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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,590 3,734 3,748
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.28% 11.31% 9.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.17% 12.49% 11.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,883 2,602 2,490
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 £620 £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 67
10th Percentile £37.85 £44.25 £49.97
25th Percentile £61.00 £54.88 £65.63
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 £74.22
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 45,930 29,887 32,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.55% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,618 18,553 19,727
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £635 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,299 1,876 1,335
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.12 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.25 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.09% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.22 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.60 £65.00 £74.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.52% -48.10% +1.18%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -1 4,746 £525 - 4,848
London -1 2,512 £550 - 2,386
UK excluding London -3 2,373 £500 - 3,039
Work from Home -2 1,585 £525 +2.44% 2,661
North of England -2 788 £500 +5.26% 817
South East -11 446 £525 +5.00% 632
Midlands -6 410 £488 -5.11% 355
Yorkshire -3 380 £500 +1.46% 250
South West +8 328 £550 +0.46% 317
West Midlands -8 328 £500 -4.76% 225
North West -3 315 £525 +16.67% 427
Scotland -4 219 £475 -5.00% 368
East of England +4 154 £505 -6.05% 258
North East +11 109 £450 -18.18% 148
East Midlands -3 80 £455 +8.33% 130
Wales -7 41 £375 - 162
Northern Ireland +24 24 £525 - 148
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
1 342 (6.12%) Confluence
2 158 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 136 (2.43%) Apache Spark
4 122 (2.18%) Apache Airflow
5 121 (2.16%) Apache
6 47 (0.84%) SAS
7 44 (0.79%) Jupyter
8 43 (0.77%) CMS
9 30 (0.54%) IIS
10 26 (0.47%) nginx
11 20 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.29%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
14 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.21%) WebLogic
15 11 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
16 10 (0.18%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 69 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 53 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
3 51 (0.91%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
5 35 (0.63%) 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 (0.054%) Mingle
10 2 (0.036%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.036%) 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 81 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.84%) 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
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.089%) Aladdin
10 5 (0.089%) Dynamics AX
10 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
10 5 (0.089%) Temenos T24
11 4 (0.072%) Oracle Payroll
11 4 (0.072%) Teamcenter
11 4 (0.072%) Workday HCM
12 3 (0.054%) Endur
12 3 (0.054%) Maximo
12 3 (0.054%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 3,021 (54.04%) Azure
2 2,013 (36.01%) AWS
3 1,729 (30.93%) Azure DevOps
4 982 (17.57%) GitHub
5 759 (13.58%) GCP
6 622 (11.13%) GitHub Actions
7 489 (8.75%) Power Platform
8 464 (8.30%) Serverless
9 312 (5.58%) Amazon S3
10 283 (5.06%) AWS Lambda
11 268 (4.79%) Amazon EKS
12 255 (4.56%) Entra ID
13 254 (4.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 233 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
15 215 (3.85%) Azure AKS
16 208 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
17 203 (3.63%) Amazon EC2
18 195 (3.49%) Azure Data Factory
19 191 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
20 176 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 240 (4.29%) Firewall
2 173 (3.09%) DNS
3 118 (2.11%) VPN
4 114 (2.04%) Network Security
5 77 (1.38%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.97%) SSL
7 51 (0.91%) DHCP
8 44 (0.79%) WAN
9 38 (0.68%) BGP
9 38 (0.68%) HTTP
10 28 (0.50%) Internet
10 28 (0.50%) OSPF
10 28 (0.50%) SSH
11 26 (0.47%) SD-WAN
12 21 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
13 20 (0.36%) LAN
13 20 (0.36%) VLAN
14 18 (0.32%) BIG-IP
14 18 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 18 (0.32%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (5.65%) Power BI
2 301 (5.38%) PostgreSQL
3 296 (5.30%) SQL Server
4 210 (3.76%) Data Warehouse
5 187 (3.35%) MongoDB
6 181 (3.24%) NoSQL
7 179 (3.20%) Data Lake
8 163 (2.92%) Relational Database
9 152 (2.72%) Amazon RDS
10 125 (2.24%) Metadata
11 102 (1.82%) Azure SQL Database
12 87 (1.56%) Delta Lake
12 87 (1.56%) DynamoDB
12 87 (1.56%) MySQL
13 86 (1.54%) Oracle Database
14 84 (1.50%) Redis
15 67 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (1.16%) Big Data
17 63 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 57 (1.02%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 856 (15.31%) Git
2 804 (14.38%) Jenkins
3 660 (11.81%) GitLab
3 660 (11.81%) JIRA
4 141 (2.52%) Selenium
5 99 (1.77%) JUnit
6 95 (1.70%) Maven
6 95 (1.70%) SonarQube
7 94 (1.68%) Postman
8 79 (1.41%) Cucumber
9 75 (1.34%) REST Assured
10 72 (1.29%) Bitbucket
11 68 (1.22%) Cypress.io
12 65 (1.16%) Gradle
13 64 (1.14%) JMeter
14 55 (0.98%) Claude Code
15 48 (0.86%) Mockito
16 44 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
17 42 (0.75%) Visual Studio
18 40 (0.72%) Gatling
General
1 1,464 (26.19%) Social Skills
2 1,015 (18.16%) Finance
3 796 (14.24%) Public Sector
4 533 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 406 (7.26%) Banking
6 168 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 111 (1.99%) Retail
8 91 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 78 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
10 59 (1.06%) Aerospace
11 57 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
12 56 (1.00%) Marketing
13 55 (0.98%) Legal
14 54 (0.97%) Military
15 53 (0.95%) Investment Banking
16 52 (0.93%) Telecoms
17 51 (0.91%) Manufacturing
18 45 (0.81%) Law
19 44 (0.79%) Financial Institution
20 42 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,134 (20.29%) DevOps Engineer
2 917 (16.40%) Developer
3 856 (15.31%) Senior
4 626 (11.20%) Architect
5 534 (9.55%) Lead
6 343 (6.14%) Azure Engineer
7 307 (5.49%) Data Engineer
8 265 (4.74%) Analyst
9 259 (4.63%) AWS Engineer
10 227 (4.06%) Platform Engineer
11 206 (3.69%) Senior DevOps
12 205 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
13 200 (3.58%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 194 (3.47%) Java Developer
15 188 (3.36%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 184 (3.29%) AWS DevOps
17 173 (3.09%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 168 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
19 146 (2.61%) Senior Developer
20 143 (2.56%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,703 (30.47%) Terraform
2 657 (11.75%) REST
3 482 (8.62%) .NET
4 396 (7.08%) Kafka
5 361 (6.46%) RESTful
6 300 (5.37%) Spring
7 295 (5.28%) Spring Boot
8 291 (5.21%) React
9 195 (3.49%) OAuth
10 190 (3.40%) Node.js
11 187 (3.35%) JSON
12 153 (2.74%) Playwright
13 151 (2.70%) PySpark
14 149 (2.67%) HTML
15 134 (2.40%) CSS
16 133 (2.38%) OAuth2
17 132 (2.36%) .NET Framework
18 127 (2.27%) Middleware
19 126 (2.25%) SOAP
20 121 (2.16%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,049 (18.77%) Cloud Native
2 416 (7.44%) Product Ownership
3 262 (4.69%) Distributed Systems
4 223 (3.99%) Enterprise Software
5 209 (3.74%) Onboarding
6 152 (2.72%) Hybrid Cloud
7 146 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 114 (2.04%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.72%) Management Information System
10 86 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.41%) Public Cloud
12 77 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 76 (1.36%) Replication
14 74 (1.32%) Data Centre
14 74 (1.32%) Data Structures
14 74 (1.32%) Security Posture
15 65 (1.16%) PKI
16 61 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
17 55 (0.98%) Virtual Team
18 52 (0.93%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 573 (10.25%) Linux
2 320 (5.72%) Windows
3 125 (2.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 112 (2.00%) Unix
5 99 (1.77%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.66%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.61%) VMS
8 29 (0.52%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.38%) 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 (0.13%) AIX
14 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 4 (0.072%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
15 4 (0.072%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,456 (61.82%) CI/CD
2 2,290 (40.97%) Agile
3 1,683 (30.11%) Infrastructure as Code
4 967 (17.30%) Stakeholder Management
5 957 (17.12%) Continuous Improvement
6 946 (16.92%) Containerisation
7 919 (16.44%) Test Automation
8 910 (16.28%) AI
9 891 (15.94%) Problem-Solving
10 832 (14.88%) Microservices
11 790 (14.13%) Observability
12 788 (14.10%) Platform Engineering
13 750 (13.42%) Software Engineering
14 689 (12.33%) Scrum
15 676 (12.09%) Migration
16 625 (11.18%) Technical Leadership
17 565 (10.11%) Analytics
18 525 (9.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 485 (8.68%) Roadmaps
20 481 (8.60%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 1,650 (29.52%) Python
2 981 (17.55%) SQL
3 816 (14.60%) Java
4 519 (9.28%) Bash
5 504 (9.02%) C#
6 502 (8.98%) PowerShell
7 463 (8.28%) JavaScript
8 319 (5.71%) TypeScript
9 262 (4.69%) Bicep
10 129 (2.31%) Go
11 82 (1.47%) Shell Script
12 68 (1.22%) Scala
12 68 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 59 (1.06%) PL/SQL
14 58 (1.04%) Apex Code
14 58 (1.04%) Groovy
15 38 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 34 (0.61%) C++
16 34 (0.61%) Perl
17 28 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,793 (32.08%) Security Cleared
2 1,493 (26.71%) SC Cleared
3 368 (6.58%) Degree
4 246 (4.40%) Azure Certification
4 246 (4.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 244 (4.36%) DV Cleared
6 200 (3.58%) AWS Certification
7 146 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 111 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
9 74 (1.32%) CISSP
10 59 (1.06%) ISTQB
11 55 (0.98%) PMP
12 53 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.89%) PMI Certification
14 48 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 42 (0.75%) Master's Degree
16 28 (0.50%) CISM
17 27 (0.48%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 23 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 23 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 552 (9.87%) QA
2 282 (5.04%) Data Quality
3 219 (3.92%) Accessibility
4 116 (2.08%) GDPR
5 88 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.48%) WCAG
7 67 (1.20%) NIST
8 54 (0.97%) NCSC
9 46 (0.82%) PMO
10 35 (0.63%) SLA
11 30 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.50%) GRC
13 22 (0.39%) ISO 20022
14 18 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 14 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
16 14 (0.25%) SEPA
16 14 (0.25%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,164 (20.82%) Docker
2 164 (2.93%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.59%) vSphere
6 24 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 20 (0.36%) 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 1,559 (27.89%) Kubernetes
2 546 (9.77%) Ansible
3 376 (6.73%) Grafana
4 323 (5.78%) Prometheus
5 76 (1.36%) Argo
6 58 (1.04%) Puppet
7 48 (0.86%) Progress Chef
8 47 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
9 38 (0.68%) Packer
9 38 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
10 34 (0.61%) Kibana
11 30 (0.54%) Istio
12 23 (0.41%) Kubeflow
13 21 (0.38%) Kustomize
14 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.30%) SCCM
16 16 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
17 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 1,113 (19.91%) Microsoft
2 313 (5.60%) Databricks
3 307 (5.49%) Google
4 293 (5.24%) Oracle
5 199 (3.56%) ServiceNow
6 188 (3.36%) Splunk
7 165 (2.95%) Salesforce
8 146 (2.61%) Dynatrace
9 127 (2.27%) VMware
10 115 (2.06%) SAP
11 97 (1.74%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.32%) OpenAI
13 69 (1.23%) IBM
14 66 (1.18%) MuleSoft
15 60 (1.07%) Foundry
16 46 (0.82%) Informatica
17 44 (0.79%) Cisco
18 41 (0.73%) AppDynamics
19 39 (0.70%) Atlassian
20 38 (0.68%) Okta