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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 -4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,134 2,999 4,026
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.60% 10.41% 9.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.57% 11.44% 11.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,577 2,182 2,796
10th Percentile £386 £380 £400
25th Percentile £438 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% -4.55% -6.38%
75th Percentile £605 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 18 111
10th Percentile £39.53 £33.58 £56.25
25th Percentile £56.50 £52.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.50 £71.61 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +10.17% -0.76%
75th Percentile £77.50 £86.37 £77.50
90th Percentile £92.50 £89.00 £87.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £71.61 £65.25
% change year-on-year -5.74% +9.75% -0.38%

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 40,852 26,213 36,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.38% 91.03% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,586 16,831 23,574
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,418 1,066 2,483
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £27.59 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +52.71% -23.47% -0.22%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -33.82% +8.57%

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 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 25 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 25 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 +4 4,377 £525 -1.55% 1,234
UK excluding London +9 2,265 £500 - 899
London +5 2,233 £550 -1.79% 499
Work from Home -3 1,377 £525 - 656
North of England +7 782 £500 - 290
South East +3 484 £513 +2.50% 247
Yorkshire 0 435 £500 - 80
Midlands +6 400 £488 -2.50% 99
West Midlands 0 309 £500 -4.58% 69
North West 0 284 £500 - 167
South West +16 282 £525 -4.55% 122
Scotland +2 179 £475 - 46
East of England +15 127 £525 +3.45% 63
East Midlands +2 87 £465 +0.54% 30
North East +6 77 £450 -16.28% 46
Wales +7 47 £425 +39.13% 26
Northern Ireland 0 14 £531 +27.25% 18
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
1 287 (5.59%) Confluence
2 132 (2.57%) Apache Spark
3 117 (2.28%) SharePoint
4 89 (1.73%) Apache
5 78 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
5 78 (1.52%) SAS
6 40 (0.78%) CMS
7 30 (0.58%) nginx
8 28 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
9 26 (0.51%) IIS
10 20 (0.39%) OpenStack
11 16 (0.31%) Jupyter
12 14 (0.27%) Mendix
13 13 (0.25%) WebSphere
14 12 (0.23%) Camunda
15 11 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
16 10 (0.19%) HCL Notes
17 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
18 8 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
19 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 72 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
3 46 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
5 25 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.097%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.078%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.078%) Trello
8 3 (0.058%) Notion
9 2 (0.039%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.039%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.019%) InDesign
10 1 (0.019%) Maya
10 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 62 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 11 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
6 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.097%) Endur
8 5 (0.097%) Magento
8 5 (0.097%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.097%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.078%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.058%) Findur
10 3 (0.058%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.058%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 2 (0.039%) OpenText MBPM
11 2 (0.039%) SAP MM
11 2 (0.039%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,775 (54.05%) Azure
2 1,743 (33.95%) AWS
3 1,505 (29.31%) Azure DevOps
4 861 (16.77%) GitHub
5 667 (12.99%) GCP
6 507 (9.88%) GitHub Actions
7 480 (9.35%) Serverless
8 436 (8.49%) Power Platform
9 271 (5.28%) Amazon S3
10 259 (5.04%) AWS CloudFormation
11 241 (4.69%) AWS Lambda
12 231 (4.50%) Entra ID
13 222 (4.32%) Azure AKS
14 218 (4.25%) Azure Data Factory
15 194 (3.78%) Amazon EKS
16 177 (3.45%) OpenShift
17 164 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
18 162 (3.16%) PaaS
19 156 (3.04%) Amazon EC2
20 151 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 218 (4.25%) Firewall
2 127 (2.47%) DNS
3 102 (1.99%) Network Security
4 95 (1.85%) VPN
5 45 (0.88%) TCP/IP
6 36 (0.70%) WAN
7 32 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 28 (0.55%) BGP
8 28 (0.55%) SSL
9 26 (0.51%) HTTP
10 23 (0.45%) DHCP
10 23 (0.45%) SAN
11 22 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
12 19 (0.37%) IPsec
12 19 (0.37%) OSPF
13 16 (0.31%) MPLS
13 16 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
14 14 (0.27%) Internet
14 14 (0.27%) LAN
14 14 (0.27%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (5.51%) Power BI
2 255 (4.97%) SQL Server
3 249 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
4 185 (3.60%) NoSQL
5 175 (3.41%) Data Lake
6 158 (3.08%) Relational Database
7 139 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 134 (2.61%) MongoDB
9 111 (2.16%) Azure SQL Database
10 105 (2.05%) Amazon RDS
11 97 (1.89%) DynamoDB
12 95 (1.85%) Delta Lake
12 95 (1.85%) Metadata
13 72 (1.40%) Big Data
13 72 (1.40%) Oracle Database
14 67 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
15 62 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
16 56 (1.09%) Redis
17 53 (1.03%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 733 (14.28%) Jenkins
2 647 (12.60%) Git
3 606 (11.80%) JIRA
4 528 (10.28%) GitLab
5 111 (2.16%) Selenium
6 105 (2.05%) Postman
7 86 (1.68%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.58%) JUnit
9 65 (1.27%) REST Assured
10 63 (1.23%) Bitbucket
11 60 (1.17%) Maven
12 58 (1.13%) Cucumber
13 56 (1.09%) JMeter
14 50 (0.97%) Artifactory
15 49 (0.95%) Cypress.io
16 43 (0.84%) Gatling
17 37 (0.72%) Mockito
18 36 (0.70%) Gradle
19 31 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
19 31 (0.60%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,248 (24.31%) Social Skills
2 919 (17.90%) Finance
3 644 (12.54%) Public Sector
4 401 (7.81%) Analytical Skills
5 332 (6.47%) Banking
6 140 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 77 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 74 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
9 68 (1.32%) Legal
10 66 (1.29%) Retail
11 53 (1.03%) Financial Institution
11 53 (1.03%) Marketing
12 51 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
13 41 (0.80%) Military
13 41 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 38 (0.74%) Front Office
15 37 (0.72%) Investment Banking
16 29 (0.56%) Law
17 28 (0.55%) Telecoms
18 24 (0.47%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,058 (20.61%) DevOps Engineer
2 756 (14.73%) Developer
3 706 (13.75%) Senior
4 594 (11.57%) Architect
5 442 (8.61%) Lead
6 342 (6.66%) Azure Engineer
7 308 (6.00%) Data Engineer
8 304 (5.92%) Analyst
9 244 (4.75%) AWS Engineer
10 187 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
11 183 (3.56%) Platform Engineer
12 177 (3.45%) AWS DevOps
13 176 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
14 169 (3.29%) Senior DevOps
15 167 (3.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 164 (3.19%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 156 (3.04%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 152 (2.96%) Business Analyst
19 151 (2.94%) Java Developer
19 151 (2.94%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 465 (9.06%) REST
2 456 (8.88%) .NET
3 309 (6.02%) React
4 287 (5.59%) Spring
5 286 (5.57%) Kafka
6 273 (5.32%) Spring Boot
7 262 (5.10%) RESTful
8 255 (4.97%) Node.js
9 169 (3.29%) AngularJS
10 159 (3.10%) PySpark
11 155 (3.02%) Playwright
12 152 (2.96%) OAuth
13 140 (2.73%) JSON
14 129 (2.51%) YAML
15 116 (2.26%) SOAP
16 113 (2.20%) Middleware
17 111 (2.16%) HTML
18 103 (2.01%) .NET Framework
19 100 (1.95%) OpenID
20 96 (1.87%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 824 (16.05%) Cloud Native
2 323 (6.29%) Product Ownership
3 200 (3.90%) Distributed Systems
4 133 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 115 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
6 104 (2.03%) Public Cloud
7 102 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
8 95 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
9 82 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
10 71 (1.38%) Data Centre
11 57 (1.11%) Management Information System
12 53 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
13 48 (0.93%) Virtual Team
14 46 (0.90%) AI Agents
15 45 (0.88%) Data Structures
15 45 (0.88%) NHS
15 45 (0.88%) Private Cloud
16 44 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
17 43 (0.84%) Low-Code
18 42 (0.82%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 445 (8.67%) Linux
2 253 (4.93%) Windows
3 83 (1.62%) Unix
4 79 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 49 (0.95%) Windows Server
6 42 (0.82%) VMS
7 23 (0.45%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.35%) Apple iOS
9 14 (0.27%) Android
10 12 (0.23%) CentOS
11 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.097%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.097%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.078%) zOS
17 3 (0.058%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,949 (57.44%) CI/CD
2 1,861 (36.25%) Agile
3 1,316 (25.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 822 (16.01%) Containerisation
5 765 (14.90%) Problem-Solving
6 742 (14.45%) Microservices
7 728 (14.18%) Test Automation
8 682 (13.28%) Continuous Improvement
9 620 (12.08%) Migration
10 616 (12.00%) Observability
11 579 (11.28%) Analytics
12 561 (10.93%) Stakeholder Management
13 559 (10.89%) AI
14 549 (10.69%) Scrum
15 494 (9.62%) Software Engineering
16 488 (9.51%) Data Modelling
17 482 (9.39%) Platform Engineering
18 410 (7.99%) Mentoring
19 405 (7.89%) Technical Leadership
20 398 (7.75%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,397 (27.21%) Python
2 999 (19.46%) SQL
3 685 (13.34%) Java
4 490 (9.54%) C#
5 380 (7.40%) JavaScript
6 346 (6.74%) Bash
6 346 (6.74%) PowerShell
7 275 (5.36%) TypeScript
8 177 (3.45%) Bicep
9 109 (2.12%) Go
10 70 (1.36%) Scala
11 64 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 57 (1.11%) Apex Code
13 51 (0.99%) PL/SQL
14 46 (0.90%) T-SQL
15 45 (0.88%) Groovy
16 36 (0.70%) C++
17 27 (0.53%) Ruby
18 25 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 25 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,610 (31.36%) Security Cleared
2 1,338 (26.06%) SC Cleared
3 317 (6.17%) Degree
4 207 (4.03%) Azure Certification
5 157 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 153 (2.98%) DV Cleared
7 139 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
8 135 (2.63%) AWS Certification
9 73 (1.42%) CISSP
10 59 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
11 55 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 50 (0.97%) CISM
13 49 (0.95%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 44 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
16 43 (0.84%) PMI Certification
17 40 (0.78%) PMP
18 27 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
19 25 (0.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
20 21 (0.41%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (8.51%) QA
2 243 (4.73%) Data Quality
3 177 (3.45%) GDPR
4 138 (2.69%) Accessibility
5 127 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 117 (2.28%) NIST
7 66 (1.29%) NCSC
8 53 (1.03%) WCAG
9 48 (0.93%) PCI DSS
10 37 (0.72%) SLA
11 34 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 33 (0.64%) PMO
13 22 (0.43%) GRC
14 17 (0.33%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.25%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.23%) PSD2
16 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.19%) SEPA
18 9 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 977 (19.03%) Docker
2 170 (3.31%) Active Directory
3 74 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
4 68 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 33 (0.64%) vSphere
6 26 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 19 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.35%) Squid
9 14 (0.27%) Postfix
10 12 (0.23%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) HDFS
14 6 (0.12%) Corosync
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) RACF
15 5 (0.097%) Ceph
15 5 (0.097%) NFS
16 4 (0.078%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 4 (0.078%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,449 (28.22%) Terraform
2 1,314 (25.59%) Kubernetes
3 499 (9.72%) Ansible
4 355 (6.91%) Grafana
5 295 (5.75%) Prometheus
6 92 (1.79%) Argo
7 72 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (1.38%) Puppet
9 62 (1.21%) Istio
10 29 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
10 29 (0.56%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.55%) Packer
12 24 (0.47%) Kibana
13 23 (0.45%) HP ALM
14 21 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.41%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.33%) Consul
16 15 (0.29%) SCCM
17 14 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 14 (0.27%) Rancher
Vendors
1 885 (17.24%) Microsoft
2 294 (5.73%) Databricks
3 280 (5.45%) Oracle
4 235 (4.58%) Google
5 198 (3.86%) Splunk
6 184 (3.58%) ServiceNow
7 163 (3.17%) Salesforce
8 140 (2.73%) Red Hat
9 116 (2.26%) SAP
10 113 (2.20%) VMware
11 105 (2.05%) Dynatrace
12 74 (1.44%) OpenAI
13 50 (0.97%) Atlassian
14 47 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 46 (0.90%) IBM
16 44 (0.86%) Informatica
17 43 (0.84%) Cisco
18 39 (0.76%) Foundry
19 38 (0.74%) AppDynamics
20 32 (0.62%) Okta