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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,042 3,046 3,942
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.59% 10.39% 9.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 11.43% 10.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,520 2,234 2,714
10th Percentile £381 £395 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% -2.73% -5.17%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 20 107
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.53 £56.25
25th Percentile £54.06 £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 £77.63 £84.10 £77.50
90th Percentile £94.13 £88.00 £87.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.45% +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 40,206 26,654 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,270 17,186 24,018
10th Percentile £320 £307 £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 £482 £500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -3.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,411 1,084 2,441
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.64 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.33% +0.42%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.70 £37.50
% change year-on-year +58.84% -26.13% +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 6 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 6 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 6 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 4,307 £525 -4.55% 1,590
UK excluding London +11 2,210 £500 -1.96% 1,197
London +4 2,210 £538 -6.43% 603
Work from Home -4 1,349 £525 -1.59% 888
North of England +8 734 £500 -3.80% 326
South East +2 471 £510 -7.27% 366
Yorkshire +2 407 £500 -3.80% 79
Midlands +3 406 £488 -2.50% 126
West Midlands +3 310 £500 -4.03% 62
South West +16 290 £500 -12.28% 131
North West +1 272 £500 - 161
Scotland +2 178 £475 - 76
East of England +26 127 £525 +3.45% 125
East Midlands +3 93 £465 -0.80% 64
North East +9 64 £475 -13.64% 86
Wales +1 38 £425 +39.13% 44
Northern Ireland -3 11 £475 +13.77% 22
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
1 284 (5.63%) Confluence
2 131 (2.60%) Apache Spark
3 115 (2.28%) SharePoint
4 86 (1.71%) Apache
5 81 (1.61%) SAS
6 67 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.69%) CMS
8 31 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
9 30 (0.60%) nginx
10 26 (0.52%) OpenStack
11 24 (0.48%) IIS
12 15 (0.30%) Mendix
13 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.18%) Camunda
15 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
16 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
17 7 (0.14%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 73 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
3 47 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.099%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.079%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.079%) Trello
8 3 (0.060%) Weka
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 69 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 25 (0.50%) 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
7 5 (0.099%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.079%) Endur
8 4 (0.079%) SAP BPC
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 FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 2,752 (54.58%) Azure
2 1,712 (33.95%) AWS
3 1,504 (29.83%) Azure DevOps
4 861 (17.08%) GitHub
5 664 (13.17%) GCP
6 510 (10.12%) Serverless
7 504 (10.00%) GitHub Actions
8 423 (8.39%) Power Platform
9 276 (5.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 267 (5.30%) Amazon S3
11 254 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
12 239 (4.74%) Azure AKS
13 232 (4.60%) Entra ID
14 222 (4.40%) Azure Data Factory
15 202 (4.01%) Amazon EKS
16 175 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
16 175 (3.47%) OpenShift
17 166 (3.29%) PaaS
18 154 (3.05%) Dynamics 365
19 152 (3.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 212 (4.20%) Firewall
2 119 (2.36%) DNS
3 98 (1.94%) Network Security
4 89 (1.77%) VPN
5 39 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 34 (0.67%) 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 11 (0.22%) Internet
16 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (5.51%) Power BI
2 249 (4.94%) SQL Server
3 244 (4.84%) PostgreSQL
4 179 (3.55%) NoSQL
5 173 (3.43%) Data Lake
6 148 (2.94%) Relational Database
7 137 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
8 118 (2.34%) Azure SQL Database
9 112 (2.22%) MongoDB
10 107 (2.12%) Amazon RDS
11 98 (1.94%) DynamoDB
12 93 (1.84%) Metadata
13 90 (1.79%) Delta Lake
14 75 (1.49%) Big Data
15 72 (1.43%) Oracle Database
16 71 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
17 65 (1.29%) Amazon Athena
18 53 (1.05%) Redis
19 52 (1.03%) BigQuery
20 49 (0.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 730 (14.48%) Jenkins
2 638 (12.65%) Git
3 614 (12.18%) JIRA
4 503 (9.98%) GitLab
5 102 (2.02%) Selenium
6 98 (1.94%) Postman
7 83 (1.65%) JUnit
8 82 (1.63%) SonarQube
9 71 (1.41%) Bitbucket
10 58 (1.15%) Maven
11 53 (1.05%) JMeter
12 51 (1.01%) Artifactory
13 50 (0.99%) Cucumber
13 50 (0.99%) REST Assured
14 49 (0.97%) Cypress.io
15 37 (0.73%) Gatling
15 37 (0.73%) Mockito
16 33 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
17 30 (0.60%) Gradle
18 28 (0.56%) TestRail
General
1 1,282 (25.43%) Social Skills
2 924 (18.33%) Finance
3 629 (12.48%) Public Sector
4 406 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
5 324 (6.43%) Banking
6 150 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 66 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
9 62 (1.23%) Legal
10 61 (1.21%) Retail
11 53 (1.05%) Financial Institution
11 53 (1.05%) Marketing
12 51 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
13 44 (0.87%) Front Office
14 42 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 39 (0.77%) Investment Banking
16 36 (0.71%) Telecoms
17 34 (0.67%) Military
18 26 (0.52%) Law
19 24 (0.48%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,022 (20.27%) DevOps Engineer
2 754 (14.95%) Developer
3 701 (13.90%) Senior
4 574 (11.38%) Architect
5 412 (8.17%) Lead
6 344 (6.82%) Azure Engineer
7 311 (6.17%) Data Engineer
8 300 (5.95%) Analyst
9 238 (4.72%) AWS Engineer
10 183 (3.63%) AWS DevOps
10 183 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
11 180 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
12 172 (3.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
13 168 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
14 166 (3.29%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 155 (3.07%) Senior DevOps
16 148 (2.94%) Software Engineer
17 146 (2.90%) Business Analyst
18 144 (2.86%) Senior DevOps Engineer
19 138 (2.74%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 461 (9.14%) REST
2 446 (8.85%) .NET
3 297 (5.89%) React
4 281 (5.57%) Node.js
5 280 (5.55%) Kafka
5 280 (5.55%) Spring
6 264 (5.24%) Spring Boot
7 258 (5.12%) RESTful
8 180 (3.57%) AngularJS
9 150 (2.98%) OAuth
9 150 (2.98%) PySpark
10 147 (2.92%) Playwright
11 139 (2.76%) JSON
12 132 (2.62%) YAML
13 117 (2.32%) HTML
13 117 (2.32%) Middleware
14 108 (2.14%) SOAP
15 103 (2.04%) CSS
16 102 (2.02%) .NET Framework
17 99 (1.96%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 813 (16.12%) Cloud Native
2 323 (6.41%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.69%) Distributed Systems
4 136 (2.70%) Onboarding
5 105 (2.08%) Public Cloud
6 101 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
8 94 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
9 79 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
10 60 (1.19%) Data Centre
11 58 (1.15%) Management Information System
12 51 (1.01%) Virtual Team
13 49 (0.97%) Private Cloud
13 49 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 43 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 41 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
15 41 (0.81%) NHS
15 41 (0.81%) Replication
16 40 (0.79%) AI Agents
16 40 (0.79%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 446 (8.85%) Linux
2 253 (5.02%) Windows
3 79 (1.57%) Unix
4 78 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 43 (0.85%) VMS
7 22 (0.44%) Ubuntu
8 15 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 14 (0.28%) Android
10 11 (0.22%) CentOS
11 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
16 4 (0.079%) Mac OS
16 4 (0.079%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
17 3 (0.060%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,866 (56.84%) CI/CD
2 1,875 (37.19%) Agile
3 1,282 (25.43%) Infrastructure as Code
4 848 (16.82%) Containerisation
5 803 (15.93%) Problem-Solving
6 731 (14.50%) Microservices
7 719 (14.26%) Test Automation
8 664 (13.17%) Continuous Improvement
9 608 (12.06%) Migration
10 590 (11.70%) Observability
11 589 (11.68%) Analytics
12 541 (10.73%) Scrum
13 534 (10.59%) Stakeholder Management
14 509 (10.10%) AI
15 474 (9.40%) Software Engineering
16 470 (9.32%) Data Modelling
17 439 (8.71%) Platform Engineering
18 390 (7.74%) Data Pipeline
19 389 (7.72%) Roadmaps
20 388 (7.70%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,402 (27.81%) Python
2 1,010 (20.03%) SQL
3 656 (13.01%) Java
4 501 (9.94%) C#
5 387 (7.68%) JavaScript
6 353 (7.00%) PowerShell
7 341 (6.76%) Bash
8 289 (5.73%) TypeScript
9 169 (3.35%) Bicep
10 112 (2.22%) 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 (0.85%) T-SQL
16 42 (0.83%) Apex Code
17 38 (0.75%) C++
18 31 (0.61%) Ruby
19 27 (0.54%) Perl
20 24 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,603 (31.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,339 (26.56%) SC Cleared
3 323 (6.41%) Degree
4 210 (4.17%) Azure Certification
5 153 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 151 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
7 148 (2.94%) DV Cleared
8 139 (2.76%) AWS Certification
9 76 (1.51%) CISSP
10 56 (1.11%) ISTQB
10 56 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 54 (1.07%) Master's Degree
12 53 (1.05%) CISM
13 50 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (0.93%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.83%) PMP
16 41 (0.81%) 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
1 450 (8.93%) QA
2 239 (4.74%) Data Quality
3 185 (3.67%) GDPR
4 139 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 130 (2.58%) Accessibility
6 125 (2.48%) NIST
7 64 (1.27%) NCSC
8 47 (0.93%) PCI DSS
9 46 (0.91%) WCAG
10 38 (0.75%) PMO
11 33 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 33 (0.65%) SLA
12 20 (0.40%) HIPAA
13 19 (0.38%) GRC
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 13 (0.26%) PSD2
16 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 11 (0.22%) SEPA
18 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 990 (19.64%) Docker
2 176 (3.49%) Active Directory
3 79 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
4 72 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 34 (0.67%) vSphere
6 29 (0.58%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (0.26%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.26%) Squid
9 12 (0.24%) Postfix
10 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.16%) Firmware
11 8 (0.16%) HDFS
12 6 (0.12%) Corosync
12 6 (0.12%) Lustre
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 5 (0.099%) Ceph
13 5 (0.099%) NFS
13 5 (0.099%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,438 (28.52%) Terraform
2 1,324 (26.26%) Kubernetes
3 481 (9.54%) Ansible
4 346 (6.86%) Grafana
5 287 (5.69%) Prometheus
6 100 (1.98%) Argo
7 71 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.37%) Puppet
9 63 (1.25%) Istio
10 28 (0.56%) Progress Chef
11 26 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
11 26 (0.52%) Packer
12 23 (0.46%) Kibana
12 23 (0.46%) vCenter Server
13 22 (0.44%) HP ALM
14 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 19 (0.38%) Rancher
15 15 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 14 (0.28%) Consul
16 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 885 (17.55%) Microsoft
2 298 (5.91%) Oracle
3 281 (5.57%) Databricks
4 238 (4.72%) Google
5 196 (3.89%) Splunk
6 179 (3.55%) ServiceNow
7 154 (3.05%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.76%) Red Hat
9 121 (2.40%) VMware
10 116 (2.30%) SAP
11 98 (1.94%) Dynatrace
12 74 (1.47%) OpenAI
13 60 (1.19%) CyberArk
14 50 (0.99%) Atlassian
15 43 (0.85%) Cisco
15 43 (0.85%) IBM
15 43 (0.85%) Informatica
16 38 (0.75%) AppDynamics
17 36 (0.71%) Denodo
18 35 (0.69%) Talend