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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 14 15
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,583 3,570 3,803
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.41% 11.05% 9.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.30% 12.22% 11.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,887 2,512 2,599
10th Percentile £381 £363 £381
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -5.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £615 £621 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 27 74
10th Percentile £37.24 £39.50 £56.45
25th Percentile £55.38 £52.75 £65.00
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.50 £74.00
90th Percentile £93.38 £95.00 £85.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +1.49% -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 45,398 29,222 32,553
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.44% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,158 20,413
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% -3.67%
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 2,911 1,744 1,558
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.01 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.18 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 4,768 £525 - 3,692
London -1 2,509 £550 - 2,123
UK excluding London -4 2,404 £500 - 2,004
Work from Home 0 1,603 £525 +1.94% 1,847
North of England -1 797 £500 +5.26% 566
South East -10 447 £525 +5.00% 445
Midlands -2 444 £488 -2.50% 230
Yorkshire -2 391 £500 +3.63% 151
West Midlands -4 348 £492 -5.11% 137
South West +8 317 £546 +5.05% 288
North West -2 312 £523 +16.22% 317
Scotland -4 208 £488 +2.63% 177
East of England +15 150 £505 -3.81% 178
North East +19 109 £425 -18.27% 101
East Midlands +2 92 £463 +2.78% 93
Wales -5 47 £513 +36.67% 47
Northern Ireland +21 23 £450 +2.27% 87
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
1 337 (6.04%) Confluence
2 148 (2.65%) SharePoint
3 129 (2.31%) Apache Airflow
4 127 (2.27%) Apache Spark
5 113 (2.02%) Apache
6 60 (1.07%) SAS
7 44 (0.79%) CMS
8 39 (0.70%) Jupyter
9 33 (0.59%) IIS
10 25 (0.45%) nginx
11 17 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.29%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
14 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.21%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
17 9 (0.16%) WebLogic
18 8 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 65 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
3 45 (0.81%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
5 33 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 9 (0.16%) Chatbot
6 9 (0.16%) CPLEX
6 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.13%) Trello
8 5 (0.090%) Notion
8 5 (0.090%) Windchill
9 1 (0.018%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
9 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.018%) Mingle
9 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 73 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.18%) Magento
6 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.090%) Aladdin
8 5 (0.090%) OpenText MBPM
8 5 (0.090%) Oracle BPM
8 5 (0.090%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.072%) Endur
10 3 (0.054%) Findur
10 3 (0.054%) Maximo
10 3 (0.054%) Oracle EBS R12
10 3 (0.054%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.054%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 3 (0.054%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3,063 (54.86%) Azure
2 1,999 (35.81%) AWS
3 1,769 (31.69%) Azure DevOps
4 973 (17.43%) GitHub
5 713 (12.77%) GCP
6 608 (10.89%) GitHub Actions
7 486 (8.70%) Power Platform
8 458 (8.20%) Serverless
9 301 (5.39%) Amazon S3
10 284 (5.09%) AWS Lambda
11 252 (4.51%) Entra ID
12 240 (4.30%) Amazon EKS
13 234 (4.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 234 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
14 215 (3.85%) Azure AKS
15 211 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
16 204 (3.65%) Azure Data Factory
17 184 (3.30%) Amazon EC2
18 176 (3.15%) Dynamics 365
19 158 (2.83%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 251 (4.50%) Firewall
2 172 (3.08%) DNS
3 121 (2.17%) VPN
4 113 (2.02%) Network Security
5 67 (1.20%) TCP/IP
6 52 (0.93%) SSL
7 49 (0.88%) WAN
8 47 (0.84%) DHCP
9 36 (0.64%) HTTP
10 34 (0.61%) SD-WAN
11 30 (0.54%) BGP
11 30 (0.54%) Internet
12 28 (0.50%) SSH
12 28 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
13 21 (0.38%) OSPF
14 19 (0.34%) SAN
14 19 (0.34%) VLAN
15 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
15 17 (0.30%) HTTPS
15 17 (0.30%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 328 (5.87%) Power BI
2 297 (5.32%) SQL Server
3 295 (5.28%) PostgreSQL
4 212 (3.80%) Data Warehouse
5 186 (3.33%) NoSQL
6 180 (3.22%) MongoDB
7 177 (3.17%) Relational Database
8 175 (3.13%) Data Lake
9 139 (2.49%) Amazon RDS
10 125 (2.24%) Metadata
11 110 (1.97%) Azure SQL Database
12 95 (1.70%) Delta Lake
13 93 (1.67%) DynamoDB
14 83 (1.49%) Oracle Database
15 81 (1.45%) MySQL
16 80 (1.43%) Redis
17 69 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
18 61 (1.09%) Big Data
18 61 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 53 (0.95%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 789 (14.13%) Git
2 787 (14.10%) Jenkins
3 678 (12.14%) JIRA
4 620 (11.11%) GitLab
5 139 (2.49%) Selenium
6 100 (1.79%) SonarQube
7 99 (1.77%) Postman
8 94 (1.68%) JUnit
9 92 (1.65%) Maven
10 79 (1.42%) Bitbucket
11 74 (1.33%) JMeter
12 73 (1.31%) REST Assured
13 70 (1.25%) Cypress.io
14 64 (1.15%) Gradle
15 59 (1.06%) Cucumber
16 50 (0.90%) Gatling
17 46 (0.82%) Claude Code
18 44 (0.79%) Mockito
19 43 (0.77%) LoadRunner
19 43 (0.77%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,446 (25.90%) Social Skills
2 981 (17.57%) Finance
3 807 (14.45%) Public Sector
4 513 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (6.52%) Banking
6 164 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 108 (1.93%) Retail
8 91 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
9 76 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
10 65 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 64 (1.15%) Legal
12 56 (1.00%) Marketing
13 53 (0.95%) Military
14 51 (0.91%) Aerospace
15 50 (0.90%) Investment Banking
15 50 (0.90%) Telecoms
16 46 (0.82%) Law
17 42 (0.75%) Front Office
18 40 (0.72%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.68%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,120 (20.06%) DevOps Engineer
2 902 (16.16%) Developer
3 845 (15.14%) Senior
4 622 (11.14%) Architect
5 536 (9.60%) Lead
6 351 (6.29%) Azure Engineer
7 313 (5.61%) Data Engineer
8 277 (4.96%) Analyst
9 263 (4.71%) AWS Engineer
10 233 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
11 207 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 202 (3.62%) Azure DevOps Engineer
13 195 (3.49%) Senior DevOps
14 191 (3.42%) Java Developer
15 181 (3.24%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 180 (3.22%) AWS DevOps
17 172 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
18 169 (3.03%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 159 (2.85%) Senior Developer
20 141 (2.53%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,655 (29.64%) Terraform
2 591 (10.59%) REST
3 469 (8.40%) .NET
4 375 (6.72%) Kafka
5 347 (6.22%) RESTful
6 301 (5.39%) Spring
7 290 (5.19%) React
7 290 (5.19%) Spring Boot
8 202 (3.62%) Node.js
9 183 (3.28%) JSON
10 166 (2.97%) OAuth
11 165 (2.96%) Playwright
12 162 (2.90%) PySpark
13 138 (2.47%) HTML
14 127 (2.27%) CSS
15 126 (2.26%) .NET Framework
16 125 (2.24%) AngularJS
16 125 (2.24%) SOAP
17 117 (2.10%) OAuth2
18 113 (2.02%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,019 (18.25%) Cloud Native
2 423 (7.58%) Product Ownership
3 261 (4.67%) Distributed Systems
4 194 (3.47%) Enterprise Software
5 182 (3.26%) Onboarding
6 149 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 149 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
7 92 (1.65%) AI Agents
8 86 (1.54%) Management Information System
9 84 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
10 82 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
11 75 (1.34%) Public Cloud
11 75 (1.34%) Replication
12 73 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 68 (1.22%) Security Posture
14 65 (1.16%) Data Centre
15 57 (1.02%) Virtual Team
16 55 (0.99%) Enterprise Cloud
17 51 (0.91%) Mobile App
18 50 (0.90%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 529 (9.48%) Linux
2 305 (5.46%) Windows
3 113 (2.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 108 (1.93%) Unix
5 96 (1.72%) Windows Server
6 38 (0.68%) VMS
7 32 (0.57%) Ubuntu
8 31 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.38%) Android
10 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
11 9 (0.16%) CentOS
11 9 (0.16%) Solaris
11 9 (0.16%) zOS
12 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
12 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 7 (0.13%) AIX
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.072%) Alpine Linux
16 4 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,350 (60.00%) CI/CD
2 2,275 (40.75%) Agile
3 1,608 (28.80%) Infrastructure as Code
4 933 (16.71%) Continuous Improvement
5 926 (16.59%) Containerisation
6 880 (15.76%) Stakeholder Management
7 879 (15.74%) Test Automation
8 874 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
9 821 (14.71%) AI
10 818 (14.65%) Microservices
11 744 (13.33%) Observability
12 742 (13.29%) Platform Engineering
13 707 (12.66%) Software Engineering
14 678 (12.14%) Scrum
15 671 (12.02%) Migration
16 584 (10.46%) Technical Leadership
17 583 (10.44%) Analytics
18 528 (9.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 485 (8.69%) Data Modelling
20 478 (8.56%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,604 (28.73%) Python
2 1,018 (18.23%) SQL
3 806 (14.44%) Java
4 486 (8.70%) Bash
5 483 (8.65%) C#
5 483 (8.65%) PowerShell
6 458 (8.20%) JavaScript
7 306 (5.48%) TypeScript
8 252 (4.51%) Bicep
9 100 (1.79%) Go
10 80 (1.43%) Shell Script
11 69 (1.24%) Apex Code
11 69 (1.24%) T-SQL
12 67 (1.20%) Scala
13 63 (1.13%) Groovy
14 58 (1.04%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 35 (0.63%) Perl
17 30 (0.54%) C++
18 23 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,789 (32.04%) Security Cleared
2 1,506 (26.97%) SC Cleared
3 343 (6.14%) Degree
4 237 (4.25%) Azure Certification
5 229 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 210 (3.76%) DV Cleared
7 185 (3.31%) AWS Certification
8 133 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
9 107 (1.92%) Microsoft Certification
10 75 (1.34%) CISSP
11 62 (1.11%) ISTQB
12 54 (0.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 49 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
14 44 (0.79%) PMP
15 41 (0.73%) PMI Certification
16 36 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 30 (0.54%) CISM
18 24 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (9.69%) QA
2 287 (5.14%) Data Quality
3 201 (3.60%) Accessibility
4 131 (2.35%) GDPR
5 101 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 82 (1.47%) WCAG
7 80 (1.43%) NIST
8 52 (0.93%) NCSC
8 52 (0.93%) PMO
9 39 (0.70%) SLA
10 31 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 29 (0.52%) GRC
12 24 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 16 (0.29%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
15 12 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
16 10 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
16 10 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 10 (0.18%) HL7
16 10 (0.18%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,144 (20.49%) Docker
2 171 (3.06%) Active Directory
3 89 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.48%) Hyper-V
5 27 (0.48%) vSphere
6 22 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
7 20 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
9 14 (0.25%) Squid
10 11 (0.20%) IAG
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.16%) Postfix
12 7 (0.13%) KVM
12 7 (0.13%) zsh
13 6 (0.11%) Corosync
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 5 (0.090%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,510 (27.05%) Kubernetes
2 529 (9.48%) Ansible
3 366 (6.56%) Grafana
4 309 (5.53%) Prometheus
5 83 (1.49%) Argo
6 58 (1.04%) Puppet
7 53 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 42 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
10 34 (0.61%) Packer
11 33 (0.59%) Istio
12 26 (0.47%) Kibana
13 21 (0.38%) Kustomize
14 20 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.34%) SCCM
16 18 (0.32%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
18 15 (0.27%) HP ALM
19 13 (0.23%) SCOM
20 12 (0.21%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,093 (19.58%) Microsoft
2 306 (5.48%) Oracle
3 302 (5.41%) Databricks
4 273 (4.89%) Google
5 205 (3.67%) ServiceNow
6 186 (3.33%) Splunk
7 185 (3.31%) Salesforce
8 145 (2.60%) Dynatrace
9 128 (2.29%) VMware
10 112 (2.01%) SAP
11 108 (1.93%) Red Hat
12 65 (1.16%) IBM
13 64 (1.15%) OpenAI
14 62 (1.11%) Informatica
15 61 (1.09%) MuleSoft
16 50 (0.90%) Foundry
17 47 (0.84%) AppDynamics
18 44 (0.79%) Cisco
19 41 (0.73%) Atlassian
20 35 (0.63%) CyberArk