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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 13 14
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,638 3,766 3,740
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.34% 11.39% 9.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.22% 12.59% 11.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,923 2,616 2,483
10th Percentile £381 £363 £380
25th Percentile £437 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £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 115 23 66
10th Percentile £37.65 £44.25 £49.34
25th Percentile £58.63 £54.88 £65.31
Median hourly rate £69.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.75 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £91.45 £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 46,126 29,916 32,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.50% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,740 18,573 19,640
10th Percentile £325 £295 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,322 1,863 1,307
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.95 £65.23 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.05% -47.49% -

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 4,790 £525 - 4,787
London -1 2,545 £550 - 2,464
UK excluding London -4 2,380 £500 - 2,601
Work from Home -2 1,615 £525 +2.44% 2,245
North of England -2 800 £500 +5.04% 761
South East -12 447 £525 +5.00% 646
Midlands -7 405 £488 -5.34% 317
Yorkshire -3 382 £500 - 234
South West +6 331 £550 - 277
West Midlands -9 327 £500 -4.76% 210
North West -4 318 £525 +16.67% 407
Scotland -4 221 £475 -4.81% 209
East of England -1 148 £504 -7.31% 234
North East +12 116 £450 -18.18% 125
East Midlands -6 76 £450 +8.11% 107
Wales -4 42 £375 - 89
Northern Ireland +28 23 £600 - 81
Channel Islands - 2 £500 -

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
1 340 (6.03%) Confluence
2 159 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 135 (2.39%) Apache Spark
4 122 (2.16%) Apache
4 122 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
5 48 (0.85%) SAS
6 44 (0.78%) Jupyter
7 41 (0.73%) CMS
8 34 (0.60%) nginx
9 31 (0.55%) IIS
10 19 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.28%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
13 12 (0.21%) WebLogic
14 11 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 10 (0.18%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
16 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 73 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 52 (0.92%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
5 39 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.25%) 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 3 (0.053%) Mingle
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 83 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.16%) Magento
6 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.089%) Aladdin
9 5 (0.089%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
9 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
9 5 (0.089%) Temenos T24
10 4 (0.071%) Maximo
10 4 (0.071%) Oracle Payroll
10 4 (0.071%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.071%) Workday HCM
11 3 (0.053%) FLEXCUBE
11 3 (0.053%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 3,064 (54.35%) Azure
2 2,039 (36.17%) AWS
3 1,746 (30.97%) Azure DevOps
4 999 (17.72%) GitHub
5 772 (13.69%) GCP
6 629 (11.16%) GitHub Actions
7 499 (8.85%) Power Platform
8 477 (8.46%) Serverless
9 315 (5.59%) Amazon S3
10 289 (5.13%) AWS Lambda
11 269 (4.77%) Amazon EKS
12 267 (4.74%) Entra ID
13 258 (4.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 236 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
15 221 (3.92%) Azure Monitor
16 220 (3.90%) Azure AKS
17 205 (3.64%) Amazon EC2
18 197 (3.49%) Azure Data Factory
19 194 (3.44%) Dynamics 365
20 183 (3.25%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 241 (4.27%) Firewall
2 181 (3.21%) DNS
3 121 (2.15%) Network Security
3 121 (2.15%) VPN
4 81 (1.44%) TCP/IP
5 56 (0.99%) DHCP
6 54 (0.96%) SSL
7 45 (0.80%) WAN
8 38 (0.67%) BGP
8 38 (0.67%) HTTP
9 29 (0.51%) Internet
9 29 (0.51%) SSH
10 28 (0.50%) OSPF
11 27 (0.48%) SD-WAN
12 21 (0.37%) LAN
13 20 (0.35%) VLAN
14 19 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
15 18 (0.32%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 16 (0.28%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (5.69%) Power BI
2 303 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
3 299 (5.30%) SQL Server
4 214 (3.80%) Data Warehouse
5 189 (3.35%) MongoDB
6 181 (3.21%) Data Lake
6 181 (3.21%) NoSQL
7 165 (2.93%) Relational Database
8 158 (2.80%) Amazon RDS
9 128 (2.27%) Metadata
10 110 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
11 90 (1.60%) DynamoDB
12 87 (1.54%) Delta Lake
12 87 (1.54%) MySQL
12 87 (1.54%) Oracle Database
13 86 (1.53%) Redis
14 66 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (1.14%) Big Data
15 64 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 57 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 873 (15.48%) Git
2 830 (14.72%) Jenkins
3 673 (11.94%) GitLab
4 662 (11.74%) JIRA
5 146 (2.59%) Selenium
6 101 (1.79%) JUnit
7 98 (1.74%) Maven
8 95 (1.68%) Postman
8 95 (1.68%) SonarQube
9 81 (1.44%) Cucumber
10 75 (1.33%) REST Assured
11 71 (1.26%) Bitbucket
11 71 (1.26%) Cypress.io
12 67 (1.19%) Gradle
13 64 (1.14%) JMeter
14 55 (0.98%) Claude Code
15 50 (0.89%) Mockito
16 45 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
17 43 (0.76%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.69%) Gatling
General
1 1,498 (26.57%) Social Skills
2 1,037 (18.39%) Finance
3 819 (14.53%) Public Sector
4 546 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
5 411 (7.29%) Banking
6 170 (3.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 112 (1.99%) Retail
8 92 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 79 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.10%) Aerospace
11 60 (1.06%) Military
12 58 (1.03%) Investment Banking
12 58 (1.03%) Legal
12 58 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 54 (0.96%) Marketing
14 51 (0.90%) Telecoms
15 49 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 47 (0.83%) Law
17 44 (0.78%) Financial Institution
18 43 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,136 (20.15%) DevOps Engineer
2 924 (16.39%) Developer
3 872 (15.47%) Senior
4 636 (11.28%) Architect
5 544 (9.65%) Lead
6 346 (6.14%) Azure Engineer
7 313 (5.55%) Data Engineer
8 263 (4.66%) AWS Engineer
9 261 (4.63%) Analyst
10 225 (3.99%) Platform Engineer
11 206 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
12 204 (3.62%) Senior DevOps
13 198 (3.51%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 194 (3.44%) Java Developer
15 187 (3.32%) AWS DevOps
16 186 (3.30%) Senior DevOps Engineer
17 176 (3.12%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 176 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
18 148 (2.63%) Senior Developer
19 143 (2.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,733 (30.74%) Terraform
2 685 (12.15%) REST
3 491 (8.71%) .NET
4 401 (7.11%) Kafka
5 362 (6.42%) RESTful
6 303 (5.37%) Spring
7 298 (5.29%) React
8 297 (5.27%) Spring Boot
9 204 (3.62%) OAuth
10 193 (3.42%) Node.js
11 188 (3.33%) JSON
12 159 (2.82%) Playwright
13 153 (2.71%) PySpark
14 148 (2.63%) HTML
15 139 (2.47%) OAuth2
16 134 (2.38%) .NET Framework
16 134 (2.38%) CSS
17 131 (2.32%) Middleware
18 130 (2.31%) SOAP
19 127 (2.25%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,061 (18.82%) Cloud Native
2 418 (7.41%) Product Ownership
3 271 (4.81%) Distributed Systems
4 234 (4.15%) Enterprise Software
5 215 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 160 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 148 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 114 (2.02%) AI Agents
9 106 (1.88%) Management Information System
10 85 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
11 79 (1.40%) Public Cloud
12 77 (1.37%) Security Posture
13 76 (1.35%) Data Structures
14 75 (1.33%) Replication
15 73 (1.29%) Data Centre
16 67 (1.19%) PKI
17 64 (1.14%) Enterprise Cloud
18 55 (0.98%) Virtual Team
19 53 (0.94%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 594 (10.54%) Linux
2 336 (5.96%) Windows
3 125 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 114 (2.02%) Unix
5 103 (1.83%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.66%) Ubuntu
7 35 (0.62%) VMS
8 27 (0.48%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.34%) Android
10 17 (0.30%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 11 (0.20%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.12%) AIX
14 7 (0.12%) Solaris
15 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.071%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.053%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,507 (62.20%) CI/CD
2 2,296 (40.72%) Agile
3 1,716 (30.44%) Infrastructure as Code
4 994 (17.63%) Stakeholder Management
5 980 (17.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 957 (16.97%) Containerisation
7 944 (16.74%) Test Automation
8 924 (16.39%) AI
9 904 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
10 844 (14.97%) Microservices
11 806 (14.30%) Observability
12 799 (14.17%) Platform Engineering
13 767 (13.60%) Software Engineering
14 689 (12.22%) Scrum
15 687 (12.19%) Migration
16 635 (11.26%) Technical Leadership
17 581 (10.31%) Analytics
18 532 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 504 (8.94%) Roadmaps
20 498 (8.83%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 1,673 (29.67%) Python
2 988 (17.52%) SQL
3 823 (14.60%) Java
4 531 (9.42%) Bash
5 517 (9.17%) PowerShell
6 512 (9.08%) C#
7 471 (8.35%) JavaScript
8 334 (5.92%) TypeScript
9 272 (4.82%) Bicep
10 129 (2.29%) Go
11 83 (1.47%) Shell Script
12 69 (1.22%) Scala
12 69 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 66 (1.17%) Groovy
14 59 (1.05%) Apex Code
14 59 (1.05%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 35 (0.62%) Perl
17 34 (0.60%) C++
18 28 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,827 (32.41%) Security Cleared
2 1,524 (27.03%) SC Cleared
3 375 (6.65%) Degree
4 255 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 252 (4.47%) Azure Certification
6 249 (4.42%) DV Cleared
7 205 (3.64%) AWS Certification
8 150 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 109 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
10 79 (1.40%) CISSP
11 61 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 56 (0.99%) PMP
13 54 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
14 52 (0.92%) PMI Certification
15 49 (0.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 42 (0.74%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.57%) CISM
18 28 (0.50%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 559 (9.91%) QA
2 283 (5.02%) Data Quality
3 220 (3.90%) Accessibility
4 122 (2.16%) GDPR
5 95 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.47%) WCAG
7 68 (1.21%) NIST
8 56 (0.99%) NCSC
9 47 (0.83%) PMO
10 35 (0.62%) SLA
11 33 (0.59%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.50%) GRC
13 23 (0.41%) ISO 20022
14 18 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.27%) SEPA
15 15 (0.27%) SOC 2
16 14 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 14 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,185 (21.02%) Docker
2 172 (3.05%) Active Directory
3 83 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (0.55%) vSphere
6 24 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
7 23 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
8 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
9 14 (0.25%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.20%) Squid
11 10 (0.18%) IAG
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.14%) zsh
13 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 6 (0.11%) Corosync
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Postfix
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
13 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.089%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,568 (27.81%) Kubernetes
2 554 (9.83%) Ansible
3 380 (6.74%) Grafana
4 320 (5.68%) Prometheus
5 72 (1.28%) Argo
6 59 (1.05%) Puppet
7 49 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.87%) Progress Chef
8 43 (0.76%) Kibana
9 41 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
10 38 (0.67%) Packer
11 31 (0.55%) Istio
12 23 (0.41%) Kubeflow
12 23 (0.41%) Kustomize
13 20 (0.35%) SCCM
14 17 (0.30%) vCenter Server
15 15 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
16 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
17 13 (0.23%) Karpenter
17 13 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,141 (20.24%) Microsoft
2 317 (5.62%) Databricks
2 317 (5.62%) Google
3 295 (5.23%) Oracle
4 205 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 187 (3.32%) Splunk
6 165 (2.93%) Salesforce
7 154 (2.73%) Dynatrace
8 124 (2.20%) VMware
9 116 (2.06%) SAP
10 96 (1.70%) Red Hat
11 76 (1.35%) OpenAI
12 70 (1.24%) IBM
13 69 (1.22%) MuleSoft
14 61 (1.08%) Foundry
15 46 (0.82%) Informatica
16 44 (0.78%) Cisco
17 39 (0.69%) AppDynamics
17 39 (0.69%) Atlassian
17 39 (0.69%) Okta