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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,977 3,115 3,955
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.72% 10.55% 9.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.64% 11.62% 10.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,481 2,288 2,736
10th Percentile £383 £389 £400
25th Percentile £433 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.28% -2.18% -5.98%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £705 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £533
% change year-on-year -1.96% -4.23% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 21 100
10th Percentile £39.53 £35.00 £55.90
25th Percentile £45.87 £66.25 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £76.94 £82.96 £79.22
90th Percentile £90.05 £87.50 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.96% +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 39,369 26,799 37,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.74% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,829 17,326 24,410
10th Percentile £318 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,054 2,423
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £29.90 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.11% -14.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.25 £58.70
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.18 £35.00
% change year-on-year +47.46% -19.49% -6.17%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 4,272 £525 -4.55% 1,296
UK excluding London +9 2,194 £500 -1.96% 1,036
London +1 2,176 £538 -6.43% 476
Work from Home -4 1,331 £523 -0.85% 692
North of England +6 750 £500 -3.82% 303
South East +1 452 £510 -7.27% 288
Yorkshire 0 408 £500 -4.28% 73
Midlands +2 390 £491 -1.80% 120
South West +14 302 £500 -11.89% 128
West Midlands +7 298 £500 -2.34% 59
North West +4 283 £500 -2.72% 166
Scotland +2 174 £475 +1.33% 55
East of England +27 125 £525 +1.94% 101
East Midlands +2 89 £464 -2.37% 60
North East +5 66 £475 -9.52% 64
Wales +8 36 £425 +57.41% 27
Northern Ireland -2 11 £475 +13.77% 32
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
1 292 (5.87%) Confluence
2 129 (2.59%) Apache Spark
3 112 (2.25%) SharePoint
4 91 (1.83%) Apache
5 77 (1.55%) SAS
6 73 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.76%) nginx
8 35 (0.70%) CMS
9 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
10 27 (0.54%) OpenStack
11 22 (0.44%) IIS
12 15 (0.30%) Mendix
13 11 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
14 10 (0.20%) WebLogic
14 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Camunda
15 8 (0.16%) JBoss
Applications
1 76 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
3 52 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.10%) Trello
7 5 (0.10%) 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 76 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.080%) Endur
7 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
8 3 (0.060%) Findur
8 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 3 (0.060%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,709 (54.43%) Azure
2 1,705 (34.26%) AWS
3 1,497 (30.08%) Azure DevOps
4 868 (17.44%) GitHub
5 640 (12.86%) GCP
6 534 (10.73%) Serverless
7 500 (10.05%) GitHub Actions
8 415 (8.34%) Power Platform
9 289 (5.81%) AWS CloudFormation
10 273 (5.49%) Amazon S3
11 266 (5.34%) AWS Lambda
12 235 (4.72%) Azure AKS
13 230 (4.62%) Azure Data Factory
13 230 (4.62%) Entra ID
14 207 (4.16%) Amazon EKS
15 181 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
16 180 (3.62%) OpenShift
17 165 (3.32%) PaaS
18 156 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
19 152 (3.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 209 (4.20%) Firewall
2 112 (2.25%) DNS
3 95 (1.91%) Network Security
4 87 (1.75%) VPN
5 41 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 31 (0.62%) HTTP
7 25 (0.50%) SSL
7 25 (0.50%) WAN
8 23 (0.46%) DHCP
8 23 (0.46%) SD-WAN
9 21 (0.42%) SAN
10 19 (0.38%) BGP
11 18 (0.36%) IPsec
12 16 (0.32%) MPLS
12 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
13 12 (0.24%) Internet
13 12 (0.24%) LAN
13 12 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
15 10 (0.20%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (5.32%) Power BI
2 255 (5.12%) PostgreSQL
3 241 (4.84%) SQL Server
4 185 (3.72%) NoSQL
5 169 (3.40%) Data Lake
6 147 (2.95%) Relational Database
7 135 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 117 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 115 (2.31%) MongoDB
10 106 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (1.99%) DynamoDB
12 94 (1.89%) Metadata
13 88 (1.77%) Delta Lake
14 77 (1.55%) Big Data
15 71 (1.43%) Oracle Database
16 70 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
17 61 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
18 54 (1.08%) Tableau
19 53 (1.06%) MySQL
20 50 (1.00%) Redis
Development Applications
1 723 (14.53%) Jenkins
2 636 (12.78%) JIRA
3 634 (12.74%) Git
4 494 (9.93%) GitLab
5 111 (2.23%) Selenium
6 96 (1.93%) Postman
7 93 (1.87%) JUnit
8 80 (1.61%) SonarQube
9 78 (1.57%) Bitbucket
10 58 (1.17%) Cucumber
11 57 (1.15%) Maven
12 53 (1.06%) Artifactory
13 52 (1.04%) Cypress.io
13 52 (1.04%) REST Assured
14 50 (1.00%) JMeter
15 38 (0.76%) Mockito
15 38 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
16 37 (0.74%) Gatling
17 33 (0.66%) TestRail
18 32 (0.64%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,312 (26.36%) Social Skills
2 905 (18.18%) Finance
3 640 (12.86%) Public Sector
4 403 (8.10%) Analytical Skills
5 333 (6.69%) Banking
6 158 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
7 69 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
9 62 (1.25%) Retail
10 55 (1.11%) Marketing
11 54 (1.08%) Legal
12 52 (1.04%) Financial Institution
13 49 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 47 (0.94%) Front Office
15 44 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
16 42 (0.84%) Investment Banking
17 39 (0.78%) Telecoms
18 33 (0.66%) Military
19 26 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
20 25 (0.50%) Law
Job Titles
1 983 (19.75%) DevOps Engineer
2 764 (15.35%) Developer
3 692 (13.90%) Senior
4 557 (11.19%) Architect
5 417 (8.38%) Lead
6 338 (6.79%) Azure Engineer
7 296 (5.95%) Data Engineer
8 283 (5.69%) Analyst
9 246 (4.94%) AWS Engineer
10 193 (3.88%) AWS DevOps
11 181 (3.64%) Platform Engineer
12 177 (3.56%) Cloud Engineer
13 174 (3.50%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 170 (3.42%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 163 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
16 150 (3.01%) Senior DevOps
17 148 (2.97%) Software Engineer
18 143 (2.87%) Business Analyst
19 140 (2.81%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 136 (2.73%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 467 (9.38%) REST
2 447 (8.98%) .NET
3 298 (5.99%) Node.js
3 298 (5.99%) React
4 276 (5.55%) Spring
5 275 (5.53%) Kafka
6 261 (5.24%) RESTful
7 259 (5.20%) Spring Boot
8 180 (3.62%) AngularJS
9 155 (3.11%) OAuth
10 153 (3.07%) Playwright
11 148 (2.97%) JSON
12 146 (2.93%) PySpark
13 137 (2.75%) YAML
14 121 (2.43%) HTML
15 112 (2.25%) SOAP
16 111 (2.23%) Middleware
17 103 (2.07%) CSS
18 102 (2.05%) .NET Core
19 99 (1.99%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 766 (15.39%) Cloud Native
2 314 (6.31%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 112 (2.25%) Public Cloud
6 104 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
7 101 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
8 91 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
9 74 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.25%) Virtual Team
11 58 (1.17%) Management Information System
12 52 (1.04%) Data Centre
13 51 (1.02%) Private Cloud
14 49 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
15 46 (0.92%) NHS
16 42 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 41 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
18 40 (0.80%) AI Agents
18 40 (0.80%) Low-Code
19 38 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 451 (9.06%) Linux
2 251 (5.04%) Windows
3 87 (1.75%) Unix
4 79 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 45 (0.90%) Windows Server
6 43 (0.86%) VMS
7 23 (0.46%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.24%) Android
8 12 (0.24%) CentOS
9 11 (0.22%) Apple iOS
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 (0.10%) 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%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,802 (56.30%) CI/CD
2 1,881 (37.79%) Agile
3 1,249 (25.10%) Infrastructure as Code
4 837 (16.82%) Containerisation
5 822 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
6 735 (14.77%) Microservices
7 703 (14.12%) Test Automation
8 662 (13.30%) Continuous Improvement
9 610 (12.26%) Migration
10 600 (12.06%) Analytics
11 558 (11.21%) Observability
12 546 (10.97%) Scrum
13 517 (10.39%) Stakeholder Management
14 516 (10.37%) AI
15 463 (9.30%) Software Engineering
16 459 (9.22%) Data Modelling
17 414 (8.32%) Platform Engineering
18 397 (7.98%) Mentoring
19 380 (7.64%) Data Pipeline
20 374 (7.51%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,410 (28.33%) Python
2 1,027 (20.63%) SQL
3 641 (12.88%) Java
4 514 (10.33%) C#
5 407 (8.18%) JavaScript
6 348 (6.99%) PowerShell
7 336 (6.75%) Bash
8 287 (5.77%) TypeScript
9 170 (3.42%) Bicep
10 111 (2.23%) Go
11 87 (1.75%) PL/SQL
12 72 (1.45%) Scala
13 63 (1.27%) Shell Script
14 44 (0.88%) Groovy
14 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.78%) Apex Code
15 39 (0.78%) C++
16 35 (0.70%) Ruby
17 29 (0.58%) Perl
18 22 (0.44%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,576 (31.67%) Security Cleared
2 1,315 (26.42%) SC Cleared
3 340 (6.83%) Degree
4 209 (4.20%) Azure Certification
5 159 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 150 (3.01%) DV Cleared
8 144 (2.89%) AWS Certification
9 78 (1.57%) CISSP
10 58 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 57 (1.15%) CISM
11 57 (1.15%) ISTQB
12 56 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 51 (1.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (0.94%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.84%) PMP
16 37 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
17 31 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
19 24 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (8.84%) QA
2 229 (4.60%) Data Quality
3 181 (3.64%) GDPR
4 139 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 124 (2.49%) NIST
6 123 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 66 (1.33%) NCSC
8 44 (0.88%) WCAG
9 42 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.70%) PMO
11 31 (0.62%) SLA
12 29 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.38%) HIPAA
14 17 (0.34%) GRC
15 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 13 (0.26%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.24%) PSD2
18 10 (0.20%) HL7
18 10 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,014 (20.37%) Docker
2 175 (3.52%) Active Directory
3 75 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (0.70%) vSphere
6 30 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 13 (0.26%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) Postfix
11 11 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) HDFS
12 8 (0.16%) Lustre
12 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.12%) Ceph
13 6 (0.12%) GPFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.10%) Corosync
14 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,420 (28.53%) Terraform
2 1,313 (26.38%) Kubernetes
3 479 (9.62%) Ansible
4 327 (6.57%) Grafana
5 271 (5.45%) Prometheus
6 101 (2.03%) Argo
7 72 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.39%) Puppet
9 63 (1.27%) Istio
10 31 (0.62%) Packer
11 27 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 25 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
12 25 (0.50%) vCenter Server
13 23 (0.46%) Kibana
14 21 (0.42%) HP ALM
14 21 (0.42%) Rancher
15 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 18 (0.36%) Consul
17 17 (0.34%) FortiGate
18 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 884 (17.76%) Microsoft
2 317 (6.37%) Oracle
3 287 (5.77%) Databricks
4 229 (4.60%) Google
5 192 (3.86%) Splunk
6 178 (3.58%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.89%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.79%) Red Hat
9 127 (2.55%) VMware
10 112 (2.25%) SAP
11 84 (1.69%) Dynatrace
12 80 (1.61%) OpenAI
13 62 (1.25%) Atlassian
14 57 (1.15%) CyberArk
15 48 (0.96%) IBM
16 45 (0.90%) Cisco
17 36 (0.72%) Foundry
18 34 (0.68%) Informatica
18 34 (0.68%) Talend
19 33 (0.66%) AppDynamics