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 19 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,655 3,673 3,817
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.31% 11.15% 9.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.20% 12.31% 11.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,936 2,557 2,556
10th Percentile £381 £363 £381
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 24 71
10th Percentile £37.55 £45.13 £57.50
25th Percentile £56.25 £52.88 £65.00
Median hourly rate £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.61% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.81 £74.44
90th Percentile £91.15 £95.00 £85.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +7.69%

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 46,340 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.48% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,136 18,534 20,247
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,159 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +1.18%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 -1 4,803 £525 - 4,555
London 0 2,541 £550 - 2,395
UK excluding London -4 2,416 £500 - 2,427
Work from Home 0 1,602 £525 +2.44% 2,084
North of England -2 777 £500 +5.26% 734
South East -10 454 £535 +7.00% 565
Midlands -5 439 £488 -2.74% 290
Yorkshire -2 389 £500 +3.09% 192
West Midlands -6 345 £500 -4.58% 173
South West +6 323 £550 +4.76% 300
North West -5 294 £525 +13.51% 421
Scotland -2 227 £475 -4.62% 198
East of England +10 154 £504 -4.00% 210
North East +12 109 £450 -13.46% 124
East Midlands +1 91 £464 +3.06% 117
Wales -6 48 £425 +13.33% 64
Northern Ireland +20 23 £450 -4.26% 75
Channel Islands - 5 £450 - 1

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
1 336 (5.94%) Confluence
2 162 (2.86%) SharePoint
3 132 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
4 129 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 114 (2.02%) Apache
6 61 (1.08%) SAS
7 44 (0.78%) CMS
8 42 (0.74%) Jupyter
9 29 (0.51%) nginx
10 26 (0.46%) IIS
11 20 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.27%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
14 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.18%) WebSphere
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 70 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
3 50 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 34 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 6 (0.11%) Trello
9 6 (0.11%) Windchill
10 5 (0.088%) Notion
11 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.035%) Mingle
12 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
12 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 1 (0.018%) Sketch
12 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 83 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.18%) Magento
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.11%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
9 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.088%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.088%) Oracle BPM
11 4 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
12 3 (0.053%) Endur
12 3 (0.053%) Infor LN
12 3 (0.053%) Maximo
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.053%) SAP ERP
12 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3,072 (54.32%) Azure
2 2,042 (36.11%) AWS
3 1,759 (31.11%) Azure DevOps
4 978 (17.29%) GitHub
5 745 (13.17%) GCP
6 620 (10.96%) GitHub Actions
7 491 (8.68%) Power Platform
8 469 (8.29%) Serverless
9 312 (5.52%) Amazon S3
10 293 (5.18%) AWS Lambda
11 258 (4.56%) Entra ID
12 251 (4.44%) Amazon EKS
13 246 (4.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 236 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
15 217 (3.84%) Azure AKS
16 208 (3.68%) Azure Monitor
17 201 (3.55%) Amazon EC2
18 194 (3.43%) Azure Data Factory
19 189 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
20 166 (2.94%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 245 (4.33%) Firewall
2 174 (3.08%) DNS
3 122 (2.16%) VPN
4 115 (2.03%) Network Security
5 72 (1.27%) TCP/IP
6 58 (1.03%) SSL
7 51 (0.90%) DHCP
8 47 (0.83%) WAN
9 37 (0.65%) HTTP
10 34 (0.60%) BGP
11 30 (0.53%) SD-WAN
12 29 (0.51%) SSH
13 28 (0.50%) Internet
14 25 (0.44%) OSPF
15 24 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.35%) VLAN
17 18 (0.32%) HTTPS
17 18 (0.32%) LAN
17 18 (0.32%) SAN
18 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 320 (5.66%) Power BI
2 304 (5.38%) PostgreSQL
3 297 (5.25%) SQL Server
4 214 (3.78%) Data Warehouse
5 186 (3.29%) MongoDB
6 184 (3.25%) NoSQL
7 177 (3.13%) Data Lake
8 171 (3.02%) Relational Database
9 150 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
10 132 (2.33%) Metadata
11 97 (1.72%) Azure SQL Database
11 97 (1.72%) DynamoDB
12 90 (1.59%) Oracle Database
13 89 (1.57%) Delta Lake
14 88 (1.56%) MySQL
15 83 (1.47%) Redis
16 69 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (1.15%) Big Data
18 62 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 58 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 846 (14.96%) Git
2 813 (14.38%) Jenkins
3 672 (11.88%) JIRA
4 652 (11.53%) GitLab
5 145 (2.56%) Selenium
6 103 (1.82%) SonarQube
7 98 (1.73%) Maven
8 97 (1.72%) JUnit
8 97 (1.72%) Postman
9 73 (1.29%) Bitbucket
10 72 (1.27%) Cucumber
11 71 (1.26%) Cypress.io
11 71 (1.26%) REST Assured
12 68 (1.20%) Gradle
13 64 (1.13%) JMeter
14 52 (0.92%) Claude Code
15 48 (0.85%) Mockito
16 45 (0.80%) Gatling
17 41 (0.73%) Visual Studio
18 40 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,474 (26.07%) Social Skills
2 1,001 (17.70%) Finance
3 803 (14.20%) Public Sector
4 527 (9.32%) Analytical Skills
5 393 (6.95%) Banking
6 175 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 107 (1.89%) Retail
8 86 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
9 84 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
11 62 (1.10%) Legal
12 55 (0.97%) Aerospace
12 55 (0.97%) Marketing
12 55 (0.97%) Military
13 52 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 51 (0.90%) Investment Banking
15 46 (0.81%) Law
16 43 (0.76%) Manufacturing
17 41 (0.73%) Front Office
18 37 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,150 (20.34%) DevOps Engineer
2 918 (16.23%) Developer
3 862 (15.24%) Senior
4 647 (11.44%) Architect
5 535 (9.46%) Lead
6 351 (6.21%) Azure Engineer
7 311 (5.50%) Data Engineer
8 267 (4.72%) Analyst
9 266 (4.70%) AWS Engineer
10 233 (4.12%) Platform Engineer
11 211 (3.73%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 210 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
13 203 (3.59%) Senior DevOps
14 199 (3.52%) Java Developer
15 188 (3.32%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 184 (3.25%) AWS DevOps
17 180 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
18 173 (3.06%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 157 (2.78%) Senior Developer
20 146 (2.58%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,686 (29.81%) Terraform
2 627 (11.09%) REST
3 476 (8.42%) .NET
4 390 (6.90%) Kafka
5 361 (6.38%) RESTful
6 311 (5.50%) Spring
7 306 (5.41%) Spring Boot
8 288 (5.09%) React
9 202 (3.57%) Node.js
10 185 (3.27%) OAuth
11 184 (3.25%) JSON
12 162 (2.86%) Playwright
13 160 (2.83%) PySpark
14 145 (2.56%) HTML
15 133 (2.35%) CSS
16 132 (2.33%) OAuth2
17 130 (2.30%) SOAP
18 125 (2.21%) .NET Framework
19 122 (2.16%) Middleware
20 120 (2.12%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,034 (18.28%) Cloud Native
2 429 (7.59%) Product Ownership
3 266 (4.70%) Distributed Systems
4 207 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 204 (3.61%) Onboarding
6 150 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 143 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
8 105 (1.86%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 85 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
11 80 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
12 78 (1.38%) Public Cloud
13 77 (1.36%) Replication
14 75 (1.33%) Data Structures
15 73 (1.29%) Security Posture
16 71 (1.26%) Data Centre
17 64 (1.13%) Virtual Team
18 59 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
19 58 (1.03%) PKI
20 54 (0.95%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 563 (9.96%) Linux
2 321 (5.68%) Windows
3 120 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 111 (1.96%) Unix
5 95 (1.68%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.60%) VMS
8 32 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 22 (0.39%) Android
10 14 (0.25%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.12%) AIX
16 5 (0.088%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
17 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,447 (60.95%) CI/CD
2 2,312 (40.88%) Agile
3 1,675 (29.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 966 (17.08%) Continuous Improvement
5 954 (16.87%) Containerisation
6 939 (16.60%) Stakeholder Management
7 904 (15.99%) Test Automation
8 902 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
9 867 (15.33%) AI
10 838 (14.82%) Microservices
11 787 (13.92%) Observability
12 772 (13.65%) Platform Engineering
13 745 (13.17%) Software Engineering
14 691 (12.22%) Scrum
15 679 (12.01%) Migration
16 618 (10.93%) Technical Leadership
17 588 (10.40%) Analytics
18 534 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 493 (8.72%) Roadmaps
20 491 (8.68%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,636 (28.93%) Python
2 995 (17.60%) SQL
3 834 (14.75%) Java
4 498 (8.81%) Bash
4 498 (8.81%) C#
5 494 (8.74%) PowerShell
6 465 (8.22%) JavaScript
7 314 (5.55%) TypeScript
8 256 (4.53%) Bicep
9 119 (2.10%) Go
10 80 (1.41%) Shell Script
11 68 (1.20%) Scala
12 67 (1.18%) T-SQL
13 65 (1.15%) Apex Code
13 65 (1.15%) Groovy
14 62 (1.10%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 35 (0.62%) Perl
17 31 (0.55%) C++
18 26 (0.46%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,823 (32.24%) Security Cleared
2 1,528 (27.02%) SC Cleared
3 360 (6.37%) Degree
4 252 (4.46%) Azure Certification
5 241 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 234 (4.14%) DV Cleared
7 191 (3.38%) AWS Certification
8 145 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 79 (1.40%) CISSP
11 61 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 52 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 45 (0.80%) PMP
15 43 (0.76%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.73%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.55%) CISM
18 25 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
19 24 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 24 (0.42%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 548 (9.69%) QA
2 292 (5.16%) Data Quality
3 212 (3.75%) Accessibility
4 131 (2.32%) GDPR
5 88 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 86 (1.52%) WCAG
7 76 (1.34%) NIST
8 55 (0.97%) NCSC
9 48 (0.85%) PMO
10 37 (0.65%) SLA
11 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.50%) GRC
13 24 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 22 (0.39%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 14 (0.25%) SEPA
17 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
18 11 (0.19%) SOC 2
19 10 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,172 (20.73%) Docker
2 167 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 87 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.51%) vSphere
6 26 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 24 (0.42%) Hyper-V
8 20 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 14 (0.25%) Squid
11 11 (0.19%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) Postfix
14 7 (0.12%) zsh
15 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 6 (0.11%) Corosync
15 6 (0.11%) KVM
15 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,556 (27.52%) Kubernetes
2 543 (9.60%) Ansible
3 377 (6.67%) Grafana
4 322 (5.69%) Prometheus
5 75 (1.33%) Argo
6 63 (1.11%) Puppet
7 52 (0.92%) Progress Chef
7 52 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 46 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
9 37 (0.65%) Packer
10 31 (0.55%) Kibana
11 30 (0.53%) Istio
12 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
13 20 (0.35%) Kubeflow
14 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.30%) SCCM
16 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 14 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,113 (19.68%) Microsoft
2 312 (5.52%) Oracle
3 309 (5.46%) Databricks
4 288 (5.09%) Google
5 216 (3.82%) ServiceNow
6 190 (3.36%) Splunk
7 182 (3.22%) Salesforce
8 147 (2.60%) Dynatrace
9 132 (2.33%) VMware
10 112 (1.98%) SAP
11 103 (1.82%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.29%) OpenAI
13 70 (1.24%) IBM
14 65 (1.15%) MuleSoft
15 56 (0.99%) Foundry
16 52 (0.92%) Informatica
17 49 (0.87%) Cisco
18 42 (0.74%) AppDynamics
19 40 (0.71%) Atlassian
19 40 (0.71%) Okta