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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 -3
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,667 3,570 3,817
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.58% 10.86% 9.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.49% 12.00% 11.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,929 2,533 2,618
10th Percentile £385 £363 £382
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £724 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 27 83
10th Percentile £37.24 £33.10 £56.25
25th Percentile £56.25 £51.88 £63.30
Median hourly rate £68.22 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.81% -4.29% +6.87%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.50 £74.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £95.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.70 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +1.04% -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 45,374 29,740 33,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.47% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,514 21,188
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,851 1,725 1,782
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £18.17
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% +0.86%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +19.72%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 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
England +2 4,862 £525 - 1,126
London 0 2,535 £550 - 406
UK excluding London +1 2,457 £500 - 940
Work from Home +1 1,636 £525 +2.39% 651
North of England 0 823 £500 +4.17% 251
South East -10 479 £525 +5.00% 295
Midlands -1 464 £488 -2.50% 120
Yorkshire 0 405 £500 +1.46% 65
West Midlands +1 377 £490 -4.85% 77
North West -4 323 £525 +11.11% 136
South West +8 317 £525 +0.96% 136
Scotland -1 190 £500 +3.20% 43
East of England +11 139 £505 +1.00% 53
North East +15 112 £425 -19.05% 53
East Midlands +2 83 £488 +6.85% 42
Wales -6 49 £525 +40.00% 25
Northern Ireland +20 23 £475 +7.95% 28
Channel Islands - 5 £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
1 332 (5.86%) Confluence
2 142 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 129 (2.28%) Apache Spark
4 122 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
5 111 (1.96%) Apache
6 86 (1.52%) SAS
7 42 (0.74%) CMS
8 38 (0.67%) IIS
8 38 (0.67%) Jupyter
9 24 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
10 23 (0.41%) nginx
11 14 (0.25%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) Anypoint
12 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
13 12 (0.21%) OpenStack
14 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
14 11 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.16%) Appian
16 8 (0.14%) Tomcat
16 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 62 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
2 61 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
5 30 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.16%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
9 7 (0.12%) Trello
10 5 (0.088%) Notion
11 3 (0.053%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
12 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.018%) InDesign
12 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 69 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 37 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
3 11 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 11 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
5 9 (0.16%) Magento
6 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.088%) Maximo
9 5 (0.088%) OpenText MBPM
9 5 (0.088%) Oracle BPM
10 4 (0.071%) Endur
10 4 (0.071%) SAP ERP
11 3 (0.053%) Findur
11 3 (0.053%) SAP BPC
11 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
11 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,093 (54.58%) Azure
2 2,015 (35.56%) AWS
3 1,777 (31.36%) Azure DevOps
4 974 (17.19%) GitHub
5 724 (12.78%) GCP
6 608 (10.73%) GitHub Actions
7 473 (8.35%) Power Platform
8 445 (7.85%) Serverless
9 291 (5.13%) Amazon S3
10 266 (4.69%) Entra ID
11 265 (4.68%) AWS Lambda
12 248 (4.38%) AWS CloudFormation
13 234 (4.13%) Amazon EKS
14 219 (3.86%) Azure AKS
15 214 (3.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 202 (3.56%) Azure Data Factory
17 201 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
18 176 (3.11%) Amazon EC2
19 166 (2.93%) Dynamics 365
20 159 (2.81%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 250 (4.41%) Firewall
2 162 (2.86%) DNS
3 124 (2.19%) VPN
4 111 (1.96%) Network Security
5 62 (1.09%) TCP/IP
6 52 (0.92%) WAN
7 45 (0.79%) SSL
8 43 (0.76%) DHCP
9 38 (0.67%) SD-WAN
10 33 (0.58%) BGP
10 33 (0.58%) HTTP
11 32 (0.56%) Internet
12 29 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
13 26 (0.46%) OSPF
14 22 (0.39%) SAN
14 22 (0.39%) SSH
14 22 (0.39%) VLAN
15 18 (0.32%) LAN
15 18 (0.32%) VXLAN
16 17 (0.30%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (5.58%) Power BI
2 295 (5.21%) SQL Server
3 294 (5.19%) PostgreSQL
4 200 (3.53%) Data Warehouse
5 194 (3.42%) NoSQL
6 182 (3.21%) Relational Database
7 177 (3.12%) MongoDB
8 162 (2.86%) Data Lake
9 123 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
10 118 (2.08%) Metadata
11 112 (1.98%) Azure SQL Database
12 93 (1.64%) DynamoDB
13 85 (1.50%) Delta Lake
14 80 (1.41%) Oracle Database
15 72 (1.27%) Redis
16 68 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
17 67 (1.18%) MySQL
18 65 (1.15%) Big Data
19 56 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 54 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 826 (14.58%) Jenkins
2 797 (14.06%) Git
3 687 (12.12%) JIRA
4 606 (10.69%) GitLab
5 137 (2.42%) Selenium
6 101 (1.78%) SonarQube
7 100 (1.76%) Postman
8 94 (1.66%) JUnit
9 87 (1.54%) Maven
10 85 (1.50%) Bitbucket
11 68 (1.20%) Cypress.io
11 68 (1.20%) JMeter
12 66 (1.16%) REST Assured
13 58 (1.02%) Gradle
14 57 (1.01%) Cucumber
15 50 (0.88%) Gatling
16 44 (0.78%) LoadRunner
16 44 (0.78%) Mockito
17 42 (0.74%) Claude Code
18 40 (0.71%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,448 (25.55%) Social Skills
2 1,019 (17.98%) Finance
3 828 (14.61%) Public Sector
4 503 (8.88%) Analytical Skills
5 376 (6.63%) Banking
6 155 (2.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 106 (1.87%) Retail
8 100 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
9 69 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
10 67 (1.18%) Legal
11 66 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
12 53 (0.94%) Investment Banking
12 53 (0.94%) Marketing
13 49 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 47 (0.83%) Telecoms
15 46 (0.81%) Military
16 45 (0.79%) Front Office
16 45 (0.79%) Law
17 43 (0.76%) Financial Institution
18 42 (0.74%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,089 (19.22%) DevOps Engineer
2 939 (16.57%) Developer
3 831 (14.66%) Senior
4 621 (10.96%) Architect
5 548 (9.67%) Lead
6 349 (6.16%) Azure Engineer
7 324 (5.72%) Data Engineer
8 284 (5.01%) Analyst
9 267 (4.71%) AWS Engineer
10 231 (4.08%) Platform Engineer
11 211 (3.72%) Cloud Engineer
12 201 (3.55%) Senior DevOps
13 194 (3.42%) Java Developer
14 187 (3.30%) AWS DevOps
14 187 (3.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 185 (3.26%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 176 (3.11%) Solutions Architect
17 174 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 158 (2.79%) Senior Developer
19 149 (2.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 596 (10.52%) REST
2 488 (8.61%) .NET
3 354 (6.25%) Kafka
4 341 (6.02%) RESTful
5 304 (5.36%) Spring
6 289 (5.10%) React
7 286 (5.05%) Spring Boot
8 216 (3.81%) Node.js
9 183 (3.23%) JSON
10 166 (2.93%) OAuth
10 166 (2.93%) Playwright
11 162 (2.86%) PySpark
12 148 (2.61%) AngularJS
13 137 (2.42%) SOAP
14 135 (2.38%) .NET Framework
14 135 (2.38%) HTML
15 121 (2.14%) OAuth2
16 116 (2.05%) YAML
17 113 (1.99%) CSS
18 108 (1.91%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,027 (18.12%) Cloud Native
2 403 (7.11%) Product Ownership
3 268 (4.73%) Distributed Systems
4 182 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
5 177 (3.12%) Onboarding
6 156 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
8 93 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
9 81 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
10 78 (1.38%) AI Agents
10 78 (1.38%) Management Information System
11 77 (1.36%) Public Cloud
12 71 (1.25%) Data Structures
12 71 (1.25%) Security Posture
13 68 (1.20%) Data Centre
14 64 (1.13%) Enterprise Cloud
14 64 (1.13%) Replication
15 54 (0.95%) Virtual Team
16 52 (0.92%) Mobile App
17 48 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 520 (9.18%) Linux
2 316 (5.58%) Windows
3 114 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 98 (1.73%) Unix
5 87 (1.54%) Windows Server
6 34 (0.60%) VMS
7 30 (0.53%) Apple iOS
7 30 (0.53%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.32%) Android
9 10 (0.18%) Solaris
10 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.16%) zOS
11 8 (0.14%) AIX
11 8 (0.14%) CentOS
12 7 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
12 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
14 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
14 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,356 (59.22%) CI/CD
2 2,298 (40.55%) Agile
3 1,582 (27.92%) Infrastructure as Code
4 936 (16.52%) Containerisation
5 930 (16.41%) Continuous Improvement
6 888 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
6 888 (15.67%) Test Automation
7 827 (14.59%) Stakeholder Management
8 826 (14.58%) Microservices
9 784 (13.83%) AI
10 718 (12.67%) Observability
11 700 (12.35%) Platform Engineering
12 692 (12.21%) Scrum
13 683 (12.05%) Migration
13 683 (12.05%) Software Engineering
14 608 (10.73%) Analytics
15 561 (9.90%) Technical Leadership
16 539 (9.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 500 (8.82%) Data Modelling
18 466 (8.22%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,606 (28.34%) Python
2 1,051 (18.55%) SQL
3 808 (14.26%) Java
4 506 (8.93%) C#
5 476 (8.40%) PowerShell
6 470 (8.29%) Bash
7 462 (8.15%) JavaScript
8 311 (5.49%) TypeScript
9 233 (4.11%) Bicep
10 95 (1.68%) Go
11 74 (1.31%) Shell Script
12 71 (1.25%) Apex Code
13 70 (1.24%) T-SQL
14 66 (1.16%) PL/SQL
15 62 (1.09%) Scala
16 58 (1.02%) Groovy
17 32 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.55%) C++
19 29 (0.51%) Perl
20 23 (0.41%) C
Qualifications
1 1,827 (32.24%) Security Cleared
2 1,548 (27.32%) SC Cleared
3 329 (5.81%) Degree
4 224 (3.95%) Azure Certification
4 224 (3.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 195 (3.44%) DV Cleared
6 188 (3.32%) AWS Certification
7 123 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 88 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 80 (1.41%) CISSP
10 67 (1.18%) ISTQB
11 56 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 55 (0.97%) Cisco Certification
13 46 (0.81%) PMP
14 44 (0.78%) PMI Certification
15 36 (0.64%) Master's Degree
16 33 (0.58%) CISM
17 29 (0.51%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 26 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.41%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 528 (9.32%) QA
2 284 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 202 (3.56%) Accessibility
4 146 (2.58%) GDPR
5 102 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.41%) NIST
7 79 (1.39%) WCAG
8 56 (0.99%) NCSC
9 48 (0.85%) PMO
10 40 (0.71%) SLA
11 38 (0.67%) PCI DSS
12 31 (0.55%) GRC
13 29 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
15 12 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
15 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
17 9 (0.16%) SEPA
17 9 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,126 (19.87%) Docker
2 182 (3.21%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.44%) Hyper-V
6 24 (0.42%) vSphere
7 17 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
7 17 (0.30%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 13 (0.23%) Squid
9 11 (0.19%) Postfix
10 9 (0.16%) IAG
11 8 (0.14%) KVM
12 7 (0.12%) zsh
13 6 (0.11%) Corosync
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
14 5 (0.088%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 5 (0.088%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,640 (28.94%) Terraform
2 1,497 (26.42%) Kubernetes
3 532 (9.39%) Ansible
4 369 (6.51%) Grafana
5 312 (5.51%) Prometheus
6 85 (1.50%) Argo
7 62 (1.09%) Puppet
8 56 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
9 49 (0.86%) Progress Chef
10 44 (0.78%) Istio
11 39 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
12 34 (0.60%) Packer
13 20 (0.35%) Kibana
13 20 (0.35%) Kustomize
14 19 (0.34%) SCCM
15 18 (0.32%) HP ALM
16 17 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
18 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,068 (18.85%) Microsoft
2 312 (5.51%) Oracle
3 279 (4.92%) Databricks
4 276 (4.87%) Google
5 211 (3.72%) ServiceNow
6 187 (3.30%) Salesforce
7 177 (3.12%) Splunk
8 145 (2.56%) Dynatrace
9 122 (2.15%) SAP
10 120 (2.12%) VMware
11 108 (1.91%) Red Hat
12 63 (1.11%) IBM
13 62 (1.09%) Informatica
14 57 (1.01%) MuleSoft
15 56 (0.99%) OpenAI
16 52 (0.92%) Atlassian
17 51 (0.90%) Cisco
18 46 (0.81%) Foundry
19 44 (0.78%) AppDynamics
20 42 (0.74%) Okta