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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,698 3,581 3,839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.62% 10.87% 9.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 12.00% 11.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,942 2,538 2,620
10th Percentile £385 £363 £381
25th Percentile £439 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 27 87
10th Percentile £37.24 £33.10 £56.25
25th Percentile £56.25 £51.88 £63.30
Median hourly rate £67.86 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.28% -4.29% +6.87%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.50 £74.22
90th Percentile £88.00 £95.00 £85.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +0.75% -4.29% +7.28%

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 45,525 29,831 33,211
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.51% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,003 18,596 21,236
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £424 £403 £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 2,834 1,716 1,828
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -39.40% -1.19%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.71 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +13.33%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +3 4,880 £525 - 3,717
London 0 2,545 £550 - 2,181
UK excluding London +1 2,462 £500 - 1,899
Work from Home +1 1,645 £525 +2.34% 1,736
North of England 0 834 £500 +4.17% 528
South East -10 480 £525 +5.00% 487
Midlands -1 460 £488 -2.50% 242
Yorkshire 0 415 £500 +1.46% 139
West Midlands -3 378 £490 -4.85% 156
North West -5 325 £525 +11.11% 288
South West +6 316 £525 +0.96% 229
Scotland -3 189 £498 +2.68% 162
East of England +14 140 £505 +1.00% 135
North East +13 111 £425 -19.05% 105
East Midlands -1 77 £488 +6.85% 85
Wales -4 48 £513 +36.67% 51
Northern Ireland +19 23 £475 +7.95% 71
Channel Islands - 4 £475 -

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
1 334 (5.86%) Confluence
2 140 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.30%) Apache Spark
4 125 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
5 112 (1.97%) Apache
6 88 (1.54%) SAS
7 43 (0.75%) CMS
8 38 (0.67%) IIS
8 38 (0.67%) Jupyter
9 25 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
10 23 (0.40%) nginx
11 15 (0.26%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) Anypoint
12 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
13 11 (0.19%) OpenStack
13 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 11 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.16%) Appian
15 7 (0.12%) Mendix
15 7 (0.12%) Mule
Applications
1 62 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
2 60 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
5 28 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.19%) 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 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 38 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
3 11 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Magento
6 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 5 (0.088%) Maximo
8 5 (0.088%) OpenText MBPM
8 5 (0.088%) Oracle BPM
9 4 (0.070%) Endur
9 4 (0.070%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.053%) Findur
10 3 (0.053%) Shopify
10 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,100 (54.41%) Azure
2 2,019 (35.43%) AWS
3 1,774 (31.13%) Azure DevOps
4 977 (17.15%) GitHub
5 730 (12.81%) GCP
6 605 (10.62%) GitHub Actions
7 471 (8.27%) Power Platform
8 447 (7.84%) Serverless
9 297 (5.21%) Amazon S3
10 268 (4.70%) AWS Lambda
11 265 (4.65%) Entra ID
12 249 (4.37%) AWS CloudFormation
13 237 (4.16%) Amazon EKS
14 221 (3.88%) Azure AKS
15 214 (3.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 204 (3.58%) Azure Data Factory
17 200 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
18 181 (3.18%) Amazon EC2
19 164 (2.88%) Dynamics 365
20 157 (2.76%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 249 (4.37%) Firewall
2 164 (2.88%) DNS
3 124 (2.18%) VPN
4 112 (1.97%) Network Security
5 62 (1.09%) TCP/IP
6 51 (0.90%) WAN
7 45 (0.79%) SSL
8 44 (0.77%) DHCP
9 37 (0.65%) SD-WAN
10 32 (0.56%) BGP
10 32 (0.56%) HTTP
10 32 (0.56%) Internet
11 29 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
12 25 (0.44%) OSPF
13 22 (0.39%) SAN
13 22 (0.39%) VLAN
14 21 (0.37%) SSH
15 18 (0.32%) VXLAN
16 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
16 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (5.53%) Power BI
2 297 (5.21%) SQL Server
3 290 (5.09%) PostgreSQL
4 201 (3.53%) Data Warehouse
5 190 (3.33%) NoSQL
6 183 (3.21%) Relational Database
7 177 (3.11%) MongoDB
8 164 (2.88%) Data Lake
9 124 (2.18%) Amazon RDS
10 119 (2.09%) Metadata
11 113 (1.98%) Azure SQL Database
12 91 (1.60%) DynamoDB
13 87 (1.53%) Delta Lake
14 80 (1.40%) Oracle Database
15 71 (1.25%) Redis
16 70 (1.23%) Amazon Redshift
17 67 (1.18%) MySQL
18 65 (1.14%) Big Data
19 57 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
20 56 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 826 (14.50%) Jenkins
2 792 (13.90%) Git
3 691 (12.13%) JIRA
4 606 (10.64%) GitLab
5 135 (2.37%) Selenium
6 103 (1.81%) Postman
7 101 (1.77%) SonarQube
8 92 (1.61%) JUnit
9 87 (1.53%) Maven
10 84 (1.47%) Bitbucket
11 67 (1.18%) Cypress.io
11 67 (1.18%) JMeter
12 65 (1.14%) REST Assured
13 58 (1.02%) Cucumber
13 58 (1.02%) Gradle
14 49 (0.86%) Gatling
15 43 (0.75%) LoadRunner
15 43 (0.75%) Mockito
16 42 (0.74%) Claude Code
17 40 (0.70%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,453 (25.50%) Social Skills
2 1,020 (17.90%) Finance
3 829 (14.55%) Public Sector
4 507 (8.90%) Analytical Skills
5 375 (6.58%) Banking
6 152 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 104 (1.83%) Retail
8 98 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 71 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
10 68 (1.19%) Legal
10 68 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 54 (0.95%) Marketing
12 53 (0.93%) Investment Banking
13 48 (0.84%) Telecoms
14 47 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 47 (0.82%) Military
15 45 (0.79%) Law
16 44 (0.77%) Front Office
17 43 (0.75%) Financial Institution
18 41 (0.72%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,095 (19.22%) DevOps Engineer
2 939 (16.48%) Developer
3 838 (14.71%) Senior
4 622 (10.92%) Architect
5 549 (9.63%) Lead
6 349 (6.12%) Azure Engineer
7 327 (5.74%) Data Engineer
8 287 (5.04%) Analyst
9 272 (4.77%) AWS Engineer
10 231 (4.05%) Platform Engineer
11 212 (3.72%) Cloud Engineer
12 203 (3.56%) Senior DevOps
13 194 (3.40%) Java Developer
14 189 (3.32%) AWS DevOps
15 187 (3.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 186 (3.26%) Senior DevOps Engineer
17 178 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
18 176 (3.09%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 158 (2.77%) Senior Developer
20 153 (2.69%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 591 (10.37%) REST
2 486 (8.53%) .NET
3 355 (6.23%) Kafka
4 341 (5.98%) RESTful
5 303 (5.32%) Spring
6 287 (5.04%) React
7 285 (5.00%) Spring Boot
8 215 (3.77%) Node.js
9 184 (3.23%) JSON
10 167 (2.93%) OAuth
10 167 (2.93%) Playwright
11 164 (2.88%) PySpark
12 149 (2.61%) AngularJS
13 139 (2.44%) SOAP
14 135 (2.37%) .NET Framework
15 133 (2.33%) HTML
16 120 (2.11%) OAuth2
17 115 (2.02%) YAML
18 110 (1.93%) CSS
19 109 (1.91%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,028 (18.04%) Cloud Native
2 404 (7.09%) Product Ownership
3 268 (4.70%) Distributed Systems
4 180 (3.16%) Enterprise Software
5 176 (3.09%) Onboarding
6 153 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
8 94 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
9 82 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
10 81 (1.42%) Public Cloud
11 77 (1.35%) AI Agents
12 75 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 72 (1.26%) Data Structures
14 70 (1.23%) Data Centre
14 70 (1.23%) Security Posture
15 64 (1.12%) Replication
16 63 (1.11%) Enterprise Cloud
17 55 (0.97%) Virtual Team
18 52 (0.91%) Mobile App
19 48 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 519 (9.11%) Linux
2 311 (5.46%) Windows
3 113 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 94 (1.65%) Unix
5 86 (1.51%) Windows Server
6 34 (0.60%) VMS
7 30 (0.53%) Apple iOS
7 30 (0.53%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.32%) Android
9 9 (0.16%) Solaris
9 9 (0.16%) zOS
10 8 (0.14%) AIX
10 8 (0.14%) CentOS
10 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (0.12%) Amazon Linux
12 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
14 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
14 4 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,363 (59.02%) CI/CD
2 2,302 (40.40%) Agile
3 1,581 (27.75%) Infrastructure as Code
4 936 (16.43%) Continuous Improvement
5 931 (16.34%) Containerisation
6 892 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
7 881 (15.46%) Test Automation
8 823 (14.44%) Microservices
9 822 (14.43%) Stakeholder Management
10 792 (13.90%) AI
11 717 (12.58%) Observability
12 699 (12.27%) Platform Engineering
13 693 (12.16%) Scrum
14 689 (12.09%) Software Engineering
15 683 (11.99%) Migration
16 613 (10.76%) Analytics
17 557 (9.78%) Technical Leadership
18 541 (9.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 502 (8.81%) Data Modelling
20 466 (8.18%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,618 (28.40%) Python
2 1,051 (18.45%) SQL
3 811 (14.23%) Java
4 506 (8.88%) C#
5 471 (8.27%) Bash
6 469 (8.23%) PowerShell
7 468 (8.21%) JavaScript
8 311 (5.46%) TypeScript
9 231 (4.05%) Bicep
10 97 (1.70%) Go
11 73 (1.28%) Shell Script
12 71 (1.25%) T-SQL
13 70 (1.23%) Apex Code
14 65 (1.14%) PL/SQL
15 64 (1.12%) Scala
16 59 (1.04%) Groovy
17 32 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 31 (0.54%) C++
19 29 (0.51%) Perl
20 23 (0.40%) C
Qualifications
1 1,830 (32.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,543 (27.08%) SC Cleared
3 331 (5.81%) Degree
4 226 (3.97%) Azure Certification
5 225 (3.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 198 (3.47%) DV Cleared
7 189 (3.32%) AWS Certification
8 125 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
9 88 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
10 80 (1.40%) CISSP
11 65 (1.14%) ISTQB
12 58 (1.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 53 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
14 46 (0.81%) PMP
15 43 (0.75%) PMI Certification
16 37 (0.65%) Master's Degree
17 33 (0.58%) CISM
18 29 (0.51%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 27 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
20 22 (0.39%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 526 (9.23%) QA
2 288 (5.05%) Data Quality
3 201 (3.53%) Accessibility
4 153 (2.69%) GDPR
5 99 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.39%) NIST
6 79 (1.39%) WCAG
7 55 (0.97%) NCSC
8 48 (0.84%) PMO
9 38 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 38 (0.67%) SLA
10 31 (0.54%) GRC
11 30 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 13 (0.23%) ISO 20022
13 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
14 11 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
14 11 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
14 11 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
15 9 (0.16%) PSD2
15 9 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,121 (19.67%) Docker
2 183 (3.21%) Active Directory
3 85 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.44%) Hyper-V
5 25 (0.44%) vSphere
6 18 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.23%) Squid
10 12 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
11 11 (0.19%) Postfix
12 9 (0.16%) IAG
13 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 7 (0.12%) zsh
15 6 (0.11%) Corosync
15 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 5 (0.088%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 5 (0.088%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,656 (29.06%) Terraform
2 1,497 (26.27%) Kubernetes
3 532 (9.34%) Ansible
4 367 (6.44%) Grafana
5 313 (5.49%) Prometheus
6 85 (1.49%) Argo
7 63 (1.11%) Puppet
8 58 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
9 48 (0.84%) Progress Chef
10 45 (0.79%) Istio
11 39 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
12 34 (0.60%) Packer
13 20 (0.35%) Kibana
13 20 (0.35%) Kustomize
14 19 (0.33%) SCCM
15 18 (0.32%) HP ALM
15 18 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 16 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
18 13 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,070 (18.78%) Microsoft
2 317 (5.56%) Oracle
3 279 (4.90%) Google
4 277 (4.86%) Databricks
5 211 (3.70%) ServiceNow
6 189 (3.32%) Salesforce
7 176 (3.09%) Splunk
8 144 (2.53%) Dynatrace
9 124 (2.18%) SAP
10 119 (2.09%) VMware
11 108 (1.90%) Red Hat
12 63 (1.11%) IBM
13 62 (1.09%) Informatica
14 57 (1.00%) MuleSoft
15 56 (0.98%) OpenAI
16 52 (0.91%) Atlassian
17 50 (0.88%) Cisco
18 44 (0.77%) Foundry
18 44 (0.77%) Okta
19 43 (0.75%) AppDynamics