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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,077 3,020 4,009
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.57% 10.34% 9.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 11.37% 10.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,546 2,199 2,765
10th Percentile £381 £387 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -5.94%
75th Percentile £605 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 20 110
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.53 £56.25
25th Percentile £56.25 £55.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.82% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.50 £77.50
90th Percentile £92.50 £92.75 £87.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £71.61 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.74% +10.17% -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 40,493 26,571 36,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.28% 90.99% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,428 17,064 23,633
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,382 1,097 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +7.14%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 4,327 £525 -3.58% 1,347
UK excluding London +9 2,242 £500 - 965
London +4 2,208 £550 -2.65% 540
Work from Home -3 1,360 £525 - 730
North of England +8 767 £500 -1.96% 284
South East +2 474 £513 +2.40% 299
Yorkshire +2 418 £500 -2.20% 80
Midlands +4 391 £488 -2.50% 100
West Midlands 0 302 £492 -6.08% 65
South West +15 289 £525 -5.83% 122
North West +2 287 £500 - 154
Scotland +2 183 £475 - 53
East of England +30 128 £525 +5.00% 77
East Midlands -2 86 £465 -0.80% 35
North East +8 75 £450 -14.29% 52
Wales +7 46 £425 +39.13% 32
Northern Ireland -3 14 £525 +25.75% 14
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
1 283 (5.57%) Confluence
2 133 (2.62%) Apache Spark
3 118 (2.32%) SharePoint
4 88 (1.73%) Apache
5 76 (1.50%) SAS
6 69 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.77%) CMS
8 30 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
8 30 (0.59%) nginx
9 26 (0.51%) IIS
10 21 (0.41%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.28%) Mendix
12 13 (0.26%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.24%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.22%) Camunda
15 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
16 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
17 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
18 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 71 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
3 46 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
5 23 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.079%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.079%) CPLEX
6 4 (0.079%) Trello
7 2 (0.039%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.039%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.020%) InDesign
8 1 (0.020%) Maya
8 1 (0.020%) Notion
8 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 64 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 11 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.098%) Magento
8 5 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.098%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.079%) Endur
9 4 (0.079%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.059%) Findur
10 3 (0.059%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.059%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 2 (0.039%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.039%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.039%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 2,755 (54.26%) Azure
2 1,710 (33.68%) AWS
3 1,496 (29.47%) Azure DevOps
4 855 (16.84%) GitHub
5 668 (13.16%) GCP
6 504 (9.93%) GitHub Actions
7 485 (9.55%) Serverless
8 431 (8.49%) Power Platform
9 266 (5.24%) Amazon S3
10 258 (5.08%) AWS CloudFormation
11 243 (4.79%) AWS Lambda
12 229 (4.51%) Azure AKS
12 229 (4.51%) Entra ID
13 218 (4.29%) Azure Data Factory
14 197 (3.88%) Amazon EKS
15 172 (3.39%) OpenShift
16 167 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
17 165 (3.25%) PaaS
18 151 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
19 150 (2.95%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 217 (4.27%) Firewall
2 123 (2.42%) DNS
3 100 (1.97%) Network Security
4 93 (1.83%) VPN
5 43 (0.85%) TCP/IP
6 36 (0.71%) WAN
7 32 (0.63%) SD-WAN
8 28 (0.55%) BGP
9 27 (0.53%) HTTP
10 26 (0.51%) SSL
11 23 (0.45%) SAN
12 22 (0.43%) DHCP
12 22 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (0.37%) IPsec
13 19 (0.37%) OSPF
14 16 (0.32%) MPLS
14 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
15 14 (0.28%) Internet
15 14 (0.28%) LAN
15 14 (0.28%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (5.55%) Power BI
2 253 (4.98%) SQL Server
3 241 (4.75%) PostgreSQL
4 180 (3.55%) NoSQL
5 173 (3.41%) Data Lake
6 161 (3.17%) Relational Database
7 135 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
8 126 (2.48%) MongoDB
9 113 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
10 99 (1.95%) Amazon RDS
11 93 (1.83%) DynamoDB
12 92 (1.81%) Metadata
13 91 (1.79%) Delta Lake
14 73 (1.44%) Big Data
15 72 (1.42%) Oracle Database
16 68 (1.34%) Elasticsearch
17 61 (1.20%) Amazon Athena
18 54 (1.06%) Redis
19 52 (1.02%) BigQuery
20 50 (0.98%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 728 (14.34%) Jenkins
2 640 (12.61%) Git
3 597 (11.76%) JIRA
4 515 (10.14%) GitLab
5 107 (2.11%) Selenium
6 105 (2.07%) Postman
7 80 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 78 (1.54%) JUnit
9 65 (1.28%) Bitbucket
10 63 (1.24%) REST Assured
11 59 (1.16%) Maven
12 57 (1.12%) JMeter
13 56 (1.10%) Cucumber
14 51 (1.00%) Artifactory
15 47 (0.93%) Cypress.io
16 44 (0.87%) Gatling
17 36 (0.71%) Gradle
18 32 (0.63%) Mockito
19 30 (0.59%) Visual Studio
20 29 (0.57%) NUnit
General
1 1,242 (24.46%) Social Skills
2 902 (17.77%) Finance
3 643 (12.66%) Public Sector
4 402 (7.92%) Analytical Skills
5 322 (6.34%) Banking
6 140 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 72 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 70 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
9 66 (1.30%) Legal
10 64 (1.26%) Retail
11 55 (1.08%) Marketing
12 53 (1.04%) Financial Institution
13 50 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 42 (0.83%) Front Office
15 41 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
16 40 (0.79%) Military
17 36 (0.71%) Investment Banking
18 31 (0.61%) Telecoms
19 24 (0.47%) Law
20 23 (0.45%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,042 (20.52%) DevOps Engineer
2 753 (14.83%) Developer
3 712 (14.02%) Senior
4 586 (11.54%) Architect
5 422 (8.31%) Lead
6 344 (6.78%) Azure Engineer
7 302 (5.95%) Data Engineer
8 301 (5.93%) Analyst
9 236 (4.65%) AWS Engineer
10 187 (3.68%) Cloud Engineer
11 179 (3.53%) Platform Engineer
12 175 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
13 170 (3.35%) AWS DevOps
14 169 (3.33%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 166 (3.27%) Senior DevOps
16 157 (3.09%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 153 (3.01%) Senior DevOps Engineer
17 153 (3.01%) Software Engineer
18 148 (2.92%) Business Analyst
19 143 (2.82%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 458 (9.02%) REST
2 455 (8.96%) .NET
3 304 (5.99%) React
4 283 (5.57%) Kafka
5 280 (5.52%) Spring
6 265 (5.22%) Spring Boot
7 257 (5.06%) RESTful
8 256 (5.04%) Node.js
9 170 (3.35%) AngularJS
10 156 (3.07%) Playwright
11 154 (3.03%) PySpark
12 147 (2.90%) OAuth
13 142 (2.80%) JSON
14 126 (2.48%) YAML
15 112 (2.21%) HTML
15 112 (2.21%) Middleware
16 111 (2.19%) SOAP
17 102 (2.01%) .NET Framework
18 100 (1.97%) OpenID
19 95 (1.87%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 802 (15.80%) Cloud Native
2 324 (6.38%) Product Ownership
3 193 (3.80%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 109 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
6 107 (2.11%) Public Cloud
7 96 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 94 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
9 82 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
10 67 (1.32%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.08%) Management Information System
12 53 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 49 (0.97%) Virtual Team
14 44 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
14 44 (0.87%) NHS
15 43 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 43 (0.85%) Low-Code
15 43 (0.85%) Private Cloud
16 42 (0.83%) Mobile App
16 42 (0.83%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 439 (8.65%) Linux
2 253 (4.98%) Windows
3 83 (1.63%) Unix
4 77 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 48 (0.95%) Windows Server
6 43 (0.85%) VMS
7 23 (0.45%) Ubuntu
8 19 (0.37%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.32%) Android
10 11 (0.22%) CentOS
11 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.098%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.098%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.098%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.079%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.079%) zOS
17 3 (0.059%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,902 (57.16%) CI/CD
2 1,849 (36.42%) Agile
3 1,297 (25.55%) Infrastructure as Code
4 828 (16.31%) Containerisation
5 775 (15.26%) Problem-Solving
6 729 (14.36%) Microservices
7 712 (14.02%) Test Automation
8 667 (13.14%) Continuous Improvement
9 608 (11.98%) Migration
9 608 (11.98%) Observability
10 574 (11.31%) Analytics
11 541 (10.66%) Stakeholder Management
12 539 (10.62%) Scrum
13 529 (10.42%) AI
14 481 (9.47%) Data Modelling
15 475 (9.36%) Software Engineering
16 457 (9.00%) Platform Engineering
17 395 (7.78%) Mentoring
18 390 (7.68%) Roadmaps
19 389 (7.66%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,384 (27.26%) Python
2 988 (19.46%) SQL
3 669 (13.18%) Java
4 500 (9.85%) C#
5 380 (7.48%) JavaScript
6 349 (6.87%) PowerShell
7 347 (6.83%) Bash
8 278 (5.48%) TypeScript
9 176 (3.47%) Bicep
10 108 (2.13%) Go
11 70 (1.38%) Scala
12 64 (1.26%) Shell Script
13 57 (1.12%) PL/SQL
14 54 (1.06%) Apex Code
15 47 (0.93%) Groovy
16 46 (0.91%) T-SQL
17 37 (0.73%) C++
18 27 (0.53%) Ruby
19 25 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 24 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,603 (31.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,327 (26.14%) SC Cleared
3 318 (6.26%) Degree
4 210 (4.14%) Azure Certification
5 157 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 153 (3.01%) DV Cleared
7 139 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 135 (2.66%) AWS Certification
9 73 (1.44%) CISSP
10 60 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 56 (1.10%) ISTQB
12 52 (1.02%) Master's Degree
13 50 (0.98%) CISM
14 47 (0.93%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 46 (0.91%) PMI Certification
16 44 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
17 41 (0.81%) PMP
18 28 (0.55%) TOGAF Certification
19 24 (0.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
20 21 (0.41%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (8.63%) QA
2 241 (4.75%) Data Quality
3 179 (3.53%) GDPR
4 137 (2.70%) Accessibility
5 128 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 119 (2.34%) NIST
7 66 (1.30%) NCSC
8 55 (1.08%) WCAG
9 48 (0.95%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.69%) PMO
10 35 (0.69%) SLA
11 34 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.41%) GRC
13 18 (0.35%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.26%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.26%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.24%) PSD2
15 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
16 10 (0.20%) HL7
16 10 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 971 (19.13%) Docker
2 168 (3.31%) Active Directory
3 77 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
4 69 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 33 (0.65%) vSphere
6 26 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.35%) Squid
7 18 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (0.26%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.24%) Postfix
10 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 7 (0.14%) HDFS
13 6 (0.12%) Corosync
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) RACF
14 5 (0.098%) Ceph
14 5 (0.098%) NFS
15 4 (0.079%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 4 (0.079%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,429 (28.15%) Terraform
2 1,295 (25.51%) Kubernetes
3 487 (9.59%) Ansible
4 349 (6.87%) Grafana
5 288 (5.67%) Prometheus
6 91 (1.79%) Argo
7 71 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.36%) Puppet
9 65 (1.28%) Istio
10 28 (0.55%) Progress Chef
11 26 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 26 (0.51%) Packer
12 23 (0.45%) HP ALM
12 23 (0.45%) Kibana
13 21 (0.41%) vCenter Server
14 20 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.30%) Rancher
15 15 (0.30%) SCCM
16 14 (0.28%) Consul
16 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 882 (17.37%) Microsoft
2 287 (5.65%) Databricks
3 280 (5.52%) Oracle
4 240 (4.73%) Google
5 199 (3.92%) Splunk
6 178 (3.51%) ServiceNow
7 160 (3.15%) Salesforce
8 137 (2.70%) Red Hat
9 118 (2.32%) SAP
10 113 (2.23%) VMware
11 105 (2.07%) Dynatrace
12 73 (1.44%) OpenAI
13 49 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 48 (0.95%) Atlassian
15 45 (0.89%) IBM
16 43 (0.85%) Informatica
17 41 (0.81%) Cisco
18 39 (0.77%) AppDynamics
19 38 (0.75%) Foundry
20 31 (0.61%) Denodo