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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,644 3,704 3,809
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.29% 11.22% 9.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.19% 12.40% 11.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,926 2,589 2,534
10th Percentile £381 £363 £381
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £623 £623 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 23 68
10th Percentile £38.25 £44.25 £54.25
25th Percentile £56.50 £56.50 £65.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £78.00 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £91.60 £95.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +7.69%

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 46,295 29,870 32,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,040 18,573 20,019
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,185 1,844 1,407
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +1.18%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 -1 4,788 £525 - 4,408
London 0 2,531 £550 - 2,287
UK excluding London -4 2,406 £500 - 2,390
Work from Home -1 1,605 £525 +1.69% 2,038
North of England -2 785 £500 +5.26% 715
South East -12 446 £530 +6.00% 559
Midlands -6 428 £488 -2.50% 286
Yorkshire -2 388 £500 +2.56% 212
West Midlands -8 344 £500 -3.94% 175
South West +3 322 £550 +4.76% 302
North West -3 304 £528 +15.24% 404
Scotland -2 227 £475 -4.62% 183
East of England +6 160 £504 -4.00% 206
North East +10 108 £450 -18.18% 103
East Midlands -4 81 £459 +1.94% 111
Wales -8 47 £400 +6.67% 74
Northern Ireland +20 22 £450 +2.27% 78
Channel Islands - 5 £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
1 339 (6.01%) Confluence
2 160 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.32%) Apache Airflow
4 129 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 113 (2.00%) Apache
6 61 (1.08%) SAS
7 45 (0.80%) CMS
8 42 (0.74%) Jupyter
9 28 (0.50%) nginx
10 26 (0.46%) IIS
11 20 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.28%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
14 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.18%) WebSphere
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 65 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (0.90%) MS Visio
3 49 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 33 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.14%) Windchill
8 5 (0.089%) Notion
8 5 (0.089%) Trello
9 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
9 2 (0.035%) Mingle
10 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.018%) Sketch
10 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 81 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 44 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.18%) Magento
7 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.11%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
9 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
11 4 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
12 3 (0.053%) Endur
12 3 (0.053%) Maximo
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
12 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
12 3 (0.053%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 3,053 (54.09%) Azure
2 2,042 (36.18%) AWS
3 1,742 (30.86%) Azure DevOps
4 975 (17.27%) GitHub
5 749 (13.27%) GCP
6 617 (10.93%) GitHub Actions
7 492 (8.72%) Power Platform
8 466 (8.26%) Serverless
9 309 (5.47%) Amazon S3
10 292 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
11 260 (4.61%) Entra ID
12 255 (4.52%) Amazon EKS
13 250 (4.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 240 (4.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 215 (3.81%) Azure AKS
16 209 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 196 (3.47%) Amazon EC2
18 191 (3.38%) Azure Data Factory
19 185 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
20 169 (2.99%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 245 (4.34%) Firewall
2 174 (3.08%) DNS
3 121 (2.14%) VPN
4 114 (2.02%) Network Security
5 74 (1.31%) TCP/IP
6 58 (1.03%) SSL
7 52 (0.92%) DHCP
8 47 (0.83%) WAN
9 38 (0.67%) HTTP
10 37 (0.66%) BGP
11 29 (0.51%) SD-WAN
12 28 (0.50%) Internet
12 28 (0.50%) OSPF
12 28 (0.50%) SSH
13 23 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
14 21 (0.37%) LAN
14 21 (0.37%) VLAN
15 18 (0.32%) SAN
16 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
16 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (5.65%) Power BI
2 300 (5.32%) PostgreSQL
3 291 (5.16%) SQL Server
4 214 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
5 190 (3.37%) MongoDB
6 183 (3.24%) NoSQL
7 178 (3.15%) Data Lake
8 167 (2.96%) Relational Database
9 147 (2.60%) Amazon RDS
10 132 (2.34%) Metadata
11 95 (1.68%) Azure SQL Database
11 95 (1.68%) DynamoDB
12 90 (1.59%) MySQL
12 90 (1.59%) Oracle Database
13 88 (1.56%) Delta Lake
14 84 (1.49%) Redis
15 68 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
16 62 (1.10%) Big Data
16 62 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 57 (1.01%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 849 (15.04%) Git
2 795 (14.09%) Jenkins
3 663 (11.75%) JIRA
4 648 (11.48%) GitLab
5 145 (2.57%) Selenium
6 102 (1.81%) SonarQube
7 98 (1.74%) Postman
8 97 (1.72%) JUnit
8 97 (1.72%) Maven
9 73 (1.29%) REST Assured
10 72 (1.28%) Cucumber
11 71 (1.26%) Bitbucket
12 70 (1.24%) Cypress.io
13 68 (1.20%) Gradle
14 66 (1.17%) JMeter
15 53 (0.94%) Claude Code
16 48 (0.85%) Mockito
17 44 (0.78%) Gatling
18 43 (0.76%) Visual Studio
19 39 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,463 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 1,005 (17.81%) Finance
3 808 (14.32%) Public Sector
4 526 (9.32%) Analytical Skills
5 395 (7.00%) Banking
6 173 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 109 (1.93%) Retail
8 89 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.13%) Legal
11 59 (1.05%) Aerospace
11 59 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
12 55 (0.97%) Military
13 54 (0.96%) Marketing
14 50 (0.89%) Telecoms
15 49 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 48 (0.85%) Manufacturing
17 45 (0.80%) Law
18 39 (0.69%) Financial Institution
18 39 (0.69%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,146 (20.30%) DevOps Engineer
2 922 (16.34%) Developer
3 856 (15.17%) Senior
4 652 (11.55%) Architect
5 532 (9.43%) Lead
6 353 (6.25%) Azure Engineer
7 309 (5.47%) Data Engineer
8 268 (4.75%) Analyst
9 260 (4.61%) AWS Engineer
10 228 (4.04%) Platform Engineer
11 209 (3.70%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 206 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
13 201 (3.56%) Senior DevOps
14 197 (3.49%) Java Developer
15 186 (3.30%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 184 (3.26%) AWS DevOps
17 181 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
18 173 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 155 (2.75%) Senior Developer
20 144 (2.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,692 (29.98%) Terraform
2 636 (11.27%) REST
3 474 (8.40%) .NET
4 392 (6.95%) Kafka
5 363 (6.43%) RESTful
6 308 (5.46%) Spring
7 304 (5.39%) Spring Boot
8 294 (5.21%) React
9 206 (3.65%) Node.js
10 195 (3.45%) OAuth
11 187 (3.31%) JSON
12 158 (2.80%) Playwright
13 155 (2.75%) PySpark
14 144 (2.55%) HTML
15 137 (2.43%) OAuth2
16 132 (2.34%) CSS
17 131 (2.32%) SOAP
18 129 (2.29%) .NET Framework
19 122 (2.16%) Middleware
20 118 (2.09%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,041 (18.44%) Cloud Native
2 431 (7.64%) Product Ownership
3 266 (4.71%) Distributed Systems
4 212 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
5 207 (3.67%) Onboarding
6 150 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 144 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (1.91%) AI Agents
9 97 (1.72%) Management Information System
10 85 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.40%) Public Cloud
12 78 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 76 (1.35%) Data Structures
14 74 (1.31%) Replication
14 74 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.29%) Data Centre
16 61 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
16 61 (1.08%) PKI
16 61 (1.08%) Virtual Team
17 53 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 561 (9.94%) Linux
2 316 (5.60%) Windows
3 122 (2.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 109 (1.93%) Unix
5 98 (1.74%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 33 (0.58%) VMS
8 30 (0.53%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 16 (0.28%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.12%) AIX
16 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
17 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
18 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,455 (61.22%) CI/CD
2 2,298 (40.72%) Agile
3 1,682 (29.80%) Infrastructure as Code
4 964 (17.08%) Continuous Improvement
5 954 (16.90%) Containerisation
5 954 (16.90%) Stakeholder Management
6 913 (16.18%) Test Automation
7 889 (15.75%) Problem-Solving
8 885 (15.68%) AI
9 837 (14.83%) Microservices
10 791 (14.01%) Observability
11 770 (13.64%) Platform Engineering
12 738 (13.08%) Software Engineering
13 693 (12.28%) Scrum
14 691 (12.24%) Migration
15 627 (11.11%) Technical Leadership
16 589 (10.44%) Analytics
17 533 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 496 (8.79%) Roadmaps
19 490 (8.68%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,629 (28.86%) Python
2 986 (17.47%) SQL
3 829 (14.69%) Java
4 495 (8.77%) C#
5 494 (8.75%) Bash
5 494 (8.75%) PowerShell
6 467 (8.27%) JavaScript
7 315 (5.58%) TypeScript
8 262 (4.64%) Bicep
9 126 (2.23%) Go
10 79 (1.40%) Shell Script
11 68 (1.20%) Scala
12 67 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 63 (1.12%) Groovy
14 61 (1.08%) Apex Code
14 61 (1.08%) PL/SQL
15 39 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 34 (0.60%) Perl
17 32 (0.57%) C++
18 26 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,824 (32.32%) Security Cleared
2 1,533 (27.16%) SC Cleared
3 368 (6.52%) Degree
4 251 (4.45%) Azure Certification
5 242 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 236 (4.18%) DV Cleared
7 194 (3.44%) AWS Certification
8 149 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 77 (1.36%) CISSP
11 62 (1.10%) ISTQB
12 54 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
13 51 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 50 (0.89%) PMP
15 45 (0.80%) Master's Degree
15 45 (0.80%) PMI Certification
16 31 (0.55%) CISM
17 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 551 (9.76%) QA
2 286 (5.07%) Data Quality
3 212 (3.76%) Accessibility
4 129 (2.29%) GDPR
5 90 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.47%) WCAG
7 74 (1.31%) NIST
8 55 (0.97%) NCSC
9 45 (0.80%) PMO
10 38 (0.67%) SLA
11 29 (0.51%) GRC
11 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 22 (0.39%) ISO 20022
13 21 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.23%) SEPA
15 13 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,165 (20.64%) Docker
2 165 (2.92%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (0.57%) vSphere
6 25 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (0.41%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 15 (0.27%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.21%) Squid
11 11 (0.19%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.14%) zsh
14 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 6 (0.11%) Corosync
14 6 (0.11%) KVM
14 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.11%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,550 (27.46%) Kubernetes
2 535 (9.48%) Ansible
3 370 (6.56%) Grafana
4 316 (5.60%) Prometheus
5 74 (1.31%) Argo
6 56 (0.99%) Puppet
7 48 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 48 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
8 46 (0.82%) Progress Chef
9 36 (0.64%) Packer
10 32 (0.57%) Kibana
11 29 (0.51%) Istio
12 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
13 20 (0.35%) Kubeflow
14 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.30%) SCCM
16 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 13 (0.23%) Consul
17 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,114 (19.74%) Microsoft
2 308 (5.46%) Databricks
2 308 (5.46%) Oracle
3 296 (5.24%) Google
4 209 (3.70%) ServiceNow
5 190 (3.37%) Splunk
6 173 (3.07%) Salesforce
7 147 (2.60%) Dynatrace
8 131 (2.32%) VMware
9 113 (2.00%) SAP
10 100 (1.77%) Red Hat
11 75 (1.33%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.29%) IBM
13 65 (1.15%) MuleSoft
14 58 (1.03%) Foundry
15 52 (0.92%) Cisco
16 46 (0.82%) Informatica
17 42 (0.74%) AppDynamics
18 41 (0.73%) Okta
19 39 (0.69%) Atlassian