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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,015 3,056 3,924
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.67% 10.41% 9.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.62% 11.47% 10.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,512 2,251 2,699
10th Percentile £381 £391 £400
25th Percentile £431 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.28% -2.18% -5.17%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £704 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £533
% change year-on-year -1.96% -4.27% -3.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 22 103
10th Percentile £39.53 £36.63 £56.25
25th Percentile £45.60 £58.75 £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 £82.72 £80.95
90th Percentile £89.35 £87.50 £87.37
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 39,735 26,655 37,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.81% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,044 17,231 24,097
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,068 2,424
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.25 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.08% -16.71% -6.27%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £28.00 £35.98
% change year-on-year +50.00% -22.17% -0.07%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 4,294 £525 -4.55% 1,480
UK excluding London +10 2,208 £500 -1.96% 1,152
London +5 2,193 £540 -6.09% 581
Work from Home -4 1,343 £520 -2.53% 903
North of England +4 751 £500 -3.82% 323
South East +1 451 £505 -8.18% 343
Yorkshire 0 409 £500 -3.80% 68
Midlands +1 398 £488 -2.50% 141
West Midlands +6 302 £500 -4.58% 82
South West +14 298 £500 -11.50% 143
North West +4 285 £500 -3.26% 195
Scotland +2 178 £475 - 54
East of England +21 130 £525 +1.94% 83
East Midlands +1 93 £465 -2.11% 57
North East +5 66 £475 -9.52% 60
Wales +5 37 £425 +39.13% 54
Northern Ireland 0 11 £475 +13.77% 30
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
1 297 (5.92%) Confluence
2 130 (2.59%) Apache Spark
3 115 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 87 (1.73%) Apache
5 80 (1.60%) SAS
6 73 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.78%) nginx
8 36 (0.72%) CMS
9 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
10 28 (0.56%) 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%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Camunda
15 8 (0.16%) WebLogic
16 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 78 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
3 52 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.100%) Trello
7 5 (0.100%) 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 73 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.32%) 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 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.080%) Endur
8 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.080%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.060%) Findur
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 2 (0.040%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,735 (54.54%) Azure
2 1,718 (34.26%) AWS
3 1,506 (30.03%) Azure DevOps
4 874 (17.43%) GitHub
5 648 (12.92%) GCP
6 533 (10.63%) Serverless
7 508 (10.13%) GitHub Actions
8 420 (8.37%) Power Platform
9 291 (5.80%) AWS CloudFormation
10 273 (5.44%) Amazon S3
11 266 (5.30%) AWS Lambda
12 238 (4.75%) Azure AKS
13 233 (4.65%) Entra ID
14 226 (4.51%) Azure Data Factory
15 205 (4.09%) Amazon EKS
16 180 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
16 180 (3.59%) OpenShift
17 166 (3.31%) PaaS
18 155 (3.09%) Dynamics 365
19 152 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 216 (4.31%) Firewall
2 117 (2.33%) DNS
3 95 (1.89%) Network Security
4 93 (1.85%) VPN
5 41 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 30 (0.60%) HTTP
7 28 (0.56%) WAN
8 25 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 25 (0.50%) SSL
9 23 (0.46%) DHCP
10 21 (0.42%) SAN
11 20 (0.40%) BGP
12 18 (0.36%) IPsec
13 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
14 15 (0.30%) MPLS
14 15 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (0.26%) LAN
16 12 (0.24%) Internet
16 12 (0.24%) OSPF
17 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 273 (5.44%) Power BI
2 255 (5.08%) PostgreSQL
3 246 (4.91%) SQL Server
4 185 (3.69%) NoSQL
5 171 (3.41%) Data Lake
6 150 (2.99%) Relational Database
7 136 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 117 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 111 (2.21%) MongoDB
10 106 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
11 103 (2.05%) DynamoDB
12 93 (1.85%) Metadata
13 89 (1.77%) Delta Lake
14 76 (1.52%) Big Data
15 72 (1.44%) Oracle Database
16 70 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
17 61 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
18 54 (1.08%) Tableau
19 52 (1.04%) MySQL
20 49 (0.98%) Redis
Development Applications
1 729 (14.54%) Jenkins
2 637 (12.70%) JIRA
3 630 (12.56%) Git
4 498 (9.93%) GitLab
5 109 (2.17%) Selenium
6 94 (1.87%) Postman
7 90 (1.79%) JUnit
8 83 (1.66%) SonarQube
9 81 (1.62%) Bitbucket
10 57 (1.14%) Maven
11 56 (1.12%) Cucumber
12 53 (1.06%) REST Assured
13 52 (1.04%) Artifactory
14 51 (1.02%) Cypress.io
15 48 (0.96%) JMeter
16 39 (0.78%) Mockito
17 37 (0.74%) Sonatype Nexus
18 36 (0.72%) Gatling
19 30 (0.60%) TestRail
20 29 (0.58%) Gradle
General
1 1,309 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 916 (18.27%) Finance
3 643 (12.82%) Public Sector
4 406 (8.10%) Analytical Skills
5 334 (6.66%) Banking
6 156 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
7 72 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 66 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.26%) Retail
10 56 (1.12%) Legal
11 54 (1.08%) Marketing
12 52 (1.04%) Financial Institution
13 49 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 46 (0.92%) Front Office
15 43 (0.86%) Investment Banking
15 43 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
16 39 (0.78%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.66%) Military
18 25 (0.50%) Law
19 24 (0.48%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 999 (19.92%) DevOps Engineer
2 765 (15.25%) Developer
3 691 (13.78%) Senior
4 563 (11.23%) Architect
5 417 (8.32%) Lead
6 340 (6.78%) Azure Engineer
7 300 (5.98%) Data Engineer
8 286 (5.70%) Analyst
9 249 (4.97%) AWS Engineer
10 193 (3.85%) AWS DevOps
11 179 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
12 178 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
13 175 (3.49%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 172 (3.43%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 169 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
16 151 (3.01%) Senior DevOps
17 144 (2.87%) Business Analyst
17 144 (2.87%) Software Engineer
18 141 (2.81%) Senior DevOps Engineer
19 139 (2.77%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (9.35%) REST
2 452 (9.01%) .NET
3 298 (5.94%) React
4 297 (5.92%) Node.js
5 279 (5.56%) Spring
6 277 (5.52%) Kafka
7 264 (5.26%) Spring Boot
8 258 (5.14%) RESTful
9 179 (3.57%) AngularJS
10 153 (3.05%) OAuth
10 153 (3.05%) Playwright
11 145 (2.89%) PySpark
12 142 (2.83%) JSON
13 136 (2.71%) YAML
14 120 (2.39%) HTML
15 115 (2.29%) SOAP
16 111 (2.21%) Middleware
17 103 (2.05%) .NET Framework
17 103 (2.05%) CSS
18 101 (2.01%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 783 (15.61%) Cloud Native
2 321 (6.40%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.71%) Distributed Systems
4 132 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 111 (2.21%) Public Cloud
6 102 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
6 102 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
7 93 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
8 77 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
9 63 (1.26%) Virtual Team
10 59 (1.18%) Management Information System
11 55 (1.10%) Data Centre
12 51 (1.02%) Private Cloud
13 48 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
14 46 (0.92%) NHS
15 41 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
16 40 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 40 (0.80%) Replication
17 39 (0.78%) AI Agents
17 39 (0.78%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 446 (8.89%) Linux
2 249 (4.97%) Windows
3 86 (1.71%) Unix
4 78 (1.56%) 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 (0.100%) 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 2,822 (56.27%) CI/CD
2 1,898 (37.85%) Agile
3 1,266 (25.24%) Infrastructure as Code
4 846 (16.87%) Containerisation
5 814 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
6 732 (14.60%) Microservices
7 710 (14.16%) Test Automation
8 668 (13.32%) Continuous Improvement
9 615 (12.26%) Migration
10 605 (12.06%) Analytics
11 576 (11.49%) Observability
12 553 (11.03%) Scrum
13 524 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
14 517 (10.31%) AI
15 465 (9.27%) Software Engineering
16 464 (9.25%) Data Modelling
17 423 (8.43%) Platform Engineering
18 396 (7.90%) Mentoring
19 383 (7.64%) Data Pipeline
20 381 (7.60%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,405 (28.02%) Python
2 1,023 (20.40%) SQL
3 649 (12.94%) Java
4 513 (10.23%) C#
5 404 (8.06%) JavaScript
6 344 (6.86%) PowerShell
7 333 (6.64%) Bash
8 290 (5.78%) TypeScript
9 171 (3.41%) Bicep
10 109 (2.17%) Go
11 79 (1.58%) PL/SQL
12 69 (1.38%) Scala
13 62 (1.24%) Shell Script
14 46 (0.92%) Groovy
15 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.82%) Apex Code
17 39 (0.78%) C++
18 35 (0.70%) Ruby
19 29 (0.58%) Perl
20 22 (0.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,591 (31.72%) Security Cleared
2 1,328 (26.48%) SC Cleared
3 338 (6.74%) Degree
4 208 (4.15%) Azure Certification
5 157 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 149 (2.97%) DV Cleared
8 143 (2.85%) AWS Certification
9 78 (1.56%) CISSP
10 57 (1.14%) CISM
10 57 (1.14%) Master's Degree
11 55 (1.10%) ISTQB
12 54 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
13 51 (1.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 49 (0.98%) PMI Certification
15 43 (0.86%) PMP
16 37 (0.74%) 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
1 448 (8.93%) QA
2 230 (4.59%) Data Quality
3 182 (3.63%) GDPR
4 139 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 125 (2.49%) Accessibility
6 124 (2.47%) NIST
7 66 (1.32%) NCSC
8 45 (0.90%) WCAG
9 42 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 37 (0.74%) PMO
11 33 (0.66%) SLA
12 31 (0.62%) 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 1,017 (20.28%) Docker
2 174 (3.47%) Active Directory
3 74 (1.48%) Virtual Machines
3 74 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.70%) vSphere
5 30 (0.60%) VMware NSX
6 17 (0.34%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (0.26%) Squid
9 12 (0.24%) Postfix
10 11 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.16%) Firmware
11 8 (0.16%) HDFS
11 8 (0.16%) Lustre
11 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 6 (0.12%) Ceph
12 6 (0.12%) GPFS
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.100%) Corosync
13 5 (0.100%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,430 (28.51%) Terraform
2 1,328 (26.48%) Kubernetes
3 483 (9.63%) Ansible
4 337 (6.72%) Grafana
5 277 (5.52%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.97%) Argo
7 72 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
8 67 (1.34%) Puppet
9 62 (1.24%) Istio
10 32 (0.64%) 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 22 (0.44%) HP ALM
15 20 (0.40%) Rancher
16 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 18 (0.36%) Consul
18 15 (0.30%) FortiGate
19 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 887 (17.69%) Microsoft
2 313 (6.24%) Oracle
3 281 (5.60%) Databricks
4 233 (4.65%) Google
5 197 (3.93%) Splunk
6 177 (3.53%) ServiceNow
7 147 (2.93%) Salesforce
8 138 (2.75%) Red Hat
9 126 (2.51%) VMware
10 112 (2.23%) SAP
11 94 (1.87%) Dynatrace
12 78 (1.56%) OpenAI
13 62 (1.24%) Atlassian
14 57 (1.14%) CyberArk
15 48 (0.96%) IBM
16 44 (0.88%) Cisco
17 38 (0.76%) AppDynamics
17 38 (0.76%) Informatica
18 36 (0.72%) Foundry
19 34 (0.68%) Talend