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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,989 3,000 3,962
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.57% 10.35% 9.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.53% 11.38% 10.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,485 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 £608 £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 109 19 108
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.05 £56.25
25th Percentile £55.50 £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 39,805 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 24,996 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 2,368 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.90 £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 £67.31 £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 13 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 13 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 13 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 4,254 £525 -4.55% 1,354
UK excluding London +10 2,200 £500 - 958
London +4 2,168 £550 -3.08% 557
Work from Home -3 1,337 £525 - 733
North of England +9 737 £500 -2.82% 281
South East +3 474 £513 - 290
Yorkshire +4 403 £500 -2.44% 76
Midlands +4 398 £490 -2.00% 105
West Midlands +2 308 £500 -4.31% 57
South West +13 278 £525 -4.55% 117
North West +4 276 £500 - 150
Scotland +2 176 £488 +2.63% 58
East of England +27 128 £525 +3.45% 77
East Midlands -1 87 £466 -1.84% 48
North East +8 69 £453 -13.81% 58
Wales +6 41 £425 +39.13% 31
Northern Ireland +1 13 £525 +25.75% 14
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 (5.67%) Confluence
2 130 (2.61%) Apache Spark
3 113 (2.26%) SharePoint
4 84 (1.68%) Apache
5 81 (1.62%) SAS
6 67 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.76%) CMS
8 31 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 30 (0.60%) nginx
10 24 (0.48%) OpenStack
11 22 (0.44%) IIS
12 14 (0.28%) Mendix
13 11 (0.22%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.18%) Camunda
15 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
16 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 73 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.18%) 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 (1.24%) 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 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.080%) Endur
8 4 (0.080%) Magento
8 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.060%) Findur
9 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,719 (54.50%) Azure
2 1,695 (33.97%) AWS
3 1,478 (29.63%) Azure DevOps
4 839 (16.82%) GitHub
5 659 (13.21%) GCP
6 490 (9.82%) GitHub Actions
7 489 (9.80%) Serverless
8 426 (8.54%) Power Platform
9 269 (5.39%) Amazon S3
10 259 (5.19%) AWS CloudFormation
11 245 (4.91%) AWS Lambda
12 223 (4.47%) Entra ID
13 221 (4.43%) Azure AKS
14 218 (4.37%) Azure Data Factory
15 197 (3.95%) Amazon EKS
16 173 (3.47%) OpenShift
17 167 (3.35%) Azure Monitor
18 165 (3.31%) PaaS
19 151 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 151 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 216 (4.33%) Firewall
2 120 (2.41%) DNS
3 99 (1.98%) Network Security
4 93 (1.86%) VPN
5 41 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 35 (0.70%) WAN
7 31 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 26 (0.52%) BGP
8 26 (0.52%) HTTP
8 26 (0.52%) SSL
9 23 (0.46%) SAN
10 22 (0.44%) DHCP
11 20 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
12 19 (0.38%) IPsec
13 17 (0.34%) OSPF
14 16 (0.32%) MPLS
14 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
15 14 (0.28%) LAN
16 13 (0.26%) Internet
17 12 (0.24%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (5.59%) Power BI
2 245 (4.91%) SQL Server
3 242 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
4 175 (3.51%) NoSQL
5 172 (3.45%) Data Lake
6 152 (3.05%) Relational Database
7 135 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
8 114 (2.29%) MongoDB
9 113 (2.26%) Azure SQL Database
10 103 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
11 93 (1.86%) DynamoDB
12 92 (1.84%) Metadata
13 89 (1.78%) Delta Lake
14 74 (1.48%) Big Data
15 69 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (1.36%) Oracle Database
17 61 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
18 53 (1.06%) Redis
19 50 (1.00%) BigQuery
20 48 (0.96%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 719 (14.41%) Jenkins
2 633 (12.69%) Git
3 605 (12.13%) JIRA
4 505 (10.12%) GitLab
5 98 (1.96%) Selenium
6 97 (1.94%) Postman
7 81 (1.62%) SonarQube
8 80 (1.60%) JUnit
9 67 (1.34%) Bitbucket
10 59 (1.18%) Maven
11 53 (1.06%) JMeter
12 52 (1.04%) Artifactory
13 50 (1.00%) REST Assured
14 47 (0.94%) Cucumber
14 47 (0.94%) Cypress.io
15 37 (0.74%) Gatling
16 35 (0.70%) Mockito
17 33 (0.66%) Gradle
18 28 (0.56%) NUnit
18 28 (0.56%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,224 (24.53%) Social Skills
2 895 (17.94%) Finance
3 627 (12.57%) Public Sector
4 400 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
5 314 (6.29%) Banking
6 145 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 72 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.26%) Legal
10 59 (1.18%) Retail
11 55 (1.10%) Marketing
12 51 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 51 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 41 (0.82%) Front Office
13 41 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
14 37 (0.74%) Investment Banking
15 36 (0.72%) Military
16 34 (0.68%) Telecoms
17 23 (0.46%) Law
18 21 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,022 (20.49%) DevOps Engineer
2 740 (14.83%) Developer
3 698 (13.99%) Senior
4 577 (11.57%) Architect
5 406 (8.14%) Lead
6 338 (6.77%) Azure Engineer
7 308 (6.17%) Data Engineer
8 302 (6.05%) Analyst
9 236 (4.73%) AWS Engineer
10 181 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
11 176 (3.53%) Platform Engineer
12 173 (3.47%) AWS DevOps
13 171 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
14 167 (3.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 161 (3.23%) Senior DevOps
16 159 (3.19%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 152 (3.05%) Software Engineer
18 150 (3.01%) Senior DevOps Engineer
19 146 (2.93%) Business Analyst
20 140 (2.81%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (8.94%) REST
2 440 (8.82%) .NET
3 293 (5.87%) React
4 274 (5.49%) Spring
5 273 (5.47%) Kafka
6 260 (5.21%) Node.js
7 259 (5.19%) Spring Boot
8 253 (5.07%) RESTful
9 172 (3.45%) AngularJS
10 152 (3.05%) PySpark
11 145 (2.91%) Playwright
12 144 (2.89%) OAuth
13 138 (2.77%) JSON
14 129 (2.59%) YAML
15 115 (2.31%) HTML
16 114 (2.29%) Middleware
17 109 (2.18%) SOAP
18 99 (1.98%) CSS
19 95 (1.90%) .NET Framework
20 94 (1.88%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 797 (15.98%) Cloud Native
2 316 (6.33%) Product Ownership
3 190 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 107 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
6 105 (2.10%) Public Cloud
7 95 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 94 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
9 82 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.24%) Data Centre
11 56 (1.12%) 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%) NHS
17 41 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
17 41 (0.82%) Low-Code
18 40 (0.80%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 443 (8.88%) Linux
2 251 (5.03%) Windows
3 83 (1.66%) Unix
4 78 (1.56%) 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 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.10%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.060%) Debian
17 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,847 (57.07%) CI/CD
2 1,834 (36.76%) Agile
3 1,265 (25.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 828 (16.60%) Containerisation
5 781 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
6 718 (14.39%) Microservices
7 698 (13.99%) Test Automation
8 647 (12.97%) Continuous Improvement
9 601 (12.05%) Migration
10 587 (11.77%) Observability
11 579 (11.61%) Analytics
12 527 (10.56%) Stakeholder Management
13 524 (10.50%) Scrum
14 506 (10.14%) AI
15 478 (9.58%) Data Modelling
16 470 (9.42%) Software Engineering
17 441 (8.84%) Platform Engineering
18 389 (7.80%) Data Pipeline
19 383 (7.68%) Mentoring
20 380 (7.62%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,378 (27.62%) Python
2 988 (19.80%) SQL
3 645 (12.93%) Java
4 488 (9.78%) C#
5 370 (7.42%) JavaScript
6 345 (6.92%) PowerShell
7 338 (6.77%) Bash
8 276 (5.53%) TypeScript
9 168 (3.37%) Bicep
10 109 (2.18%) Go
11 68 (1.36%) Scala
12 63 (1.26%) Shell Script
13 57 (1.14%) 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 1,587 (31.81%) Security Cleared
2 1,320 (26.46%) SC Cleared
3 314 (6.29%) Degree
4 208 (4.17%) Azure Certification
5 154 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 148 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 145 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
8 135 (2.71%) AWS Certification
9 76 (1.52%) CISSP
10 57 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
11 52 (1.04%) CISM
11 52 (1.04%) Master's Degree
12 51 (1.02%) ISTQB
13 49 (0.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 44 (0.88%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
16 39 (0.78%) PMP
17 28 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
18 26 (0.52%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 22 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (8.76%) QA
2 242 (4.85%) Data Quality
3 182 (3.65%) GDPR
4 132 (2.65%) Accessibility
5 130 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 122 (2.45%) NIST
7 64 (1.28%) NCSC
8 50 (1.00%) WCAG
9 46 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.70%) PMO
11 33 (0.66%) SLA
12 32 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.38%) GRC
14 17 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 14 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 14 (0.28%) PSD2
17 12 (0.24%) SEPA
17 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
18 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 963 (19.30%) Docker
2 172 (3.45%) Active Directory
3 79 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
4 71 (1.42%) 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
13 5 (0.10%) Ceph
13 5 (0.10%) NFS
13 5 (0.10%) RACF
14 4 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 4 (0.080%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,410 (28.26%) Terraform
2 1,285 (25.76%) Kubernetes
3 485 (9.72%) Ansible
4 340 (6.81%) Grafana
5 277 (5.55%) Prometheus
6 93 (1.86%) Argo
7 70 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 68 (1.36%) Puppet
9 62 (1.24%) 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
1 862 (17.28%) Microsoft
2 284 (5.69%) Databricks
3 283 (5.67%) Oracle
4 236 (4.73%) Google
5 192 (3.85%) Splunk
6 171 (3.43%) ServiceNow
7 151 (3.03%) Salesforce
8 137 (2.75%) Red Hat
9 117 (2.35%) SAP
10 115 (2.31%) VMware
11 100 (2.00%) Dynatrace
12 70 (1.40%) OpenAI
13 53 (1.06%) CyberArk
14 48 (0.96%) Atlassian
15 43 (0.86%) Informatica
16 42 (0.84%) IBM
17 40 (0.80%) Cisco
18 38 (0.76%) AppDynamics
19 36 (0.72%) Denodo
19 36 (0.72%) Foundry