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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,029 3,043 3,944
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.58% 10.39% 9.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 11.43% 10.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,511 2,230 2,715
10th Percentile £381 £395 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.44% -2.27% -5.66%
75th Percentile £603 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £530
% change year-on-year -2.44% -3.30% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 20 107
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.53 £56.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £71.61 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.74% +10.17% -0.76%
75th Percentile £77.75 £84.10 £77.50
90th Percentile £94.25 £88.00 £87.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.37 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -6.38% +5.77% -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 40,158 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,255 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,399 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +44.62% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +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 5 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 5 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 5 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 4,300 £525 -4.55% 1,391
London +3 2,208 £540 -6.09% 565
UK excluding London +11 2,202 £500 -2.44% 992
Work from Home -3 1,347 £525 -0.19% 763
North of England +7 731 £500 -3.82% 282
South East +2 468 £510 -7.27% 297
Yorkshire +2 406 £500 -3.80% 67
Midlands +2 403 £488 -2.50% 115
West Midlands +4 308 £500 -4.58% 61
South West +15 291 £500 -12.28% 116
North West +2 270 £500 - 151
Scotland +2 175 £475 - 66
East of England +18 131 £525 +3.45% 90
East Midlands -1 92 £465 -0.80% 54
North East +8 64 £475 -13.64% 64
Wales +4 37 £425 +39.13% 30
Northern Ireland -5 11 £475 +13.77% 15
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
1 281 (5.59%) Confluence
2 129 (2.57%) Apache Spark
3 114 (2.27%) SharePoint
4 86 (1.71%) Apache
5 81 (1.61%) SAS
6 67 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.74%) CMS
8 31 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 30 (0.60%) nginx
10 27 (0.54%) OpenStack
11 24 (0.48%) IIS
12 15 (0.30%) Mendix
13 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
14 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.18%) Camunda
16 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
17 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
18 6 (0.12%) Mattermost
Applications
1 73 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
3 47 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.080%) Trello
7 4 (0.080%) Weka
8 3 (0.060%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 68 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (0.48%) 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%) Remedy ITSM
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.080%) Endur
8 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.080%) SAP MDG
9 3 (0.060%) Findur
9 3 (0.060%) Magento
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,743 (54.54%) Azure
2 1,714 (34.08%) AWS
3 1,492 (29.67%) Azure DevOps
4 857 (17.04%) GitHub
5 663 (13.18%) GCP
6 509 (10.12%) Serverless
7 502 (9.98%) GitHub Actions
8 424 (8.43%) Power Platform
9 281 (5.59%) AWS CloudFormation
10 267 (5.31%) Amazon S3
11 254 (5.05%) AWS Lambda
12 238 (4.73%) Azure AKS
13 230 (4.57%) Entra ID
14 221 (4.39%) Azure Data Factory
15 201 (4.00%) Amazon EKS
16 175 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
17 174 (3.46%) OpenShift
18 164 (3.26%) PaaS
19 153 (3.04%) Dynamics 365
20 150 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 212 (4.22%) Firewall
2 116 (2.31%) DNS
3 98 (1.95%) Network Security
4 89 (1.77%) VPN
5 40 (0.80%) TCP/IP
6 34 (0.68%) WAN
7 30 (0.60%) SD-WAN
8 29 (0.58%) HTTP
9 25 (0.50%) BGP
9 25 (0.50%) SSL
10 22 (0.44%) DHCP
11 21 (0.42%) SAN
12 19 (0.38%) IPsec
13 18 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
14 16 (0.32%) MPLS
14 16 (0.32%) OSPF
14 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
15 14 (0.28%) LAN
16 12 (0.24%) Internet
17 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (5.55%) Power BI
2 248 (4.93%) SQL Server
3 244 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
4 181 (3.60%) NoSQL
5 170 (3.38%) Data Lake
6 150 (2.98%) Relational Database
7 136 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
8 118 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 110 (2.19%) MongoDB
10 106 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (1.97%) DynamoDB
12 93 (1.85%) Metadata
13 90 (1.79%) Delta Lake
14 74 (1.47%) Big Data
15 71 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
15 71 (1.41%) Oracle Database
16 64 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
17 52 (1.03%) Redis
18 51 (1.01%) BigQuery
19 49 (0.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 731 (14.54%) Jenkins
2 633 (12.59%) Git
3 610 (12.13%) JIRA
4 502 (9.98%) GitLab
5 104 (2.07%) Selenium
6 96 (1.91%) Postman
7 84 (1.67%) JUnit
8 82 (1.63%) SonarQube
9 70 (1.39%) Bitbucket
10 58 (1.15%) Maven
11 52 (1.03%) Cucumber
11 52 (1.03%) REST Assured
12 51 (1.01%) Artifactory
12 51 (1.01%) Cypress.io
12 51 (1.01%) JMeter
13 38 (0.76%) Mockito
14 37 (0.74%) Gatling
15 33 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
16 30 (0.60%) Gradle
17 28 (0.56%) TestRail
General
1 1,282 (25.49%) Social Skills
2 923 (18.35%) Finance
3 633 (12.59%) Public Sector
4 405 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
5 326 (6.48%) Banking
6 154 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 66 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
9 61 (1.21%) Legal
9 61 (1.21%) Retail
10 53 (1.05%) Financial Institution
10 53 (1.05%) Marketing
11 51 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
12 44 (0.87%) Front Office
13 43 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 40 (0.80%) Investment Banking
15 36 (0.72%) Telecoms
16 34 (0.68%) Military
17 26 (0.52%) Law
18 24 (0.48%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,025 (20.38%) DevOps Engineer
2 755 (15.01%) Developer
3 700 (13.92%) Senior
4 572 (11.37%) Architect
5 411 (8.17%) Lead
6 339 (6.74%) Azure Engineer
7 308 (6.12%) Data Engineer
8 296 (5.89%) Analyst
9 240 (4.77%) AWS Engineer
10 185 (3.68%) AWS DevOps
11 182 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
12 176 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
13 173 (3.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 168 (3.34%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 166 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
16 154 (3.06%) Senior DevOps
17 148 (2.94%) Software Engineer
18 145 (2.88%) Business Analyst
19 144 (2.86%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 139 (2.76%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 461 (9.17%) REST
2 446 (8.87%) .NET
3 298 (5.93%) React
4 287 (5.71%) Node.js
5 281 (5.59%) Spring
6 279 (5.55%) Kafka
7 265 (5.27%) Spring Boot
8 259 (5.15%) RESTful
9 179 (3.56%) AngularJS
10 151 (3.00%) Playwright
11 150 (2.98%) OAuth
12 148 (2.94%) PySpark
13 140 (2.78%) JSON
14 133 (2.64%) YAML
15 117 (2.33%) HTML
16 116 (2.31%) Middleware
17 108 (2.15%) SOAP
18 103 (2.05%) CSS
19 102 (2.03%) .NET Framework
20 99 (1.97%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 810 (16.11%) Cloud Native
2 321 (6.38%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.70%) Distributed Systems
4 137 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 107 (2.13%) Public Cloud
6 102 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
8 93 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
9 79 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
10 59 (1.17%) Data Centre
11 58 (1.15%) Management Information System
12 52 (1.03%) Virtual Team
13 50 (0.99%) Private Cloud
13 50 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
14 42 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 41 (0.82%) NHS
16 40 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
16 40 (0.80%) Low-Code
16 40 (0.80%) Mobile App
16 40 (0.80%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 446 (8.87%) Linux
2 254 (5.05%) Windows
3 79 (1.57%) Unix
4 78 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 41 (0.82%) VMS
7 22 (0.44%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.28%) Android
8 14 (0.28%) Apple iOS
9 11 (0.22%) CentOS
10 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.12%) Solaris
14 5 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.080%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
16 3 (0.060%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,855 (56.77%) CI/CD
2 1,874 (37.26%) Agile
3 1,274 (25.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 843 (16.76%) Containerisation
5 803 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
6 736 (14.64%) Microservices
7 719 (14.30%) Test Automation
8 663 (13.18%) Continuous Improvement
9 608 (12.09%) Migration
10 588 (11.69%) Analytics
11 585 (11.63%) Observability
12 540 (10.74%) Scrum
13 536 (10.66%) Stakeholder Management
14 511 (10.16%) AI
15 475 (9.45%) Software Engineering
16 470 (9.35%) Data Modelling
17 430 (8.55%) Platform Engineering
18 390 (7.76%) Mentoring
19 389 (7.74%) Data Pipeline
20 388 (7.72%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,399 (27.82%) Python
2 1,007 (20.02%) SQL
3 658 (13.08%) Java
4 505 (10.04%) C#
5 391 (7.77%) JavaScript
6 347 (6.90%) PowerShell
7 337 (6.70%) Bash
8 292 (5.81%) TypeScript
9 166 (3.30%) Bicep
10 113 (2.25%) Go
11 70 (1.39%) Scala
12 68 (1.35%) PL/SQL
13 62 (1.23%) Shell Script
14 46 (0.91%) Groovy
15 43 (0.86%) T-SQL
16 42 (0.84%) Apex Code
17 38 (0.76%) C++
18 31 (0.62%) Ruby
19 27 (0.54%) Perl
20 24 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,600 (31.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,335 (26.55%) SC Cleared
3 325 (6.46%) Degree
4 208 (4.14%) Azure Certification
5 154 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 153 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 149 (2.96%) DV Cleared
8 142 (2.82%) AWS Certification
9 74 (1.47%) CISSP
10 56 (1.11%) ISTQB
11 54 (1.07%) Master's Degree
11 54 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
12 53 (1.05%) CISM
13 50 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (0.93%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.84%) PMP
16 39 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
17 30 (0.60%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
19 22 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (8.93%) QA
2 237 (4.71%) Data Quality
3 185 (3.68%) GDPR
4 139 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 132 (2.62%) Accessibility
6 124 (2.47%) NIST
7 64 (1.27%) NCSC
8 47 (0.93%) PCI DSS
8 47 (0.93%) WCAG
9 38 (0.76%) PMO
10 33 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 33 (0.66%) SLA
11 20 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 19 (0.38%) GRC
13 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 13 (0.26%) PSD2
15 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.22%) SEPA
17 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 996 (19.81%) Docker
2 174 (3.46%) Active Directory
3 79 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
4 72 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 34 (0.68%) vSphere
6 29 (0.58%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
8 14 (0.28%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.26%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) Postfix
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) HDFS
13 7 (0.14%) Lustre
13 7 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.12%) Corosync
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.099%) Ceph
15 5 (0.099%) GPFS
15 5 (0.099%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,433 (28.49%) Terraform
2 1,325 (26.35%) Kubernetes
3 480 (9.54%) Ansible
4 342 (6.80%) Grafana
5 283 (5.63%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.97%) Argo
7 71 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
8 68 (1.35%) Puppet
9 63 (1.25%) Istio
10 28 (0.56%) Progress Chef
11 26 (0.52%) Packer
12 25 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
13 23 (0.46%) Kibana
13 23 (0.46%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.44%) HP ALM
15 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 19 (0.38%) Rancher
16 15 (0.30%) FortiGate
17 14 (0.28%) Consul
17 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 881 (17.52%) Microsoft
2 299 (5.95%) Oracle
3 279 (5.55%) Databricks
4 237 (4.71%) Google
5 195 (3.88%) Splunk
6 180 (3.58%) ServiceNow
7 154 (3.06%) Salesforce
8 138 (2.74%) Red Hat
9 122 (2.43%) VMware
10 116 (2.31%) SAP
11 98 (1.95%) Dynatrace
12 75 (1.49%) OpenAI
13 60 (1.19%) CyberArk
14 50 (0.99%) Atlassian
15 44 (0.87%) IBM
16 43 (0.86%) Cisco
16 43 (0.86%) Informatica
17 38 (0.76%) AppDynamics
18 37 (0.74%) Foundry
19 36 (0.72%) Denodo