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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 -4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,011 3,032 3,988
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.55% 10.38% 9.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.51% 11.42% 10.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,499 2,224 2,747
10th Percentile £381 £393 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.42% -4.09% -5.34%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £650
90th Percentile £703 £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 19 108
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 £77.81
90th Percentile £95.00 £88.50 £87.14
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 40,059 26,552 37,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,139 17,089 23,891
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +2.93% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,402 1,086 2,440
10th Percentile £14.97 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.48% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +3 4,276 £525 -4.55% 1,378
UK excluding London +11 2,203 £500 - 994
London +3 2,187 £550 -4.35% 541
Work from Home -3 1,347 £525 - 711
North of England +6 743 £500 -3.80% 267
South East +2 471 £513 -0.87% 318
Yorkshire +3 407 £500 -3.80% 68
Midlands +5 398 £489 -2.25% 116
West Midlands +2 307 £500 -4.03% 61
South West +15 281 £525 -4.55% 122
North West +2 276 £500 - 138
Scotland +1 178 £475 - 52
East of England +31 125 £525 +3.45% 85
East Midlands -2 88 £466 -0.53% 55
North East +9 71 £453 -15.81% 63
Wales +6 40 £425 +39.13% 29
Northern Ireland +1 11 £475 +13.77% 20
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
1 283 (5.65%) Confluence
2 131 (2.61%) Apache Spark
3 115 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 85 (1.70%) Apache
5 81 (1.62%) SAS
6 67 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.76%) CMS
8 31 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 30 (0.60%) nginx
10 24 (0.48%) OpenStack
11 22 (0.44%) IIS
12 14 (0.28%) Mendix
13 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.18%) Camunda
14 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 74 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
3 48 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.080%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.080%) CPLEX
6 4 (0.080%) Trello
7 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.020%) InDesign
8 1 (0.020%) Maya
8 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 64 (1.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 26 (0.52%) 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 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.100%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.080%) Endur
7 4 (0.080%) Magento
7 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
8 3 (0.060%) Findur
8 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.060%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,735 (54.58%) Azure
2 1,704 (34.01%) AWS
3 1,492 (29.77%) Azure DevOps
4 855 (17.06%) GitHub
5 656 (13.09%) GCP
6 503 (10.04%) GitHub Actions
7 500 (9.98%) Serverless
8 429 (8.56%) Power Platform
9 270 (5.39%) Amazon S3
10 264 (5.27%) AWS CloudFormation
11 251 (5.01%) AWS Lambda
12 228 (4.55%) Entra ID
13 225 (4.49%) Azure AKS
14 220 (4.39%) Azure Data Factory
15 200 (3.99%) Amazon EKS
16 173 (3.45%) OpenShift
17 172 (3.43%) Azure Monitor
18 164 (3.27%) PaaS
19 153 (3.05%) Dynamics 365
20 151 (3.01%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 214 (4.27%) Firewall
2 120 (2.39%) DNS
3 98 (1.96%) Network Security
4 89 (1.78%) VPN
5 39 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 35 (0.70%) WAN
7 31 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 27 (0.54%) HTTP
9 26 (0.52%) BGP
9 26 (0.52%) SSL
10 23 (0.46%) SAN
11 22 (0.44%) DHCP
12 20 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (0.38%) IPsec
14 17 (0.34%) OSPF
15 16 (0.32%) MPLS
15 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
16 14 (0.28%) LAN
17 12 (0.24%) Internet
17 12 (0.24%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (5.65%) Power BI
2 246 (4.91%) SQL Server
3 243 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
4 176 (3.51%) NoSQL
5 172 (3.43%) Data Lake
6 151 (3.01%) Relational Database
7 136 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 114 (2.27%) Azure SQL Database
8 114 (2.27%) MongoDB
9 106 (2.12%) Amazon RDS
10 93 (1.86%) DynamoDB
10 93 (1.86%) Metadata
11 90 (1.80%) Delta Lake
12 75 (1.50%) Big Data
13 71 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (1.38%) Oracle Database
15 62 (1.24%) Amazon Athena
16 53 (1.06%) Redis
17 51 (1.02%) BigQuery
18 49 (0.98%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 727 (14.51%) Jenkins
2 636 (12.69%) Git
3 607 (12.11%) JIRA
4 511 (10.20%) GitLab
5 98 (1.96%) Selenium
6 97 (1.94%) Postman
7 82 (1.64%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.62%) JUnit
9 69 (1.38%) Bitbucket
10 59 (1.18%) Maven
11 53 (1.06%) JMeter
12 51 (1.02%) Artifactory
13 50 (1.00%) REST Assured
14 47 (0.94%) Cucumber
15 46 (0.92%) Cypress.io
16 37 (0.74%) Gatling
17 36 (0.72%) Mockito
18 33 (0.66%) Gradle
19 30 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
20 28 (0.56%) NUnit
General
1 1,238 (24.71%) Social Skills
2 909 (18.14%) Finance
3 634 (12.65%) Public Sector
4 403 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
5 321 (6.41%) Banking
6 145 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 67 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.26%) Legal
10 60 (1.20%) Retail
11 57 (1.14%) Marketing
12 51 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 51 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 43 (0.86%) Front Office
14 42 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 38 (0.76%) Investment Banking
16 36 (0.72%) Military
17 35 (0.70%) Telecoms
18 23 (0.46%) Law
19 22 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,023 (20.42%) DevOps Engineer
2 744 (14.85%) Developer
3 703 (14.03%) Senior
4 576 (11.49%) Architect
5 405 (8.08%) Lead
6 339 (6.77%) Azure Engineer
7 309 (6.17%) Data Engineer
8 303 (6.05%) Analyst
9 237 (4.73%) AWS Engineer
10 182 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
11 178 (3.55%) Platform Engineer
12 176 (3.51%) AWS DevOps
13 172 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
14 167 (3.33%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 161 (3.21%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 160 (3.19%) Senior DevOps
17 150 (2.99%) Software Engineer
18 149 (2.97%) Senior DevOps Engineer
19 147 (2.93%) Business Analyst
20 141 (2.81%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 449 (8.96%) REST
2 447 (8.92%) .NET
3 294 (5.87%) React
4 278 (5.55%) Kafka
4 278 (5.55%) Spring
5 264 (5.27%) Node.js
6 263 (5.25%) Spring Boot
7 254 (5.07%) RESTful
8 174 (3.47%) AngularJS
9 153 (3.05%) PySpark
10 148 (2.95%) OAuth
11 146 (2.91%) Playwright
12 139 (2.77%) JSON
13 132 (2.63%) YAML
14 117 (2.33%) Middleware
15 116 (2.31%) HTML
16 108 (2.16%) SOAP
17 100 (2.00%) CSS
18 97 (1.94%) .NET Framework
19 96 (1.92%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 806 (16.08%) Cloud Native
2 319 (6.37%) Product Ownership
3 191 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 106 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
6 105 (2.10%) Public Cloud
7 98 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
8 93 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
9 82 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
10 61 (1.22%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.10%) Management Information System
12 48 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
12 48 (0.96%) Virtual Team
13 46 (0.92%) Private Cloud
14 43 (0.86%) Data Structures
14 43 (0.86%) Replication
15 41 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
15 41 (0.82%) Low-Code
15 41 (0.82%) Mobile App
15 41 (0.82%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 441 (8.80%) Linux
2 252 (5.03%) Windows
3 80 (1.60%) Unix
4 78 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 46 (0.92%) Windows Server
6 42 (0.84%) VMS
7 22 (0.44%) 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 (0.100%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.100%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.100%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.060%) Debian
17 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,859 (57.05%) CI/CD
2 1,846 (36.84%) Agile
3 1,275 (25.44%) Infrastructure as Code
4 845 (16.86%) Containerisation
5 784 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
6 729 (14.55%) Microservices
7 709 (14.15%) Test Automation
8 653 (13.03%) Continuous Improvement
9 604 (12.05%) Migration
10 589 (11.75%) Observability
11 581 (11.59%) Analytics
12 533 (10.64%) Stakeholder Management
13 527 (10.52%) Scrum
14 507 (10.12%) AI
15 477 (9.52%) Data Modelling
16 470 (9.38%) Software Engineering
17 438 (8.74%) Platform Engineering
18 387 (7.72%) Data Pipeline
19 383 (7.64%) Mentoring
19 383 (7.64%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,384 (27.62%) Python
2 995 (19.86%) SQL
3 654 (13.05%) Java
4 495 (9.88%) C#
5 376 (7.50%) JavaScript
6 351 (7.00%) PowerShell
7 337 (6.73%) Bash
8 281 (5.61%) TypeScript
9 170 (3.39%) Bicep
10 113 (2.26%) Go
11 69 (1.38%) Scala
12 63 (1.26%) Shell Script
13 57 (1.14%) PL/SQL
14 47 (0.94%) Groovy
15 45 (0.90%) Apex Code
16 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
17 39 (0.78%) C++
18 29 (0.58%) Ruby
19 25 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 25 (0.50%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,592 (31.77%) Security Cleared
2 1,325 (26.44%) SC Cleared
3 318 (6.35%) Degree
4 213 (4.25%) Azure Certification
5 156 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 149 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 147 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
8 139 (2.77%) AWS Certification
9 76 (1.52%) CISSP
10 59 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 53 (1.06%) ISTQB
11 53 (1.06%) Master's Degree
12 52 (1.04%) CISM
13 49 (0.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 45 (0.90%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
16 40 (0.80%) PMP
17 29 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 28 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
19 22 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (8.76%) QA
2 243 (4.85%) Data Quality
3 181 (3.61%) GDPR
4 131 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 130 (2.59%) Accessibility
6 122 (2.43%) NIST
7 64 (1.28%) NCSC
8 48 (0.96%) WCAG
9 46 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.70%) PMO
11 33 (0.66%) SLA
12 32 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.38%) GRC
14 17 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 14 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 14 (0.28%) PSD2
17 12 (0.24%) SEPA
17 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
18 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 977 (19.50%) Docker
2 174 (3.47%) Active Directory
3 78 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
4 71 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.64%) vSphere
6 26 (0.52%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.36%) 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%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.100%) Ceph
14 5 (0.100%) NFS
14 5 (0.100%) RACF
15 4 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 4 (0.080%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,423 (28.40%) Terraform
2 1,303 (26.00%) Kubernetes
3 483 (9.64%) Ansible
4 343 (6.84%) Grafana
5 283 (5.65%) Prometheus
6 97 (1.94%) Argo
7 71 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
8 68 (1.36%) Puppet
9 62 (1.24%) Istio
10 28 (0.56%) Progress Chef
11 26 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
12 25 (0.50%) Packer
13 24 (0.48%) Kibana
14 22 (0.44%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.42%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 17 (0.34%) Rancher
18 15 (0.30%) SCCM
19 14 (0.28%) Consul
19 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 873 (17.42%) Microsoft
2 285 (5.69%) Oracle
3 283 (5.65%) Databricks
4 239 (4.77%) Google
5 194 (3.87%) Splunk
6 175 (3.49%) ServiceNow
7 150 (2.99%) Salesforce
8 137 (2.73%) Red Hat
9 115 (2.29%) VMware
10 113 (2.26%) SAP
11 101 (2.02%) Dynatrace
12 71 (1.42%) OpenAI
13 54 (1.08%) CyberArk
14 49 (0.98%) Atlassian
15 43 (0.86%) Informatica
16 42 (0.84%) IBM
17 40 (0.80%) Cisco
18 39 (0.78%) AppDynamics
19 36 (0.72%) Denodo
19 36 (0.72%) Foundry