87.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -7.30% +5.77% -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 39,506 26,799 37,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.79% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,946 17,322 24,335
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £487 £500
% change year-on-year -0.36% -2.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,068 2,432
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £28.00 £35.58
% change year-on-year +49.48% -21.29% -4.62%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 4,278 £525 -4.55% 1,178
UK excluding London +9 2,203 £500 -2.34% 922
London +3 2,179 £539 -6.26% 430
Work from Home -3 1,336 £520 -2.53% 1,033
North of England +5 748 £500 -3.82% 262
South East -1 455 £505 -8.18% 283
Yorkshire 0 408 £500 -3.80% 62
Midlands +4 393 £489 -2.25% 122
South West +13 300 £500 -9.09% 114
West Midlands +6 299 £500 -4.58% 68
North West +4 281 £500 -3.26% 144
Scotland +3 176 £475 - 35
East of England +17 128 £525 +1.94% 75
East Midlands 0 91 £465 -2.11% 53
North East +5 66 £475 -9.52% 56
Wales +8 37 £425 +39.13% 24
Northern Ireland -2 11 £475 +13.77% 24
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
1 292 (5.85%) Confluence
2 130 (2.61%) Apache Spark
3 113 (2.26%) SharePoint
4 88 (1.76%) Apache
5 79 (1.58%) SAS
6 74 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.76%) nginx
8 36 (0.72%) CMS
9 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
10 28 (0.56%) OpenStack
11 22 (0.44%) 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%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Camunda
15 8 (0.16%) WebLogic
16 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 78 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
3 52 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.10%) Trello
7 5 (0.10%) Weka
8 3 (0.060%) 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 75 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.080%) Endur
8 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.060%) Findur
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 2 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,725 (54.61%) Azure
2 1,707 (34.21%) AWS
3 1,503 (30.12%) Azure DevOps
4 869 (17.41%) GitHub
5 650 (13.03%) GCP
6 531 (10.64%) Serverless
7 505 (10.12%) GitHub Actions
8 419 (8.40%) Power Platform
9 291 (5.83%) AWS CloudFormation
10 272 (5.45%) Amazon S3
11 262 (5.25%) AWS Lambda
12 238 (4.77%) Azure AKS
13 230 (4.61%) Entra ID
14 228 (4.57%) Azure Data Factory
15 203 (4.07%) Amazon EKS
16 183 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
17 179 (3.59%) OpenShift
18 167 (3.35%) PaaS
19 157 (3.15%) Dynamics 365
20 152 (3.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.19%) Firewall
2 113 (2.26%) DNS
3 95 (1.90%) Network Security
4 89 (1.78%) VPN
5 41 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 32 (0.64%) HTTP
7 26 (0.52%) WAN
8 25 (0.50%) SSL
9 23 (0.46%) DHCP
9 23 (0.46%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.42%) SAN
11 18 (0.36%) BGP
11 18 (0.36%) IPsec
12 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
13 15 (0.30%) MPLS
14 13 (0.26%) LAN
15 12 (0.24%) Internet
15 12 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
17 10 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (5.39%) Power BI
2 251 (5.03%) PostgreSQL
3 244 (4.89%) SQL Server
4 185 (3.71%) NoSQL
5 171 (3.43%) Data Lake
6 148 (2.97%) Relational Database
7 136 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
8 117 (2.34%) Azure SQL Database
9 112 (2.24%) MongoDB
10 106 (2.12%) Amazon RDS
11 101 (2.02%) DynamoDB
12 92 (1.84%) Metadata
13 88 (1.76%) Delta Lake
14 76 (1.52%) Big Data
15 71 (1.42%) Oracle Database
16 69 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
17 61 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
18 54 (1.08%) Tableau
19 53 (1.06%) MySQL
20 49 (0.98%) Redis
Development Applications
1 724 (14.51%) Jenkins
2 634 (12.71%) JIRA
3 628 (12.59%) Git
4 495 (9.92%) GitLab
5 110 (2.20%) Selenium
6 96 (1.92%) Postman
7 91 (1.82%) JUnit
8 82 (1.64%) SonarQube
9 80 (1.60%) Bitbucket
10 58 (1.16%) Cucumber
11 57 (1.14%) Maven
12 52 (1.04%) Artifactory
12 52 (1.04%) Cypress.io
12 52 (1.04%) REST Assured
13 49 (0.98%) JMeter
14 38 (0.76%) Mockito
15 37 (0.74%) Gatling
15 37 (0.74%) Sonatype Nexus
16 33 (0.66%) TestRail
17 29 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,311 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 908 (18.20%) Finance
3 641 (12.85%) Public Sector
4 404 (8.10%) Analytical Skills
5 335 (6.71%) Banking
6 156 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 71 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 65 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
9 62 (1.24%) Retail
10 56 (1.12%) Legal
11 55 (1.10%) Marketing
12 52 (1.04%) Financial Institution
13 48 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 46 (0.92%) Front Office
15 44 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
16 42 (0.84%) Investment Banking
17 40 (0.80%) Telecoms
18 32 (0.64%) Military
19 25 (0.50%) Law
20 24 (0.48%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 987 (19.78%) DevOps Engineer
2 760 (15.23%) Developer
3 688 (13.79%) Senior
4 563 (11.28%) Architect
5 417 (8.36%) Lead
6 337 (6.75%) Azure Engineer
7 297 (5.95%) Data Engineer
8 285 (5.71%) Analyst
9 249 (4.99%) AWS Engineer
10 193 (3.87%) AWS DevOps
11 180 (3.61%) Platform Engineer
12 179 (3.59%) Cloud Engineer
13 175 (3.51%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 169 (3.39%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 169 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
15 152 (3.05%) Senior DevOps
16 147 (2.95%) Software Engineer
17 143 (2.87%) Business Analyst
18 142 (2.85%) Senior DevOps Engineer
19 135 (2.71%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (9.40%) REST
2 450 (9.02%) .NET
3 296 (5.93%) Node.js
4 295 (5.91%) React
5 278 (5.57%) Spring
6 276 (5.53%) Kafka
7 263 (5.27%) Spring Boot
8 258 (5.17%) RESTful
9 181 (3.63%) AngularJS
10 154 (3.09%) Playwright
11 153 (3.07%) OAuth
12 144 (2.89%) JSON
12 144 (2.89%) PySpark
13 136 (2.73%) YAML
14 121 (2.42%) HTML
15 113 (2.26%) SOAP
16 111 (2.22%) Middleware
17 104 (2.08%) CSS
18 101 (2.02%) .NET Core
19 100 (2.00%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 774 (15.51%) Cloud Native
2 316 (6.33%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 113 (2.26%) Public Cloud
6 102 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
7 101 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
8 92 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
9 75 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.24%) Virtual Team
11 59 (1.18%) Management Information System
12 53 (1.06%) Data Centre
13 51 (1.02%) Private Cloud
14 48 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
15 46 (0.92%) NHS
16 40 (0.80%) AI Agents
16 40 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 40 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
17 39 (0.78%) Low-Code
18 38 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 446 (8.94%) Linux
2 249 (4.99%) Windows
3 85 (1.70%) Unix
4 78 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 45 (0.90%) Windows Server
6 43 (0.86%) VMS
7 23 (0.46%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.24%) Android
8 12 (0.24%) CentOS
9 11 (0.22%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.12%) Solaris
14 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.080%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.060%) Debian
16 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,809 (56.29%) CI/CD
2 1,882 (37.72%) Agile
3 1,258 (25.21%) Infrastructure as Code
4 839 (16.81%) Containerisation
5 812 (16.27%) Problem-Solving
6 734 (14.71%) Microservices
7 706 (14.15%) Test Automation
8 665 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 611 (12.24%) Migration
10 607 (12.16%) Analytics
11 568 (11.38%) Observability
12 546 (10.94%) Scrum
13 519 (10.40%) AI
13 519 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
14 462 (9.26%) Software Engineering
15 461 (9.24%) Data Modelling
16 421 (8.44%) Platform Engineering
17 393 (7.88%) Mentoring
18 381 (7.64%) Data Pipeline
19 377 (7.56%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,401 (28.08%) Python
2 1,023 (20.50%) SQL
3 645 (12.93%) Java
4 513 (10.28%) C#
5 407 (8.16%) JavaScript
6 346 (6.93%) PowerShell
7 332 (6.65%) Bash
8 286 (5.73%) TypeScript
9 173 (3.47%) Bicep
10 110 (2.20%) Go
11 84 (1.68%) PL/SQL
12 69 (1.38%) Scala
13 62 (1.24%) Shell Script
14 45 (0.90%) Groovy
15 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.80%) Apex Code
17 39 (0.78%) C++
18 34 (0.68%) Ruby
19 29 (0.58%) Perl
20 22 (0.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,578 (31.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,316 (26.37%) SC Cleared
3 340 (6.81%) Degree
4 209 (4.19%) Azure Certification
5 158 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 149 (2.99%) DV Cleared
8 144 (2.89%) AWS Certification
9 78 (1.56%) CISSP
10 58 (1.16%) Master's Degree
11 57 (1.14%) CISM
12 56 (1.12%) ISTQB
13 55 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
14 51 (1.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 48 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 43 (0.86%) PMP
17 37 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
18 31 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
20 24 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (8.90%) QA
2 230 (4.61%) Data Quality
3 185 (3.71%) GDPR
4 139 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 124 (2.48%) Accessibility
5 124 (2.48%) NIST
6 66 (1.32%) NCSC
7 44 (0.88%) WCAG
8 42 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 37 (0.74%) PMO
10 33 (0.66%) SLA
11 30 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 17 (0.34%) GRC
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 13 (0.26%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.24%) PSD2
17 10 (0.20%) SEPA
18 9 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 1,011 (20.26%) Docker
2 176 (3.53%) Active Directory
3 74 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (0.70%) vSphere
6 30 (0.60%) 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%) NFS
14 5 (0.10%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,424 (28.54%) Terraform
2 1,318 (26.41%) Kubernetes
3 479 (9.60%) Ansible
4 331 (6.63%) Grafana
5 272 (5.45%) Prometheus
6 100 (2.00%) Argo
7 72 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
8 67 (1.34%) Puppet
9 63 (1.26%) Istio
10 30 (0.60%) Packer
11 27 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 25 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
12 25 (0.50%) vCenter Server
13 22 (0.44%) Kibana
14 21 (0.42%) HP ALM
15 20 (0.40%) Rancher
16 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 18 (0.36%) Consul
18 15 (0.30%) FortiGate
19 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 885 (17.74%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.37%) Oracle
3 284 (5.69%) Databricks
4 233 (4.67%) Google
5 194 (3.89%) Splunk
6 176 (3.53%) ServiceNow
7 147 (2.95%) Salesforce
8 138 (2.77%) Red Hat
9 126 (2.53%) VMware
10 112 (2.24%) SAP
11 89 (1.78%) Dynatrace
12 80 (1.60%) OpenAI
13 62 (1.24%) Atlassian
14 57 (1.14%) CyberArk
15 47 (0.94%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) Cisco
17 36 (0.72%) Foundry
17 36 (0.72%) Informatica
18 34 (0.68%) AppDynamics
18 34 (0.68%) Talend