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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,023 3,000 3,962
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.56% 10.35% 9.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 11.38% 10.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,506 2,196 2,729
10th Percentile £381 £389 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -5.66%
75th Percentile £609 £640 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £528
% change year-on-year - -5.21% -4.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 19 108
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.05 £56.25
25th Percentile £55.69 £53.75 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.82% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £77.50 £85.23 £77.81
90th Percentile £95.00 £88.50 £87.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.57% +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 40,111 26,361 36,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.96% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,183 16,941 23,723
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
% change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +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 14 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 14 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 14 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 4,283 £525 -4.55% 1,365
UK excluding London +10 2,209 £500 - 971
London +3 2,191 £550 -3.08% 539
Work from Home -3 1,350 £525 - 729
North of England +9 738 £500 -2.82% 279
South East +3 477 £513 - 309
Yorkshire +4 403 £500 -2.44% 71
Midlands +4 398 £490 -2.00% 100
West Midlands +3 308 £500 -4.31% 60
South West +13 280 £525 -4.55% 118
North West +3 277 £500 - 151
Scotland +3 178 £475 - 50
East of England +26 128 £525 +3.45% 84
East Midlands -1 87 £466 -1.84% 40
North East +8 69 £453 -13.81% 60
Wales +6 44 £425 +39.13% 27
Northern Ireland -1 13 £525 +25.75% 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
1 283 (5.63%) Confluence
2 130 (2.59%) Apache Spark
3 114 (2.27%) SharePoint
4 85 (1.69%) Apache
5 81 (1.61%) SAS
6 67 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.78%) CMS
8 31 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 30 (0.60%) nginx
10 24 (0.48%) OpenStack
11 23 (0.46%) IIS
12 14 (0.28%) Mendix
13 12 (0.24%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.22%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
16 9 (0.18%) Camunda
16 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
17 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 73 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
3 48 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.080%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.080%) CPLEX
6 4 (0.080%) Trello
7 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.020%) InDesign
8 1 (0.020%) Maya
8 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 62 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (0.56%) 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 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.100%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.080%) Endur
9 4 (0.080%) Magento
9 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.060%) Findur
10 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
10 3 (0.060%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
10 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
10 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,736 (54.47%) Azure
2 1,705 (33.94%) AWS
3 1,483 (29.52%) Azure DevOps
4 850 (16.92%) GitHub
5 664 (13.22%) GCP
6 498 (9.91%) GitHub Actions
7 492 (9.79%) Serverless
8 429 (8.54%) Power Platform
9 271 (5.40%) Amazon S3
10 262 (5.22%) AWS CloudFormation
11 248 (4.94%) AWS Lambda
12 224 (4.46%) Azure AKS
12 224 (4.46%) Entra ID
13 219 (4.36%) Azure Data Factory
14 199 (3.96%) Amazon EKS
15 173 (3.44%) OpenShift
16 168 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
17 165 (3.28%) PaaS
18 153 (3.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 152 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 216 (4.30%) Firewall
2 122 (2.43%) DNS
3 99 (1.97%) Network Security
4 95 (1.89%) VPN
5 42 (0.84%) TCP/IP
6 36 (0.72%) WAN
7 31 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 27 (0.54%) HTTP
9 26 (0.52%) BGP
9 26 (0.52%) SSL
10 23 (0.46%) SAN
11 22 (0.44%) DHCP
12 20 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (0.38%) IPsec
14 17 (0.34%) OSPF
15 16 (0.32%) MPLS
15 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
16 14 (0.28%) LAN
17 13 (0.26%) Internet
18 12 (0.24%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (5.59%) Power BI
2 249 (4.96%) SQL Server
3 244 (4.86%) PostgreSQL
4 178 (3.54%) NoSQL
5 173 (3.44%) Data Lake
6 154 (3.07%) Relational Database
7 135 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
8 118 (2.35%) MongoDB
9 113 (2.25%) Azure SQL Database
10 104 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
11 95 (1.89%) DynamoDB
12 92 (1.83%) Metadata
13 90 (1.79%) Delta Lake
14 74 (1.47%) Big Data
15 69 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (1.37%) Oracle Database
16 61 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
17 54 (1.08%) Redis
18 50 (1.00%) BigQuery
19 49 (0.98%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 726 (14.45%) Jenkins
2 638 (12.70%) Git
3 606 (12.06%) JIRA
4 511 (10.17%) GitLab
5 99 (1.97%) Selenium
6 98 (1.95%) Postman
7 82 (1.63%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.61%) JUnit
9 67 (1.33%) Bitbucket
10 59 (1.17%) Maven
11 54 (1.08%) JMeter
12 52 (1.04%) Artifactory
13 50 (1.00%) REST Assured
14 48 (0.96%) Cucumber
15 47 (0.94%) Cypress.io
16 37 (0.74%) Gatling
17 35 (0.70%) Mockito
18 33 (0.66%) Gradle
19 29 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
20 28 (0.56%) NUnit
General
1 1,230 (24.49%) Social Skills
2 899 (17.90%) Finance
3 629 (12.52%) Public Sector
4 401 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
5 317 (6.31%) Banking
6 145 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 72 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.25%) Legal
10 61 (1.21%) Retail
11 55 (1.09%) Marketing
12 51 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 51 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 42 (0.84%) Front Office
14 41 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.74%) Investment Banking
16 36 (0.72%) Military
17 35 (0.70%) Telecoms
18 23 (0.46%) Law
19 22 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,026 (20.43%) DevOps Engineer
2 742 (14.77%) Developer
3 702 (13.98%) Senior
4 582 (11.59%) Architect
5 408 (8.12%) Lead
6 341 (6.79%) Azure Engineer
7 310 (6.17%) Data Engineer
8 305 (6.07%) Analyst
9 237 (4.72%) AWS Engineer
10 182 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 176 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
12 173 (3.44%) AWS DevOps
12 173 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
13 167 (3.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 163 (3.25%) Senior DevOps
15 159 (3.17%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 153 (3.05%) Software Engineer
17 151 (3.01%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 149 (2.97%) Business Analyst
19 140 (2.79%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 450 (8.96%) REST
2 444 (8.84%) .NET
3 294 (5.85%) React
4 277 (5.51%) Kafka
5 276 (5.49%) Spring
6 261 (5.20%) Node.js
6 261 (5.20%) Spring Boot
7 257 (5.12%) RESTful
8 173 (3.44%) AngularJS
9 152 (3.03%) PySpark
10 146 (2.91%) Playwright
11 145 (2.89%) OAuth
12 140 (2.79%) JSON
13 129 (2.57%) YAML
14 116 (2.31%) HTML
15 115 (2.29%) Middleware
16 109 (2.17%) SOAP
17 100 (1.99%) CSS
18 97 (1.93%) .NET Framework
19 95 (1.89%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 799 (15.91%) Cloud Native
2 317 (6.31%) Product Ownership
3 194 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 107 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
6 106 (2.11%) Public Cloud
7 95 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 94 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
9 82 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.23%) Data Centre
11 56 (1.11%) Management Information System
12 49 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
13 47 (0.94%) Virtual Team
14 46 (0.92%) Private Cloud
15 43 (0.86%) Data Structures
15 43 (0.86%) Replication
16 42 (0.84%) Low-Code
16 42 (0.84%) NHS
17 41 (0.82%) AI Agents
17 41 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 444 (8.84%) Linux
2 252 (5.02%) Windows
3 83 (1.65%) Unix
4 78 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 46 (0.92%) Windows Server
6 42 (0.84%) VMS
7 22 (0.44%) Ubuntu
8 17 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.30%) 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 (0.100%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.100%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.100%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.080%) zOS
17 3 (0.060%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,873 (57.20%) CI/CD
2 1,842 (36.67%) Agile
3 1,282 (25.52%) Infrastructure as Code
4 833 (16.58%) Containerisation
5 785 (15.63%) Problem-Solving
6 724 (14.41%) Microservices
7 702 (13.98%) Test Automation
8 651 (12.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 603 (12.00%) Migration
10 590 (11.75%) Observability
11 582 (11.59%) Analytics
12 531 (10.57%) Stakeholder Management
13 526 (10.47%) Scrum
14 510 (10.15%) AI
15 480 (9.56%) Data Modelling
16 473 (9.42%) Software Engineering
17 445 (8.86%) Platform Engineering
18 390 (7.76%) Data Pipeline
19 386 (7.68%) Mentoring
20 382 (7.61%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,386 (27.59%) Python
2 990 (19.71%) SQL
3 648 (12.90%) Java
4 492 (9.79%) C#
5 373 (7.43%) JavaScript
6 348 (6.93%) PowerShell
7 343 (6.83%) Bash
8 279 (5.55%) TypeScript
9 170 (3.38%) Bicep
10 109 (2.17%) Go
11 68 (1.35%) Scala
12 63 (1.25%) Shell Script
13 57 (1.13%) PL/SQL
14 48 (0.96%) Groovy
15 47 (0.94%) Apex Code
16 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
17 39 (0.78%) C++
18 27 (0.54%) Ruby
19 25 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 24 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,598 (31.81%) Security Cleared
2 1,330 (26.48%) SC Cleared
3 314 (6.25%) Degree
4 209 (4.16%) Azure Certification
5 155 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 150 (2.99%) DV Cleared
7 145 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
8 135 (2.69%) AWS Certification
9 78 (1.55%) CISSP
10 57 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 54 (1.08%) CISM
12 52 (1.04%) Master's Degree
13 51 (1.02%) ISTQB
14 49 (0.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 44 (0.88%) PMI Certification
16 42 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
17 39 (0.78%) PMP
18 28 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
19 26 (0.52%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
20 22 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (8.76%) QA
2 243 (4.84%) Data Quality
3 182 (3.62%) GDPR
4 132 (2.63%) Accessibility
4 132 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 124 (2.47%) NIST
6 67 (1.33%) NCSC
7 51 (1.02%) WCAG
8 46 (0.92%) PCI DSS
9 35 (0.70%) PMO
10 33 (0.66%) SLA
11 32 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) GRC
13 17 (0.34%) HIPAA
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 14 (0.28%) NIST 800
15 14 (0.28%) PSD2
16 12 (0.24%) SEPA
16 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 974 (19.39%) Docker
2 174 (3.46%) Active Directory
3 80 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
4 71 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.64%) vSphere
6 26 (0.52%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.36%) Squid
7 18 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (0.26%) Hyper-V
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%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.12%) RACF
13 5 (0.100%) Ceph
13 5 (0.100%) NFS
14 4 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 4 (0.080%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,422 (28.31%) Terraform
2 1,295 (25.78%) Kubernetes
3 487 (9.70%) Ansible
4 343 (6.83%) Grafana
5 279 (5.55%) Prometheus
6 93 (1.85%) Argo
7 70 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
8 68 (1.35%) 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%) HP ALM
12 23 (0.46%) Kibana
13 21 (0.42%) vCenter Server
14 20 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 17 (0.34%) Rancher
16 15 (0.30%) SCCM
17 14 (0.28%) Consul
17 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 866 (17.24%) Microsoft
2 287 (5.71%) Databricks
3 286 (5.69%) Oracle
4 238 (4.74%) Google
5 193 (3.84%) Splunk
6 172 (3.42%) ServiceNow
7 154 (3.07%) Salesforce
8 137 (2.73%) Red Hat
9 117 (2.33%) SAP
10 115 (2.29%) VMware
11 101 (2.01%) Dynatrace
12 70 (1.39%) OpenAI
13 53 (1.06%) CyberArk
14 48 (0.96%) Atlassian
15 44 (0.88%) IBM
16 43 (0.86%) Informatica
17 40 (0.80%) Cisco
18 38 (0.76%) AppDynamics
19 37 (0.74%) Foundry
20 36 (0.72%) Denodo