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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 -4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,150 2,974 4,026
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.61% 10.40% 9.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.56% 11.42% 11.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,588 2,160 2,795
10th Percentile £386 £380 £400
25th Percentile £438 £441 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -6.38%
75th Percentile £609 £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 116 17 112
10th Percentile £39.53 £33.10 £56.28
25th Percentile £56.63 £51.25 £61.25
Median hourly rate £69.25 £73.23 £65.25
Median % change year-on-year -5.43% +12.22% -0.38%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.50 £77.50
90th Percentile £92.50 £89.50 £86.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £73.23 £65.25
% change year-on-year -7.82% +12.22% -0.38%

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 40,998 26,034 36,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 91.02% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,676 16,714 23,582
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,430 1,064 2,485
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £74.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.35 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.32% -32.93% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +2 4,389 £525 -0.94% 1,345
UK excluding London +9 2,276 £500 - 932
London +4 2,233 £550 -1.79% 580
Work from Home -3 1,377 £525 - 717
North of England +6 785 £500 - 297
South East +3 484 £513 +2.50% 252
Yorkshire +1 438 £500 - 80
Midlands +4 402 £488 -2.50% 99
West Midlands +1 313 £500 -4.58% 70
South West +16 287 £525 -4.55% 128
North West +2 286 £500 - 168
Scotland +2 180 £475 - 46
East of England +17 128 £525 +3.45% 69
East Midlands -1 85 £465 +0.54% 29
North East +6 77 £450 -16.28% 53
Wales +6 47 £425 +39.13% 29
Northern Ireland 0 14 £531 +27.25% 26
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
1 287 (5.57%) Confluence
2 132 (2.56%) Apache Spark
3 116 (2.25%) SharePoint
4 89 (1.73%) Apache
5 79 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
6 78 (1.51%) SAS
7 40 (0.78%) CMS
8 30 (0.58%) nginx
9 27 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
10 26 (0.50%) IIS
11 21 (0.41%) OpenStack
12 16 (0.31%) Jupyter
13 14 (0.27%) Mendix
14 13 (0.25%) WebSphere
15 12 (0.23%) Camunda
16 11 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
17 10 (0.19%) HCL Notes
18 9 (0.17%) Sitecore CMS
19 8 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
20 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 72 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
3 47 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
5 25 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.097%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.078%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.078%) Trello
8 3 (0.058%) Notion
9 2 (0.039%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.039%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.019%) InDesign
10 1 (0.019%) Maya
10 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 60 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 11 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
6 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.097%) Endur
8 5 (0.097%) Magento
8 5 (0.097%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.097%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.078%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.058%) Findur
10 3 (0.058%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.058%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 2 (0.039%) Dynamics NAV
11 2 (0.039%) OpenText MBPM
11 2 (0.039%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,790 (54.17%) Azure
2 1,746 (33.90%) AWS
3 1,516 (29.44%) Azure DevOps
4 863 (16.76%) GitHub
5 668 (12.97%) GCP
6 507 (9.84%) GitHub Actions
7 477 (9.26%) Serverless
8 437 (8.49%) Power Platform
9 272 (5.28%) Amazon S3
10 258 (5.01%) AWS CloudFormation
11 240 (4.66%) AWS Lambda
12 232 (4.50%) Entra ID
13 225 (4.37%) Azure AKS
14 223 (4.33%) Azure Data Factory
15 192 (3.73%) Amazon EKS
16 177 (3.44%) OpenShift
17 165 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
18 162 (3.15%) PaaS
19 156 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
20 150 (2.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 219 (4.25%) Firewall
2 127 (2.47%) DNS
3 103 (2.00%) Network Security
4 95 (1.84%) VPN
5 45 (0.87%) TCP/IP
6 39 (0.76%) WAN
7 34 (0.66%) SD-WAN
8 31 (0.60%) BGP
9 28 (0.54%) SSL
10 26 (0.50%) HTTP
11 24 (0.47%) SAN
11 24 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
12 23 (0.45%) DHCP
13 21 (0.41%) OSPF
14 19 (0.37%) IPsec
15 17 (0.33%) MPLS
16 16 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
16 16 (0.31%) VXLAN
17 15 (0.29%) Internet
17 15 (0.29%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (5.51%) Power BI
2 257 (4.99%) SQL Server
3 248 (4.82%) PostgreSQL
4 182 (3.53%) NoSQL
5 178 (3.46%) Data Lake
6 158 (3.07%) Relational Database
7 141 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
8 134 (2.60%) MongoDB
9 115 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
10 105 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
11 95 (1.84%) Delta Lake
11 95 (1.84%) DynamoDB
12 94 (1.83%) Metadata
13 73 (1.42%) Oracle Database
14 72 (1.40%) Big Data
15 66 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
16 62 (1.20%) Amazon Athena
17 56 (1.09%) Redis
18 54 (1.05%) BigQuery
19 49 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 732 (14.21%) Jenkins
2 643 (12.49%) Git
3 608 (11.81%) JIRA
4 529 (10.27%) GitLab
5 111 (2.16%) Selenium
6 106 (2.06%) Postman
7 84 (1.63%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.57%) JUnit
9 66 (1.28%) REST Assured
10 61 (1.18%) Bitbucket
11 60 (1.17%) Maven
12 58 (1.13%) Cucumber
13 56 (1.09%) JMeter
14 49 (0.95%) Artifactory
14 49 (0.95%) Cypress.io
15 43 (0.83%) Gatling
16 37 (0.72%) Mockito
17 36 (0.70%) Gradle
18 32 (0.62%) Visual Studio
19 30 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,255 (24.37%) Social Skills
2 916 (17.79%) Finance
3 647 (12.56%) Public Sector
4 398 (7.73%) Analytical Skills
5 332 (6.45%) Banking
6 139 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 78 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 74 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
9 69 (1.34%) Legal
10 67 (1.30%) Retail
11 54 (1.05%) Financial Institution
12 53 (1.03%) Marketing
13 51 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 41 (0.80%) Military
15 38 (0.74%) Front Office
15 38 (0.74%) Investment Banking
15 38 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
16 29 (0.56%) Law
17 28 (0.54%) Telecoms
18 24 (0.47%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,066 (20.70%) DevOps Engineer
2 754 (14.64%) Developer
3 708 (13.75%) Senior
4 592 (11.50%) Architect
5 441 (8.56%) Lead
6 348 (6.76%) Azure Engineer
7 311 (6.04%) Data Engineer
8 303 (5.88%) Analyst
9 246 (4.78%) AWS Engineer
10 190 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
11 183 (3.55%) Platform Engineer
12 178 (3.46%) AWS DevOps
13 173 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
14 172 (3.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 171 (3.32%) Senior DevOps
16 165 (3.20%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 157 (3.05%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 152 (2.95%) Business Analyst
18 152 (2.95%) Java Developer
19 151 (2.93%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 466 (9.05%) REST
2 460 (8.93%) .NET
3 307 (5.96%) React
4 284 (5.51%) Kafka
5 280 (5.44%) Spring
6 269 (5.22%) Spring Boot
7 260 (5.05%) RESTful
8 251 (4.87%) Node.js
9 167 (3.24%) AngularJS
10 160 (3.11%) PySpark
11 155 (3.01%) Playwright
12 153 (2.97%) OAuth
13 140 (2.72%) JSON
14 131 (2.54%) YAML
15 115 (2.23%) SOAP
16 109 (2.12%) Middleware
17 107 (2.08%) HTML
18 103 (2.00%) .NET Framework
19 100 (1.94%) OpenID
20 97 (1.88%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 828 (16.08%) Cloud Native
2 323 (6.27%) Product Ownership
3 202 (3.92%) Distributed Systems
4 134 (2.60%) Onboarding
5 115 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
6 104 (2.02%) Public Cloud
7 102 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
8 101 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
9 83 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 73 (1.42%) Data Centre
11 56 (1.09%) Management Information System
12 55 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
13 48 (0.93%) Virtual Team
14 47 (0.91%) AI Agents
15 45 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 45 (0.87%) Private Cloud
16 44 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
16 44 (0.85%) NHS
17 43 (0.83%) Low-Code
17 43 (0.83%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 447 (8.68%) Linux
2 256 (4.97%) Windows
3 81 (1.57%) Unix
4 79 (1.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 50 (0.97%) Windows Server
6 42 (0.82%) VMS
7 23 (0.45%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.35%) Apple iOS
9 14 (0.27%) Android
10 12 (0.23%) CentOS
11 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.097%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.097%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.078%) zOS
17 3 (0.058%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,961 (57.50%) CI/CD
2 1,862 (36.16%) Agile
3 1,325 (25.73%) Infrastructure as Code
4 813 (15.79%) Containerisation
5 761 (14.78%) Problem-Solving
6 733 (14.23%) Microservices
7 728 (14.14%) Test Automation
8 690 (13.40%) Continuous Improvement
9 623 (12.10%) Migration
10 613 (11.90%) Observability
11 585 (11.36%) Analytics
12 565 (10.97%) AI
13 561 (10.89%) Stakeholder Management
14 547 (10.62%) Scrum
15 495 (9.61%) Software Engineering
16 489 (9.50%) Data Modelling
17 483 (9.38%) Platform Engineering
18 410 (7.96%) Mentoring
19 409 (7.94%) Technical Leadership
20 402 (7.81%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,406 (27.30%) Python
2 1,007 (19.55%) SQL
3 677 (13.15%) Java
4 492 (9.55%) C#
5 379 (7.36%) JavaScript
6 350 (6.80%) PowerShell
7 349 (6.78%) Bash
8 272 (5.28%) TypeScript
9 179 (3.48%) Bicep
10 110 (2.14%) Go
11 70 (1.36%) Scala
12 64 (1.24%) Shell Script
13 57 (1.11%) Apex Code
14 52 (1.01%) PL/SQL
15 46 (0.89%) Groovy
15 46 (0.89%) T-SQL
16 36 (0.70%) C++
17 27 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 27 (0.52%) Ruby
18 25 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,615 (31.36%) Security Cleared
2 1,341 (26.04%) SC Cleared
3 313 (6.08%) Degree
4 209 (4.06%) Azure Certification
5 157 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 153 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 136 (2.64%) AWS Certification
8 135 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
9 73 (1.42%) CISSP
10 60 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 55 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 50 (0.97%) CISM
13 46 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 46 (0.89%) Master's Degree
14 45 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
15 43 (0.83%) PMI Certification
16 40 (0.78%) PMP
17 27 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
18 25 (0.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 21 (0.41%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (8.43%) QA
2 245 (4.76%) Data Quality
3 178 (3.46%) GDPR
4 137 (2.66%) Accessibility
5 127 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 117 (2.27%) NIST
7 66 (1.28%) NCSC
8 53 (1.03%) WCAG
9 48 (0.93%) PCI DSS
10 41 (0.80%) SLA
11 34 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 33 (0.64%) PMO
13 22 (0.43%) GRC
14 17 (0.33%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.25%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.23%) PSD2
16 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.19%) SEPA
18 9 (0.17%) HL7
System Software
1 966 (18.76%) Docker
2 171 (3.32%) Active Directory
3 74 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
4 69 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
5 33 (0.64%) vSphere
6 26 (0.50%) VMware NSX
7 19 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.35%) Squid
9 14 (0.27%) Postfix
10 12 (0.23%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) HDFS
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) Corosync
14 6 (0.12%) RACF
15 5 (0.097%) Ceph
15 5 (0.097%) NFS
16 4 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 4 (0.078%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,461 (28.37%) Terraform
2 1,309 (25.42%) Kubernetes
3 502 (9.75%) Ansible
4 354 (6.87%) Grafana
5 296 (5.75%) Prometheus
6 92 (1.79%) Argo
7 72 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 68 (1.32%) Puppet
9 60 (1.17%) Istio
10 29 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
10 29 (0.56%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.54%) Packer
12 23 (0.45%) Kibana
13 22 (0.43%) HP ALM
14 21 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.41%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.35%) Consul
16 15 (0.29%) SCCM
17 14 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 14 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 892 (17.32%) Microsoft
2 296 (5.75%) Databricks
3 282 (5.48%) Oracle
4 237 (4.60%) Google
5 197 (3.83%) Splunk
6 183 (3.55%) ServiceNow
7 162 (3.15%) Salesforce
8 140 (2.72%) Red Hat
9 116 (2.25%) SAP
10 114 (2.21%) VMware
11 105 (2.04%) Dynatrace
12 77 (1.50%) OpenAI
13 50 (0.97%) Atlassian
14 47 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 46 (0.89%) IBM
16 44 (0.85%) Informatica
17 42 (0.82%) Cisco
18 39 (0.76%) Foundry
19 38 (0.74%) AppDynamics
20 32 (0.62%) Okta