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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 14 14
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,637 3,722 3,719
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.32% 11.34% 9.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.21% 12.53% 11.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,916 2,593 2,470
10th Percentile £381 £361 £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 £625 £619 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 23 66
10th Percentile £37.85 £44.25 £49.34
25th Percentile £61.00 £54.88 £65.31
Median hourly rate £69.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £90.30 £95.00 £85.00
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 46,176 29,707 32,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.53% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,450 19,527
10th Percentile £325 £297 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,315 1,863 1,324
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%
75th Percentile £65.41 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £65.00 £74.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +73.52% -47.49% -

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 0 4,785 £525 - 4,862
London -1 2,538 £550 - 2,371
UK excluding London -5 2,387 £500 - 2,832
Work from Home -2 1,607 £525 +2.44% 2,418
North of England -2 791 £500 +5.15% 823
South East -11 448 £525 +5.00% 636
Midlands -7 414 £488 -5.11% 361
Yorkshire -3 380 £500 +1.42% 258
West Midlands -9 332 £500 -4.76% 228
South West +5 330 £550 - 319
North West -3 317 £525 +16.67% 426
Scotland -4 221 £475 -4.90% 230
East of England 0 154 £505 -6.05% 273
North East +14 110 £450 -18.18% 145
East Midlands -1 80 £455 +8.33% 133
Wales -8 42 £375 - 121
Northern Ireland +26 24 £525 - 84
Channel Islands - 2 £500 -

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
1 344 (6.10%) Confluence
2 159 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 136 (2.41%) Apache Spark
4 123 (2.18%) Apache Airflow
5 121 (2.15%) Apache
6 47 (0.83%) SAS
7 44 (0.78%) CMS
7 44 (0.78%) Jupyter
8 31 (0.55%) IIS
9 29 (0.51%) nginx
10 22 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.28%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
13 12 (0.21%) WebLogic
14 11 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 10 (0.18%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
16 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 69 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 53 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
3 51 (0.90%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
5 35 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.14%) Windchill
8 5 (0.089%) Notion
8 5 (0.089%) Trello
9 3 (0.053%) Mingle
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 83 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.16%) Magento
6 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.089%) Aladdin
9 5 (0.089%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
9 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
9 5 (0.089%) Temenos T24
10 4 (0.071%) Oracle Payroll
10 4 (0.071%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.071%) Workday HCM
11 3 (0.053%) Maximo
11 3 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
11 3 (0.053%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 3,052 (54.14%) Azure
2 2,030 (36.01%) AWS
3 1,747 (30.99%) Azure DevOps
4 992 (17.60%) GitHub
5 768 (13.62%) GCP
6 624 (11.07%) GitHub Actions
7 495 (8.78%) Power Platform
8 469 (8.32%) Serverless
9 313 (5.55%) Amazon S3
10 284 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
11 269 (4.77%) Amazon EKS
12 263 (4.67%) Entra ID
13 255 (4.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 235 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
15 218 (3.87%) Azure AKS
16 217 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
17 204 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
18 196 (3.48%) Azure Data Factory
19 193 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
20 178 (3.16%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 241 (4.28%) Firewall
2 174 (3.09%) DNS
3 120 (2.13%) VPN
4 118 (2.09%) Network Security
5 77 (1.37%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.96%) SSL
7 52 (0.92%) DHCP
8 45 (0.80%) WAN
9 38 (0.67%) BGP
9 38 (0.67%) HTTP
10 29 (0.51%) Internet
11 28 (0.50%) OSPF
11 28 (0.50%) SSH
12 27 (0.48%) SD-WAN
13 21 (0.37%) LAN
13 21 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
14 20 (0.35%) VLAN
15 18 (0.32%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 18 (0.32%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (5.64%) Power BI
2 305 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
3 300 (5.32%) SQL Server
4 211 (3.74%) Data Warehouse
5 188 (3.34%) MongoDB
6 182 (3.23%) NoSQL
7 180 (3.19%) Data Lake
8 166 (2.94%) Relational Database
9 153 (2.71%) Amazon RDS
10 127 (2.25%) Metadata
11 107 (1.90%) Azure SQL Database
12 88 (1.56%) Delta Lake
12 88 (1.56%) DynamoDB
12 88 (1.56%) MySQL
12 88 (1.56%) Oracle Database
13 86 (1.53%) Redis
14 67 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
15 65 (1.15%) Big Data
15 65 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 57 (1.01%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 865 (15.35%) Git
2 815 (14.46%) Jenkins
3 664 (11.78%) GitLab
3 664 (11.78%) JIRA
4 143 (2.54%) Selenium
5 100 (1.77%) JUnit
6 96 (1.70%) Maven
6 96 (1.70%) SonarQube
7 94 (1.67%) Postman
8 81 (1.44%) Cucumber
9 75 (1.33%) REST Assured
10 72 (1.28%) Bitbucket
11 68 (1.21%) Cypress.io
12 66 (1.17%) Gradle
13 64 (1.14%) JMeter
14 55 (0.98%) Claude Code
15 49 (0.87%) Mockito
16 44 (0.78%) Sonatype Nexus
17 43 (0.76%) Visual Studio
18 40 (0.71%) Gatling
General
1 1,481 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 1,029 (18.25%) Finance
3 810 (14.37%) Public Sector
4 538 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
5 411 (7.29%) Banking
6 170 (3.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 112 (1.99%) Retail
8 92 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 81 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
10 59 (1.05%) Aerospace
11 57 (1.01%) Legal
11 57 (1.01%) Marketing
11 57 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
12 56 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 56 (0.99%) Military
13 52 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 51 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 45 (0.80%) Financial Institution
15 45 (0.80%) Law
16 42 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,144 (20.29%) DevOps Engineer
2 923 (16.37%) Developer
3 862 (15.29%) Senior
4 639 (11.34%) Architect
5 539 (9.56%) Lead
6 347 (6.16%) Azure Engineer
7 309 (5.48%) Data Engineer
8 267 (4.74%) Analyst
9 260 (4.61%) AWS Engineer
10 227 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
11 206 (3.65%) Senior DevOps
12 205 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
13 202 (3.58%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 195 (3.46%) Java Developer
15 188 (3.34%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 185 (3.28%) AWS DevOps
17 175 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
18 174 (3.09%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 146 (2.59%) Senior Developer
20 144 (2.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,722 (30.55%) Terraform
2 669 (11.87%) REST
3 486 (8.62%) .NET
4 400 (7.10%) Kafka
5 362 (6.42%) RESTful
6 304 (5.39%) Spring
7 298 (5.29%) Spring Boot
8 293 (5.20%) React
9 198 (3.51%) OAuth
10 192 (3.41%) Node.js
11 189 (3.35%) JSON
12 154 (2.73%) Playwright
13 152 (2.70%) PySpark
14 150 (2.66%) HTML
15 136 (2.41%) CSS
16 135 (2.39%) OAuth2
17 133 (2.36%) .NET Framework
18 130 (2.31%) Middleware
19 128 (2.27%) SOAP
20 123 (2.18%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,058 (18.77%) Cloud Native
2 416 (7.38%) Product Ownership
3 268 (4.75%) Distributed Systems
4 232 (4.12%) Enterprise Software
5 210 (3.73%) Onboarding
6 154 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
7 149 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 114 (2.02%) AI Agents
9 103 (1.83%) Management Information System
10 86 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 80 (1.42%) Public Cloud
12 79 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
13 77 (1.37%) Replication
14 75 (1.33%) Data Structures
15 74 (1.31%) Data Centre
15 74 (1.31%) Security Posture
16 69 (1.22%) PKI
17 61 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
18 55 (0.98%) Virtual Team
19 54 (0.96%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 584 (10.36%) Linux
2 325 (5.77%) Windows
3 125 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 113 (2.00%) Unix
5 100 (1.77%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.66%) Ubuntu
7 35 (0.62%) VMS
8 29 (0.51%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 17 (0.30%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 11 (0.20%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.12%) AIX
14 7 (0.12%) Solaris
15 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
15 4 (0.071%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,490 (61.91%) CI/CD
2 2,299 (40.78%) Agile
3 1,703 (30.21%) Infrastructure as Code
4 979 (17.37%) Stakeholder Management
5 965 (17.12%) Continuous Improvement
6 957 (16.98%) Containerisation
7 928 (16.46%) Test Automation
8 916 (16.25%) AI
9 899 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
10 841 (14.92%) Microservices
11 803 (14.25%) Observability
12 795 (14.10%) Platform Engineering
13 760 (13.48%) Software Engineering
14 691 (12.26%) Scrum
15 689 (12.22%) Migration
16 630 (11.18%) Technical Leadership
17 574 (10.18%) Analytics
18 530 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 495 (8.78%) Roadmaps
20 490 (8.69%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 1,662 (29.48%) Python
2 988 (17.53%) SQL
3 822 (14.58%) Java
4 527 (9.35%) Bash
5 509 (9.03%) PowerShell
6 504 (8.94%) C#
7 466 (8.27%) JavaScript
8 322 (5.71%) TypeScript
9 271 (4.81%) Bicep
10 130 (2.31%) Go
11 83 (1.47%) Shell Script
12 69 (1.22%) Scala
12 69 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 61 (1.08%) Groovy
14 59 (1.05%) Apex Code
14 59 (1.05%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 34 (0.60%) C++
16 34 (0.60%) Perl
17 28 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,814 (32.18%) Security Cleared
2 1,514 (26.86%) SC Cleared
3 371 (6.58%) Degree
4 251 (4.45%) Azure Certification
5 250 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
6 246 (4.36%) DV Cleared
7 203 (3.60%) AWS Certification
8 149 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 112 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
10 78 (1.38%) CISSP
11 59 (1.05%) ISTQB
12 55 (0.98%) PMP
13 54 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
14 50 (0.89%) PMI Certification
15 48 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 42 (0.75%) Master's Degree
17 31 (0.55%) CISM
18 27 (0.48%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 23 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 554 (9.83%) QA
2 285 (5.06%) Data Quality
3 221 (3.92%) Accessibility
4 121 (2.15%) GDPR
5 92 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.47%) WCAG
7 69 (1.22%) NIST
8 56 (0.99%) NCSC
9 47 (0.83%) PMO
10 35 (0.62%) SLA
11 32 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.50%) GRC
13 22 (0.39%) ISO 20022
14 18 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.27%) SOC 2
16 14 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
16 14 (0.25%) SEPA
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,179 (20.92%) Docker
2 165 (2.93%) Active Directory
3 87 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.59%) vSphere
6 24 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 21 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 14 (0.25%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.20%) Squid
11 10 (0.18%) IAG
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.14%) zsh
13 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 6 (0.11%) Corosync
13 6 (0.11%) KVM
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Postfix
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
14 5 (0.089%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,574 (27.92%) Kubernetes
2 552 (9.79%) Ansible
3 383 (6.79%) Grafana
4 324 (5.75%) Prometheus
5 77 (1.37%) Argo
6 58 (1.03%) Puppet
7 48 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 48 (0.85%) Progress Chef
8 39 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (0.67%) Kibana
9 38 (0.67%) Packer
10 30 (0.53%) Istio
11 23 (0.41%) Kubeflow
12 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
13 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
14 17 (0.30%) SCCM
15 16 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
16 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
17 13 (0.23%) Consul
17 13 (0.23%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 1,129 (20.03%) Microsoft
2 315 (5.59%) Databricks
3 312 (5.53%) Google
4 295 (5.23%) Oracle
5 199 (3.53%) ServiceNow
6 190 (3.37%) Splunk
7 166 (2.94%) Salesforce
8 153 (2.71%) Dynatrace
9 128 (2.27%) VMware
10 115 (2.04%) SAP
11 97 (1.72%) Red Hat
12 75 (1.33%) OpenAI
13 69 (1.22%) IBM
14 67 (1.19%) MuleSoft
15 61 (1.08%) Foundry
16 46 (0.82%) Cisco
16 46 (0.82%) Informatica
17 41 (0.73%) AppDynamics
18 39 (0.69%) Atlassian
19 38 (0.67%) Okta