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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,061 3,059 3,972
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.59% 10.41% 9.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 11.45% 10.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,541 2,241 2,737
10th Percentile £381 £393 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -5.17%
75th Percentile £601 £650 £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 108 19 106
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.05 £56.25
25th Percentile £55.94 £53.75 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.82% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £78.55 £85.23 £78.44
90th Percentile £95.00 £88.50 £87.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.57% +7.69% -0.76%

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 40,358 26,726 37,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,374 17,206 23,926
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,085 2,441
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.63 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +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 10 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 10 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 10 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 4,319 £525 -4.55% 1,399
UK excluding London +11 2,219 £500 - 998
London +2 2,214 £540 -6.09% 568
Work from Home -4 1,361 £525 - 757
North of England +8 741 £500 -3.80% 286
South East +3 476 £510 -2.86% 304
Yorkshire +3 407 £500 -4.28% 75
Midlands +3 402 £488 -2.50% 111
West Midlands +1 307 £500 -4.03% 59
South West +16 285 £525 -4.55% 117
North West +1 274 £500 - 145
Scotland +2 181 £475 - 57
East of England +29 128 £525 +3.45% 91
East Midlands 0 92 £465 -2.11% 52
North East +9 71 £453 -15.81% 67
Wales +5 39 £425 +39.13% 36
Northern Ireland -3 11 £475 +13.77% 16
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
1 285 (5.63%) Confluence
2 131 (2.59%) Apache Spark
3 116 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 85 (1.68%) Apache
5 81 (1.60%) SAS
6 68 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.71%) CMS
8 31 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
8 31 (0.61%) nginx
9 26 (0.51%) OpenStack
10 23 (0.45%) IIS
11 15 (0.30%) Mendix
12 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.18%) Camunda
13 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
14 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 73 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
3 47 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.099%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.079%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.079%) Trello
8 3 (0.059%) Weka
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 65 (1.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 25 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.099%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.079%) Endur
7 4 (0.079%) SAP BPC
8 3 (0.059%) Findur
8 3 (0.059%) Magento
8 3 (0.059%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.059%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.059%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.059%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.059%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,773 (54.79%) Azure
2 1,723 (34.04%) AWS
3 1,515 (29.93%) Azure DevOps
4 865 (17.09%) GitHub
5 661 (13.06%) GCP
6 510 (10.08%) GitHub Actions
7 506 (10.00%) Serverless
8 431 (8.52%) Power Platform
9 272 (5.37%) Amazon S3
10 268 (5.30%) AWS CloudFormation
11 255 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
12 232 (4.58%) Azure AKS
12 232 (4.58%) Entra ID
13 223 (4.41%) Azure Data Factory
14 202 (3.99%) Amazon EKS
15 176 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
16 175 (3.46%) OpenShift
17 166 (3.28%) PaaS
18 156 (3.08%) Dynamics 365
19 153 (3.02%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 217 (4.29%) Firewall
2 122 (2.41%) DNS
3 100 (1.98%) Network Security
4 90 (1.78%) VPN
5 41 (0.81%) TCP/IP
6 35 (0.69%) WAN
7 31 (0.61%) SD-WAN
8 28 (0.55%) HTTP
9 26 (0.51%) BGP
10 25 (0.49%) SSL
11 22 (0.43%) DHCP
12 21 (0.41%) SAN
13 20 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
14 19 (0.38%) IPsec
15 17 (0.34%) OSPF
16 16 (0.32%) MPLS
16 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
17 14 (0.28%) LAN
18 12 (0.24%) VXLAN
19 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (5.61%) Power BI
2 251 (4.96%) SQL Server
3 246 (4.86%) PostgreSQL
4 180 (3.56%) NoSQL
5 172 (3.40%) Data Lake
6 151 (2.98%) Relational Database
7 137 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 118 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 115 (2.27%) MongoDB
10 109 (2.15%) Amazon RDS
11 96 (1.90%) DynamoDB
12 93 (1.84%) Metadata
13 90 (1.78%) Delta Lake
14 75 (1.48%) Big Data
15 71 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
15 71 (1.40%) Oracle Database
16 62 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (1.09%) Redis
18 50 (0.99%) BigQuery
19 49 (0.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 734 (14.50%) Jenkins
2 647 (12.78%) Git
3 611 (12.07%) JIRA
4 513 (10.14%) GitLab
5 99 (1.96%) Selenium
6 95 (1.88%) Postman
7 82 (1.62%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.60%) JUnit
9 73 (1.44%) Bitbucket
10 60 (1.19%) Maven
11 53 (1.05%) JMeter
12 51 (1.01%) Artifactory
13 50 (0.99%) REST Assured
14 48 (0.95%) Cucumber
15 47 (0.93%) Cypress.io
16 37 (0.73%) Gatling
17 36 (0.71%) Mockito
18 33 (0.65%) Gradle
19 32 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
20 28 (0.55%) NUnit
General
1 1,272 (25.13%) Social Skills
2 926 (18.30%) Finance
3 645 (12.74%) Public Sector
4 411 (8.12%) Analytical Skills
5 325 (6.42%) Banking
6 150 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 67 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.24%) Legal
10 60 (1.19%) Retail
11 55 (1.09%) Marketing
12 54 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 51 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 44 (0.87%) Front Office
15 42 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
16 38 (0.75%) Investment Banking
17 36 (0.71%) Military
18 35 (0.69%) Telecoms
19 24 (0.47%) Law
20 23 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,026 (20.27%) DevOps Engineer
2 759 (15.00%) Developer
3 712 (14.07%) Senior
4 584 (11.54%) Architect
5 408 (8.06%) Lead
6 344 (6.80%) Azure Engineer
7 310 (6.13%) Data Engineer
8 301 (5.95%) Analyst
9 239 (4.72%) AWS Engineer
10 184 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
11 178 (3.52%) Platform Engineer
12 177 (3.50%) AWS DevOps
13 173 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
14 169 (3.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 162 (3.20%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 158 (3.12%) Senior DevOps
17 151 (2.98%) Software Engineer
18 148 (2.92%) Business Analyst
19 147 (2.90%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 141 (2.79%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 457 (9.03%) .NET
2 456 (9.01%) REST
3 300 (5.93%) React
4 282 (5.57%) Kafka
4 282 (5.57%) Spring
5 276 (5.45%) Node.js
6 268 (5.30%) Spring Boot
7 257 (5.08%) RESTful
8 181 (3.58%) AngularJS
9 152 (3.00%) PySpark
10 151 (2.98%) OAuth
11 148 (2.92%) Playwright
12 140 (2.77%) JSON
13 134 (2.65%) YAML
14 119 (2.35%) Middleware
15 115 (2.27%) HTML
16 110 (2.17%) SOAP
17 102 (2.02%) .NET Framework
18 101 (2.00%) CSS
19 99 (1.96%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 816 (16.12%) Cloud Native
2 323 (6.38%) Product Ownership
3 192 (3.79%) Distributed Systems
4 135 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 109 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
6 105 (2.07%) Public Cloud
7 98 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
8 92 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
9 83 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
10 60 (1.19%) Data Centre
11 56 (1.11%) Management Information System
12 50 (0.99%) Virtual Team
13 49 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 48 (0.95%) Private Cloud
15 43 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 43 (0.85%) Replication
16 41 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
16 41 (0.81%) Low-Code
16 41 (0.81%) Mobile App
16 41 (0.81%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 446 (8.81%) Linux
2 257 (5.08%) Windows
3 80 (1.58%) Unix
4 79 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 46 (0.91%) Windows Server
6 42 (0.83%) VMS
7 22 (0.43%) Ubuntu
8 17 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.30%) Android
10 11 (0.22%) CentOS
11 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.099%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.099%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.079%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
17 3 (0.059%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,890 (57.10%) CI/CD
2 1,869 (36.93%) Agile
3 1,286 (25.41%) Infrastructure as Code
4 855 (16.89%) Containerisation
5 803 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
6 740 (14.62%) Microservices
7 722 (14.27%) Test Automation
8 663 (13.10%) Continuous Improvement
9 611 (12.07%) Migration
10 592 (11.70%) Observability
11 586 (11.58%) Analytics
12 542 (10.71%) Stakeholder Management
13 534 (10.55%) Scrum
14 511 (10.10%) AI
15 478 (9.44%) Data Modelling
16 477 (9.43%) Software Engineering
17 439 (8.67%) Platform Engineering
18 391 (7.73%) Roadmaps
19 390 (7.71%) Data Pipeline
19 390 (7.71%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,401 (27.68%) Python
2 1,010 (19.96%) SQL
3 664 (13.12%) Java
4 505 (9.98%) C#
5 385 (7.61%) JavaScript
6 359 (7.09%) PowerShell
7 339 (6.70%) Bash
8 290 (5.73%) TypeScript
9 172 (3.40%) Bicep
10 112 (2.21%) Go
11 70 (1.38%) Scala
12 63 (1.24%) Shell Script
13 62 (1.23%) PL/SQL
14 47 (0.93%) Groovy
15 45 (0.89%) Apex Code
15 45 (0.89%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.77%) C++
17 31 (0.61%) Ruby
18 27 (0.53%) Perl
19 25 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,609 (31.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,342 (26.52%) SC Cleared
3 320 (6.32%) Degree
4 212 (4.19%) Azure Certification
5 155 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 150 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 150 (2.96%) DV Cleared
7 140 (2.77%) AWS Certification
8 80 (1.58%) CISSP
9 60 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
10 56 (1.11%) CISM
11 54 (1.07%) Master's Degree
12 53 (1.05%) ISTQB
13 48 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 46 (0.91%) PMI Certification
15 41 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 41 (0.81%) PMP
16 29 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 28 (0.55%) TOGAF Certification
18 22 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (8.87%) QA
2 242 (4.78%) Data Quality
3 187 (3.69%) GDPR
4 138 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 131 (2.59%) Accessibility
6 128 (2.53%) NIST
7 66 (1.30%) NCSC
8 48 (0.95%) WCAG
9 46 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.69%) PMO
11 33 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 33 (0.65%) SLA
12 19 (0.38%) GRC
13 18 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 14 (0.28%) PSD2
16 12 (0.24%) SEPA
16 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 990 (19.56%) Docker
2 179 (3.54%) Active Directory
3 78 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
4 70 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.63%) vSphere
6 27 (0.53%) VMware NSX
7 19 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 15 (0.30%) Squid
9 13 (0.26%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.24%) Postfix
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) HDFS
13 6 (0.12%) Corosync
13 6 (0.12%) Lustre
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 5 (0.099%) Ceph
14 5 (0.099%) NFS
14 5 (0.099%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,438 (28.41%) Terraform
2 1,320 (26.08%) Kubernetes
3 487 (9.62%) Ansible
4 346 (6.84%) Grafana
5 285 (5.63%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.96%) Argo
7 71 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.36%) Puppet
9 63 (1.24%) Istio
10 28 (0.55%) Progress Chef
11 27 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
12 26 (0.51%) Packer
13 24 (0.47%) Kibana
14 22 (0.43%) HP ALM
14 22 (0.43%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 17 (0.34%) Rancher
17 15 (0.30%) SCCM
18 14 (0.28%) Consul
18 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 886 (17.51%) Microsoft
2 292 (5.77%) Oracle
3 285 (5.63%) Databricks
4 237 (4.68%) Google
5 197 (3.89%) Splunk
6 176 (3.48%) ServiceNow
7 152 (3.00%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.75%) Red Hat
9 116 (2.29%) SAP
9 116 (2.29%) VMware
10 102 (2.02%) Dynatrace
11 72 (1.42%) OpenAI
12 60 (1.19%) CyberArk
13 50 (0.99%) Atlassian
14 43 (0.85%) IBM
14 43 (0.85%) Informatica
15 39 (0.77%) AppDynamics
15 39 (0.77%) Cisco
16 36 (0.71%) Denodo
16 36 (0.71%) Foundry