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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,951 3,106 3,952
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.74% 10.55% 9.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.64% 11.63% 10.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,461 2,290 2,748
10th Percentile £381 £393 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £542 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.49% -1.48% -6.14%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £709 £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 104 21 96
10th Percentile £39.53 £35.00 £55.50
25th Percentile £45.46 £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 £77.50 £82.96 £77.50
90th Percentile £91.45 £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 39,180 26,703 37,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.74% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,749 17,293 24,471
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,327 1,032 2,410
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.85 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%
75th Percentile £65.25 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £34.21
% change year-on-year +39.13% -15.96% -2.26%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 4,250 £525 -4.55% 1,453
UK excluding London +9 2,187 £500 -2.44% 1,091
London 0 2,159 £540 -6.09% 544
Work from Home -3 1,336 £525 -1.59% 728
North of England +6 746 £500 -4.53% 323
South East +1 446 £513 -6.68% 298
Midlands +4 413 £492 -1.60% 132
Yorkshire +2 403 £500 -4.76% 84
West Midlands +7 323 £500 -2.34% 77
South West +14 292 £500 -12.66% 157
North West +1 285 £500 -3.26% 176
Scotland +1 169 £473 +0.80% 67
East of England +22 121 £526 +3.69% 86
East Midlands -1 87 £460 -3.16% 55
North East +7 65 £475 -9.52% 64
Wales +9 36 £425 +47.70% 34
Northern Ireland -2 11 £475 +13.77% 14
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
1 294 (5.94%) Confluence
2 127 (2.57%) Apache Spark
3 113 (2.28%) SharePoint
4 98 (1.98%) SAS
5 91 (1.84%) Apache
6 71 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.75%) nginx
8 36 (0.73%) CMS
9 32 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
10 27 (0.55%) 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 9 (0.18%) WebLogic
14 9 (0.18%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Camunda
16 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 77 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 54 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.65%) 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 (0.061%) 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 79 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 14 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 5 (0.10%) Endur
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.081%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.061%) Findur
9 3 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.061%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.061%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.061%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.061%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 3 (0.061%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,664 (53.81%) Azure
2 1,677 (33.87%) AWS
3 1,481 (29.91%) Azure DevOps
4 870 (17.57%) GitHub
5 636 (12.85%) GCP
6 535 (10.81%) Serverless
7 499 (10.08%) GitHub Actions
8 413 (8.34%) Power Platform
9 286 (5.78%) AWS CloudFormation
10 271 (5.47%) Amazon S3
11 269 (5.43%) AWS Lambda
12 233 (4.71%) Azure Data Factory
12 233 (4.71%) Entra ID
13 231 (4.67%) Azure AKS
14 206 (4.16%) Amazon EKS
15 188 (3.80%) OpenShift
16 177 (3.58%) Azure Monitor
17 166 (3.35%) PaaS
18 158 (3.19%) Dynamics 365
19 155 (3.13%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 204 (4.12%) Firewall
2 111 (2.24%) DNS
3 99 (2.00%) Network Security
4 88 (1.78%) VPN
5 41 (0.83%) TCP/IP
6 30 (0.61%) HTTP
7 25 (0.50%) SSL
8 24 (0.48%) WAN
9 23 (0.46%) DHCP
10 22 (0.44%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.42%) SAN
12 19 (0.38%) BGP
13 18 (0.36%) IPsec
14 16 (0.32%) MPLS
14 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
15 12 (0.24%) Internet
15 12 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 11 (0.22%) 5G
16 11 (0.22%) LAN
16 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (5.27%) PostgreSQL
1 261 (5.27%) Power BI
2 240 (4.85%) SQL Server
3 188 (3.80%) NoSQL
4 168 (3.39%) Data Lake
5 146 (2.95%) Relational Database
6 134 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
7 118 (2.38%) Azure SQL Database
8 116 (2.34%) MongoDB
9 104 (2.10%) Amazon RDS
10 101 (2.04%) DynamoDB
11 97 (1.96%) Metadata
12 84 (1.70%) Delta Lake
13 78 (1.58%) Oracle Database
14 73 (1.47%) Big Data
15 71 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
16 63 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
17 56 (1.13%) MySQL
18 54 (1.09%) Tableau
19 51 (1.03%) Redis
Development Applications
1 733 (14.81%) Jenkins
2 641 (12.95%) JIRA
3 639 (12.91%) Git
4 501 (10.12%) GitLab
5 124 (2.50%) Selenium
6 105 (2.12%) JUnit
7 97 (1.96%) Postman
8 80 (1.62%) SonarQube
9 76 (1.54%) Bitbucket
10 58 (1.17%) Cucumber
11 57 (1.15%) Maven
12 54 (1.09%) REST Assured
13 52 (1.05%) Artifactory
13 52 (1.05%) Cypress.io
14 48 (0.97%) JMeter
15 41 (0.83%) Mockito
16 37 (0.75%) Gatling
17 35 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
18 34 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
19 32 (0.65%) TestRail
General
1 1,312 (26.50%) Social Skills
2 898 (18.14%) Finance
3 638 (12.89%) Public Sector
4 401 (8.10%) Analytical Skills
5 332 (6.71%) Banking
6 162 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 70 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
8 66 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 60 (1.21%) Retail
10 57 (1.15%) Marketing
11 53 (1.07%) Legal
12 51 (1.03%) Financial Institution
13 49 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 47 (0.95%) Front Office
15 44 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 42 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 39 (0.79%) Telecoms
18 33 (0.67%) Military
19 26 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
20 25 (0.50%) Law
Job Titles
1 948 (19.15%) DevOps Engineer
2 773 (15.61%) Developer
3 691 (13.96%) Senior
4 551 (11.13%) Architect
5 419 (8.46%) Lead
6 329 (6.65%) Azure Engineer
7 294 (5.94%) Data Engineer
8 280 (5.66%) Analyst
9 245 (4.95%) AWS Engineer
10 191 (3.86%) AWS DevOps
11 176 (3.55%) Platform Engineer
12 174 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
13 171 (3.45%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 162 (3.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 156 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
16 153 (3.09%) Software Engineer
17 146 (2.95%) Senior DevOps
18 144 (2.91%) Business Analyst
19 138 (2.79%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 137 (2.77%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 489 (9.88%) REST
2 434 (8.77%) .NET
3 304 (6.14%) Node.js
4 299 (6.04%) React
5 281 (5.68%) Kafka
6 278 (5.62%) Spring
7 266 (5.37%) RESTful
8 261 (5.27%) Spring Boot
9 178 (3.60%) AngularJS
10 153 (3.09%) OAuth
11 150 (3.03%) JSON
12 148 (2.99%) Playwright
13 145 (2.93%) PySpark
14 142 (2.87%) YAML
15 121 (2.44%) HTML
16 116 (2.34%) SOAP
17 109 (2.20%) Middleware
18 102 (2.06%) CSS
19 100 (2.02%) .NET Core
20 96 (1.94%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 754 (15.23%) Cloud Native
2 318 (6.42%) Product Ownership
3 177 (3.58%) Distributed Systems
4 124 (2.50%) Onboarding
5 112 (2.26%) Public Cloud
6 101 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
7 100 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
8 91 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
9 72 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
10 61 (1.23%) Virtual Team
11 56 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 51 (1.03%) Data Centre
13 50 (1.01%) Private Cloud
14 46 (0.93%) NHS
15 45 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
16 41 (0.83%) AI Agents
16 41 (0.83%) Data Structures
16 41 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
17 39 (0.79%) Security Posture
18 38 (0.77%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 438 (8.85%) Linux
2 249 (5.03%) Windows
3 82 (1.66%) Unix
4 75 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (0.89%) VMS
6 43 (0.87%) Windows Server
7 23 (0.46%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.26%) Android
9 12 (0.24%) CentOS
10 11 (0.22%) Apple iOS
11 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 6 (0.12%) Solaris
13 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.081%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.081%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.061%) Debian
16 3 (0.061%) Oracle Linux
16 3 (0.061%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,795 (56.45%) CI/CD
2 1,897 (38.32%) Agile
3 1,236 (24.96%) Infrastructure as Code
4 840 (16.97%) Containerisation
4 840 (16.97%) Problem-Solving
5 736 (14.87%) Microservices
6 710 (14.34%) Test Automation
7 665 (13.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 617 (12.46%) Analytics
9 603 (12.18%) Migration
10 556 (11.23%) Scrum
11 552 (11.15%) Observability
12 520 (10.50%) Stakeholder Management
13 516 (10.42%) AI
14 463 (9.35%) Data Modelling
15 454 (9.17%) Software Engineering
16 403 (8.14%) Platform Engineering
17 401 (8.10%) Mentoring
18 389 (7.86%) Data Pipeline
19 368 (7.43%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,413 (28.54%) Python
2 1,035 (20.90%) SQL
3 651 (13.15%) Java
4 506 (10.22%) C#
5 416 (8.40%) JavaScript
6 351 (7.09%) PowerShell
7 325 (6.56%) Bash
8 288 (5.82%) TypeScript
9 167 (3.37%) Bicep
10 110 (2.22%) Go
11 89 (1.80%) PL/SQL
12 76 (1.54%) Scala
13 59 (1.19%) Shell Script
14 47 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 42 (0.85%) Groovy
16 39 (0.79%) C++
17 37 (0.75%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.73%) Ruby
19 27 (0.55%) Perl
20 22 (0.44%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,564 (31.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,302 (26.30%) SC Cleared
3 341 (6.89%) Degree
4 207 (4.18%) Azure Certification
5 158 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 148 (2.99%) DV Cleared
8 136 (2.75%) AWS Certification
9 77 (1.56%) CISSP
10 58 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 57 (1.15%) CISM
12 56 (1.13%) ISTQB
12 56 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 49 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.85%) PMP
16 36 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 31 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
19 23 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 442 (8.93%) QA
2 229 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 181 (3.66%) GDPR
4 139 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 125 (2.52%) Accessibility
6 124 (2.50%) NIST
7 66 (1.33%) NCSC
8 42 (0.85%) WCAG
9 40 (0.81%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.71%) PMO
11 30 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 30 (0.61%) SLA
12 19 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.30%) GRC
13 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 14 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.24%) PSD2
16 10 (0.20%) HL7
16 10 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,028 (20.76%) Docker
2 177 (3.58%) Active Directory
3 77 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.75%) vSphere
6 31 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.30%) 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%) RACF
14 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,401 (28.30%) Terraform
2 1,322 (26.70%) Kubernetes
3 464 (9.37%) Ansible
4 319 (6.44%) Grafana
5 261 (5.27%) Prometheus
6 102 (2.06%) Argo
7 70 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
8 67 (1.35%) Puppet
9 64 (1.29%) Istio
10 30 (0.61%) Packer
11 27 (0.55%) vCenter Server
12 26 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
14 23 (0.46%) Kibana
15 21 (0.42%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.40%) Rancher
17 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 18 (0.36%) FortiGate
19 15 (0.30%) Consul
20 13 (0.26%) linkerd
Vendors
1 872 (17.61%) Microsoft
2 331 (6.69%) Oracle
3 288 (5.82%) Databricks
4 237 (4.79%) Google
5 189 (3.82%) Splunk
6 175 (3.53%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.91%) Salesforce
8 141 (2.85%) Red Hat
9 130 (2.63%) VMware
10 110 (2.22%) SAP
11 84 (1.70%) OpenAI
12 79 (1.60%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.37%) Atlassian
14 59 (1.19%) CyberArk
15 47 (0.95%) IBM
16 45 (0.91%) Cisco
17 44 (0.89%) Talend
18 40 (0.81%) Denodo
19 36 (0.73%) Foundry
20 34 (0.69%) Informatica