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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,604 3,680 3,827
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.27% 11.18% 9.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.16% 12.35% 11.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,900 2,563 2,559
10th Percentile £381 £363 £381
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £622 £621 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 24 72
10th Percentile £37.45 £45.13 £57.88
25th Percentile £56.25 £52.88 £65.00
Median hourly rate £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.61% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.81 £74.58
90th Percentile £91.60 £95.00 £85.61
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 46,068 29,787 33,025
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.40% 90.53% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 18,499 20,227
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
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 £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,164 1,816 1,455
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.90
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.48 £44.05 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +1.18%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 4,756 £525 - 4,552
London 0 2,518 £550 - 2,426
UK excluding London -4 2,391 £500 - 2,419
Work from Home -1 1,592 £525 +2.44% 2,100
North of England -2 768 £500 +5.26% 713
South East -13 449 £537 +7.40% 559
Midlands -5 432 £488 -2.74% 286
Yorkshire -2 384 £500 +3.09% 188
West Midlands -8 341 £492 -6.08% 170
South West +4 321 £550 +4.76% 300
North West -5 291 £525 +13.51% 406
Scotland -4 225 £475 -4.23% 205
East of England +9 154 £504 -4.00% 212
North East +14 108 £450 -13.46% 122
East Midlands -1 88 £464 +3.06% 116
Wales -6 48 £425 +13.33% 63
Northern Ireland +23 23 £450 +2.27% 90
Channel Islands - 5 £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
1 332 (5.92%) Confluence
2 161 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
4 129 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 113 (2.02%) Apache
6 61 (1.09%) SAS
7 44 (0.79%) CMS
8 42 (0.75%) Jupyter
9 28 (0.50%) nginx
10 26 (0.46%) IIS
11 20 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.27%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
14 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.18%) WebSphere
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 67 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
3 48 (0.86%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 34 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 6 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.11%) Windchill
9 5 (0.089%) Notion
10 2 (0.036%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.036%) Mingle
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 83 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.18%) Magento
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.11%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
9 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
11 4 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
12 3 (0.054%) Endur
12 3 (0.054%) Maximo
12 3 (0.054%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.054%) SAP ERP
12 3 (0.054%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3,039 (54.23%) Azure
2 2,021 (36.06%) AWS
3 1,742 (31.08%) Azure DevOps
4 971 (17.33%) GitHub
5 736 (13.13%) GCP
6 616 (10.99%) GitHub Actions
7 486 (8.67%) Power Platform
8 464 (8.28%) Serverless
9 310 (5.53%) Amazon S3
10 291 (5.19%) AWS Lambda
11 257 (4.59%) Entra ID
12 249 (4.44%) Amazon EKS
13 246 (4.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 235 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
15 217 (3.87%) Azure AKS
16 208 (3.71%) Azure Monitor
17 200 (3.57%) Amazon EC2
18 193 (3.44%) Azure Data Factory
19 189 (3.37%) Dynamics 365
20 165 (2.94%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 243 (4.34%) Firewall
2 170 (3.03%) DNS
3 121 (2.16%) VPN
4 115 (2.05%) Network Security
5 71 (1.27%) TCP/IP
6 56 (1.00%) SSL
7 51 (0.91%) DHCP
8 47 (0.84%) WAN
9 37 (0.66%) HTTP
10 33 (0.59%) BGP
11 30 (0.54%) SD-WAN
12 28 (0.50%) Internet
13 27 (0.48%) SSH
14 24 (0.43%) OSPF
14 24 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
15 20 (0.36%) VLAN
16 18 (0.32%) LAN
16 18 (0.32%) SAN
17 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 317 (5.66%) Power BI
2 297 (5.30%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (5.17%) SQL Server
4 212 (3.78%) Data Warehouse
5 184 (3.28%) MongoDB
5 184 (3.28%) NoSQL
6 177 (3.16%) Data Lake
7 171 (3.05%) Relational Database
8 149 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
9 131 (2.34%) Metadata
10 97 (1.73%) DynamoDB
11 95 (1.70%) Azure SQL Database
12 89 (1.59%) Oracle Database
13 88 (1.57%) Delta Lake
13 88 (1.57%) MySQL
14 82 (1.46%) Redis
15 69 (1.23%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (1.16%) Big Data
17 62 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 58 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 842 (15.02%) Git
2 801 (14.29%) Jenkins
3 660 (11.78%) JIRA
4 648 (11.56%) GitLab
5 145 (2.59%) Selenium
6 103 (1.84%) SonarQube
7 97 (1.73%) JUnit
7 97 (1.73%) Maven
7 97 (1.73%) Postman
8 73 (1.30%) Bitbucket
9 72 (1.28%) Cucumber
10 71 (1.27%) REST Assured
11 70 (1.25%) Cypress.io
12 67 (1.20%) Gradle
13 64 (1.14%) JMeter
14 52 (0.93%) Claude Code
15 48 (0.86%) Mockito
16 43 (0.77%) Gatling
17 41 (0.73%) Visual Studio
18 40 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,459 (26.03%) Social Skills
2 989 (17.65%) Finance
3 796 (14.20%) Public Sector
4 523 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
5 388 (6.92%) Banking
6 172 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 108 (1.93%) Retail
8 84 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
8 84 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
10 62 (1.11%) Legal
11 55 (0.98%) Aerospace
11 55 (0.98%) Marketing
11 55 (0.98%) Military
12 50 (0.89%) Investment Banking
12 50 (0.89%) Telecoms
13 46 (0.82%) Law
14 43 (0.77%) Manufacturing
15 41 (0.73%) Front Office
16 37 (0.66%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,140 (20.34%) DevOps Engineer
2 915 (16.33%) Developer
3 852 (15.20%) Senior
4 644 (11.49%) Architect
5 530 (9.46%) Lead
6 348 (6.21%) Azure Engineer
7 309 (5.51%) Data Engineer
8 263 (4.69%) AWS Engineer
9 262 (4.68%) Analyst
10 229 (4.09%) Platform Engineer
11 209 (3.73%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 209 (3.73%) Cloud Engineer
12 201 (3.59%) Senior DevOps
13 199 (3.55%) Java Developer
14 186 (3.32%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 183 (3.27%) AWS DevOps
16 179 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
17 172 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 156 (2.78%) Senior Developer
19 144 (2.57%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,670 (29.80%) Terraform
2 618 (11.03%) REST
3 471 (8.40%) .NET
4 386 (6.89%) Kafka
5 358 (6.39%) RESTful
6 311 (5.55%) Spring
7 306 (5.46%) Spring Boot
8 286 (5.10%) React
9 202 (3.60%) Node.js
10 185 (3.30%) OAuth
11 184 (3.28%) JSON
12 158 (2.82%) PySpark
13 157 (2.80%) Playwright
14 143 (2.55%) HTML
15 132 (2.36%) OAuth2
16 131 (2.34%) CSS
17 129 (2.30%) SOAP
18 125 (2.23%) .NET Framework
19 121 (2.16%) Middleware
20 120 (2.14%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,028 (18.34%) Cloud Native
2 424 (7.57%) Product Ownership
3 264 (4.71%) Distributed Systems
4 205 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 204 (3.64%) Onboarding
6 148 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
7 143 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 105 (1.87%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.71%) Management Information System
10 84 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
11 80 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
12 77 (1.37%) Public Cloud
13 75 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 74 (1.32%) Replication
15 73 (1.30%) Security Posture
16 71 (1.27%) Data Centre
17 62 (1.11%) Virtual Team
18 59 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
19 58 (1.03%) PKI
20 54 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 556 (9.92%) Linux
2 317 (5.66%) Windows
3 118 (2.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 110 (1.96%) Unix
5 95 (1.70%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.61%) VMS
8 31 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 14 (0.25%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.12%) AIX
16 5 (0.089%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
17 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,419 (61.01%) CI/CD
2 2,288 (40.83%) Agile
3 1,660 (29.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 956 (17.06%) Continuous Improvement
5 947 (16.90%) Containerisation
6 933 (16.65%) Stakeholder Management
7 897 (16.01%) Test Automation
8 890 (15.88%) Problem-Solving
9 858 (15.31%) AI
10 834 (14.88%) Microservices
11 780 (13.92%) Observability
12 765 (13.65%) Platform Engineering
13 738 (13.17%) Software Engineering
14 683 (12.19%) Scrum
15 675 (12.04%) Migration
16 615 (10.97%) Technical Leadership
17 581 (10.37%) Analytics
18 529 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 488 (8.71%) Data Modelling
20 482 (8.60%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,619 (28.89%) Python
2 983 (17.54%) SQL
3 829 (14.79%) Java
4 495 (8.83%) C#
5 492 (8.78%) Bash
6 491 (8.76%) PowerShell
7 463 (8.26%) JavaScript
8 313 (5.59%) TypeScript
9 255 (4.55%) Bicep
10 118 (2.11%) Go
11 79 (1.41%) Shell Script
12 66 (1.18%) Scala
12 66 (1.18%) T-SQL
13 64 (1.14%) Apex Code
13 64 (1.14%) Groovy
14 61 (1.09%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 35 (0.62%) Perl
17 31 (0.55%) C++
18 25 (0.45%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,805 (32.21%) Security Cleared
2 1,512 (26.98%) SC Cleared
3 356 (6.35%) Degree
4 251 (4.48%) Azure Certification
5 239 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 231 (4.12%) DV Cleared
7 191 (3.41%) AWS Certification
8 142 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 78 (1.39%) CISSP
11 61 (1.09%) ISTQB
12 52 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 45 (0.80%) PMP
15 43 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.73%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.55%) CISM
18 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 545 (9.73%) QA
2 290 (5.17%) Data Quality
3 209 (3.73%) Accessibility
4 130 (2.32%) GDPR
5 88 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.48%) WCAG
7 76 (1.36%) NIST
8 55 (0.98%) NCSC
9 47 (0.84%) PMO
10 37 (0.66%) SLA
11 29 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.50%) GRC
13 24 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.37%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.23%) SEPA
17 11 (0.20%) SOC 2
18 10 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 1,162 (20.74%) Docker
2 166 (2.96%) Active Directory
3 85 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.52%) vSphere
6 26 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.29%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.21%) Squid
11 11 (0.20%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) Postfix
14 7 (0.12%) zsh
15 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 6 (0.11%) Corosync
15 6 (0.11%) KVM
15 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,541 (27.50%) Kubernetes
2 536 (9.56%) Ansible
3 371 (6.62%) Grafana
4 316 (5.64%) Prometheus
5 74 (1.32%) Argo
6 63 (1.12%) Puppet
7 52 (0.93%) Progress Chef
8 51 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 46 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
10 37 (0.66%) Packer
11 31 (0.55%) Kibana
12 30 (0.54%) Istio
13 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
14 20 (0.36%) Kubeflow
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.30%) SCCM
17 16 (0.29%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,100 (19.63%) Microsoft
2 308 (5.50%) Databricks
2 308 (5.50%) Oracle
3 286 (5.10%) Google
4 212 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 189 (3.37%) Splunk
6 179 (3.19%) Salesforce
7 143 (2.55%) Dynatrace
8 130 (2.32%) VMware
9 112 (2.00%) SAP
10 100 (1.78%) Red Hat
11 73 (1.30%) OpenAI
12 70 (1.25%) IBM
13 64 (1.14%) MuleSoft
14 56 (1.00%) Foundry
15 51 (0.91%) Informatica
16 49 (0.87%) Cisco
17 43 (0.77%) AppDynamics
18 40 (0.71%) Atlassian
18 40 (0.71%) Okta