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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,968 3,142 3,967
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.00% 10.75% 8.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.86% 11.87% 10.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,470 2,316 2,768
10th Percentile £381 £393 £400
25th Percentile £431 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% - -6.34%
75th Percentile £604 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 23 90
10th Percentile £39.53 £29.45 £54.63
25th Percentile £45.46 £57.82 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £76.31 £81.86 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.50 £87.50 £87.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.59% +3.85% -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 38,631 26,466 38,100
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.54% 90.55% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,504 17,183 24,720
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,266 983 2,350
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.96 £31.52 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.07% -4.48% -11.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.83
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.10 £70.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.55 £30.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +18.50% -7.69% -12.87%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +5 4,263 £525 -4.55% 1,414
UK excluding London +9 2,208 £500 -2.44% 1,103
London 0 2,153 £544 -5.39% 512
Work from Home -4 1,359 £525 -1.59% 782
North of England +5 759 £500 -4.76% 306
South East 0 447 £525 -4.55% 307
Midlands +5 428 £492 -1.54% 142
Yorkshire 0 405 £500 -4.76% 86
West Midlands +7 335 £500 - 98
North West +4 298 £490 -6.67% 159
South West +13 286 £525 -8.30% 165
Scotland +5 174 £450 - 52
East of England +21 118 £550 +6.80% 92
East Midlands +5 90 £450 -5.26% 44
North East +3 61 £475 -9.52% 63
Wales +10 46 £468 +108.41% 43
Northern Ireland -9 10 £475 +13.77% 10
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1

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
1 297 (5.98%) Confluence
2 119 (2.40%) Apache Spark
3 103 (2.07%) SharePoint
4 101 (2.03%) SAS
5 92 (1.85%) Apache
6 72 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.68%) CMS
7 34 (0.68%) nginx
8 32 (0.64%) OpenStack
9 28 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
10 23 (0.46%) IIS
11 15 (0.30%) Mendix
12 11 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
13 9 (0.18%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.16%) Camunda
15 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 87 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 54 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 25 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.12%) Weka
8 5 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 74 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 6 (0.12%) Endur
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 4 (0.081%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.081%) SAP CO
8 4 (0.081%) SAP FI
8 4 (0.081%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.060%) Magento
9 3 (0.060%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,673 (53.80%) Azure
2 1,710 (34.42%) AWS
3 1,484 (29.87%) Azure DevOps
4 911 (18.34%) GitHub
5 676 (13.61%) GCP
6 573 (11.53%) Serverless
7 507 (10.21%) GitHub Actions
8 419 (8.43%) Power Platform
9 304 (6.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 282 (5.68%) AWS Lambda
11 273 (5.50%) Amazon S3
12 240 (4.83%) Azure Data Factory
13 227 (4.57%) Entra ID
14 223 (4.49%) Azure AKS
15 208 (4.19%) Amazon EKS
16 201 (4.05%) OpenShift
17 184 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
18 169 (3.40%) Dynamics 365
19 167 (3.36%) PaaS
20 158 (3.18%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 214 (4.31%) Firewall
2 116 (2.33%) DNS
3 102 (2.05%) Network Security
4 86 (1.73%) VPN
5 41 (0.83%) TCP/IP
6 27 (0.54%) HTTP
6 27 (0.54%) SSL
7 25 (0.50%) WAN
8 24 (0.48%) SD-WAN
9 22 (0.44%) DHCP
10 19 (0.38%) SAN
11 18 (0.36%) BGP
12 17 (0.34%) IPsec
13 16 (0.32%) MPLS
14 14 (0.28%) Reverse Proxy
15 13 (0.26%) Internet
16 12 (0.24%) 5G
16 12 (0.24%) LAN
17 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
18 10 (0.20%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
2 258 (5.19%) Power BI
3 232 (4.67%) SQL Server
4 197 (3.97%) NoSQL
5 173 (3.48%) Data Lake
6 147 (2.96%) Relational Database
7 131 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
8 120 (2.42%) Amazon RDS
9 119 (2.40%) Azure SQL Database
10 112 (2.25%) MongoDB
11 96 (1.93%) DynamoDB
12 89 (1.79%) Metadata
13 79 (1.59%) Delta Lake
14 77 (1.55%) Oracle Database
15 72 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
16 66 (1.33%) Big Data
17 59 (1.19%) MySQL
18 57 (1.15%) Amazon Athena
18 57 (1.15%) Tableau
19 52 (1.05%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 783 (15.76%) Jenkins
2 652 (13.12%) Git
3 641 (12.90%) JIRA
4 542 (10.91%) GitLab
5 141 (2.84%) Selenium
6 110 (2.21%) JUnit
7 96 (1.93%) Postman
8 79 (1.59%) Bitbucket
9 74 (1.49%) SonarQube
10 64 (1.29%) Cucumber
11 55 (1.11%) JMeter
11 55 (1.11%) Maven
12 54 (1.09%) Cypress.io
12 54 (1.09%) REST Assured
13 53 (1.07%) Artifactory
14 42 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
15 39 (0.79%) Mockito
16 36 (0.72%) Visual Studio
17 34 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
18 33 (0.66%) Liquibase
General
1 1,351 (27.19%) Social Skills
2 920 (18.52%) Finance
3 654 (13.16%) Public Sector
4 405 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
5 362 (7.29%) Banking
6 168 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
7 72 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
8 66 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 61 (1.23%) Financial Institution
9 61 (1.23%) Retail
10 59 (1.19%) Marketing
11 53 (1.07%) Legal
12 52 (1.05%) Front Office
12 52 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
13 48 (0.97%) Investment Banking
14 45 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
15 41 (0.83%) Telecoms
16 31 (0.62%) Military
17 27 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
18 24 (0.48%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 915 (18.42%) DevOps Engineer
2 788 (15.86%) Developer
3 695 (13.99%) Senior
4 552 (11.11%) Architect
5 423 (8.51%) Lead
6 321 (6.46%) Azure Engineer
7 297 (5.98%) Data Engineer
8 271 (5.45%) Analyst
9 251 (5.05%) AWS Engineer
10 193 (3.88%) AWS DevOps
11 184 (3.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 183 (3.68%) Platform Engineer
13 168 (3.38%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 158 (3.18%) Software Engineer
14 158 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
15 153 (3.08%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 151 (3.04%) Senior Developer
17 143 (2.88%) Senior DevOps
18 134 (2.70%) Senior DevOps Engineer
19 132 (2.66%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 530 (10.67%) REST
2 430 (8.66%) .NET
3 316 (6.36%) React
4 313 (6.30%) Node.js
5 285 (5.74%) Kafka
6 276 (5.56%) RESTful
7 275 (5.54%) Spring
8 257 (5.17%) Spring Boot
9 182 (3.66%) AngularJS
10 154 (3.10%) JSON
11 153 (3.08%) OAuth
12 144 (2.90%) YAML
13 143 (2.88%) Playwright
13 143 (2.88%) PySpark
14 126 (2.54%) HTML
15 123 (2.48%) SOAP
16 120 (2.42%) Elastic Stack
17 115 (2.31%) Middleware
18 106 (2.13%) CSS
19 98 (1.97%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 740 (14.90%) Cloud Native
2 308 (6.20%) Product Ownership
3 191 (3.84%) Distributed Systems
4 127 (2.56%) Onboarding
4 127 (2.56%) Public Cloud
5 101 (2.03%) Hybrid Cloud
5 101 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
6 90 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
7 71 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
8 64 (1.29%) Virtual Team
9 57 (1.15%) Management Information System
10 51 (1.03%) Data Centre
11 48 (0.97%) NHS
11 48 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
12 44 (0.89%) Private Cloud
13 43 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 42 (0.85%) AI Agents
15 40 (0.81%) Security Posture
16 37 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
17 36 (0.72%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 477 (9.60%) Linux
2 255 (5.13%) Windows
3 89 (1.79%) Unix
4 71 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 48 (0.97%) VMS
6 44 (0.89%) Windows Server
7 25 (0.50%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.28%) CentOS
9 9 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 8 (0.16%) Android
11 7 (0.14%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.10%) Solaris
12 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.081%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.081%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.060%) Rocky
14 3 (0.060%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,822 (56.80%) CI/CD
2 1,914 (38.53%) Agile
3 1,262 (25.40%) Infrastructure as Code
4 883 (17.77%) Containerisation
5 872 (17.55%) Problem-Solving
6 749 (15.08%) Microservices
7 745 (15.00%) Test Automation
8 661 (13.31%) Continuous Improvement
9 628 (12.64%) Analytics
10 591 (11.90%) Migration
11 550 (11.07%) Observability
12 548 (11.03%) Scrum
13 528 (10.63%) AI
14 525 (10.57%) Stakeholder Management
15 457 (9.20%) Data Modelling
16 445 (8.96%) Software Engineering
17 398 (8.01%) Mentoring
18 390 (7.85%) Data Pipeline
19 384 (7.73%) Platform Engineering
20 358 (7.21%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,477 (29.73%) Python
2 1,039 (20.91%) SQL
3 648 (13.04%) Java
4 514 (10.35%) C#
5 436 (8.78%) JavaScript
6 377 (7.59%) PowerShell
7 351 (7.07%) Bash
8 305 (6.14%) TypeScript
9 166 (3.34%) Bicep
10 132 (2.66%) Go
11 84 (1.69%) PL/SQL
12 69 (1.39%) Scala
13 60 (1.21%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.97%) T-SQL
15 45 (0.91%) Groovy
16 42 (0.85%) C++
17 41 (0.83%) Ruby
18 35 (0.70%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.56%) Perl
20 24 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,561 (31.42%) Security Cleared
2 1,288 (25.93%) SC Cleared
3 362 (7.29%) Degree
4 206 (4.15%) Azure Certification
5 177 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (3.16%) DV Cleared
7 144 (2.90%) AWS Certification
8 141 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
9 86 (1.73%) CISSP
10 74 (1.49%) Master's Degree
11 64 (1.29%) ISTQB
12 63 (1.27%) CISM
13 57 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
14 56 (1.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 49 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 41 (0.83%) PMP
17 36 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
18 31 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 26 (0.52%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
20 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (8.86%) QA
2 224 (4.51%) Data Quality
3 193 (3.88%) GDPR
4 164 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 132 (2.66%) NIST
6 122 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 76 (1.53%) NCSC
8 43 (0.87%) PCI DSS
8 43 (0.87%) WCAG
9 39 (0.79%) PMO
10 31 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.62%) SLA
11 22 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 16 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 16 (0.32%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 14 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 13 (0.26%) GRC
15 13 (0.26%) PSD2
16 11 (0.22%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,085 (21.84%) Docker
2 184 (3.70%) Active Directory
3 78 (1.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 46 (0.93%) vSphere
6 35 (0.70%) VMware NSX
7 16 (0.32%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.24%) Squid
10 10 (0.20%) Postfix
11 9 (0.18%) Lustre
11 9 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.14%) GPFS
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) Ceph
14 6 (0.12%) HDFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.10%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,439 (28.97%) Terraform
2 1,354 (27.25%) Kubernetes
3 490 (9.86%) Ansible
4 341 (6.86%) Grafana
5 279 (5.62%) Prometheus
6 102 (2.05%) Argo
7 76 (1.53%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (1.41%) Puppet
9 63 (1.27%) Istio
10 32 (0.64%) Progress Chef
11 29 (0.58%) Packer
11 29 (0.58%) vCenter Server
12 24 (0.48%) Kibana
13 21 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 21 (0.42%) HP ALM
14 19 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
14 19 (0.38%) Rancher
15 18 (0.36%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.36%) Podman
16 16 (0.32%) Consul
Vendors
1 859 (17.29%) Microsoft
2 337 (6.78%) Oracle
3 293 (5.90%) Databricks
4 255 (5.13%) Google
5 205 (4.13%) Splunk
6 164 (3.30%) ServiceNow
7 143 (2.88%) Red Hat
8 140 (2.82%) Salesforce
9 131 (2.64%) VMware
10 109 (2.19%) SAP
11 84 (1.69%) OpenAI
12 75 (1.51%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.37%) Atlassian
14 62 (1.25%) CyberArk
15 47 (0.95%) IBM
16 46 (0.93%) Talend
17 44 (0.89%) Cisco
18 39 (0.79%) Denodo
19 34 (0.68%) Foundry
19 34 (0.68%) Informatica