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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,642 3,670 3,731
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.29% 11.22% 9.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.18% 12.40% 11.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,928 2,559 2,496
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 £623 £619 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 23 67
10th Percentile £38.25 £44.25 £56.50
25th Percentile £56.25 £56.50 £65.00
Median hourly rate £68.88 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £92.05 £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 46,309 29,588 32,312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.49% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,063 18,372 19,750
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,189 1,818 1,403
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.25 £15.00
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% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,791 £525 - 4,140
London 0 2,537 £550 - 1,996
UK excluding London -4 2,404 £500 - 2,412
Work from Home 0 1,602 £525 +1.16% 1,991
North of England -3 779 £500 +5.26% 729
South East -12 450 £536 +7.20% 562
Midlands -6 433 £488 -2.50% 288
Yorkshire -2 386 £500 +3.09% 214
West Midlands -7 345 £500 -3.85% 172
South West +2 319 £550 +4.76% 299
North West -4 300 £525 +14.69% 403
Scotland 0 226 £475 -2.16% 183
East of England +4 156 £503 -3.73% 204
North East +11 108 £450 -18.18% 115
East Midlands -5 85 £470 +4.44% 116
Wales -7 48 £425 +13.33% 73
Northern Ireland +21 22 £450 +2.27% 85
Channel Islands - 5 £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
1 335 (5.94%) Confluence
2 161 (2.85%) SharePoint
3 132 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
4 129 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 113 (2.00%) Apache
6 61 (1.08%) SAS
7 45 (0.80%) CMS
8 42 (0.74%) Jupyter
9 28 (0.50%) nginx
10 26 (0.46%) IIS
11 20 (0.35%) 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 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
17 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 67 (1.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
3 49 (0.87%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
4 34 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.12%) Windchill
8 6 (0.11%) Trello
9 5 (0.089%) Notion
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
10 2 (0.035%) Mingle
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 82 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 43 (0.76%) 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 9 (0.16%) 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 (0.053%) Endur
12 3 (0.053%) Maximo
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.053%) SAP ERP
12 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,057 (54.18%) Azure
2 2,036 (36.09%) AWS
3 1,751 (31.04%) Azure DevOps
4 970 (17.19%) GitHub
5 743 (13.17%) GCP
6 617 (10.94%) GitHub Actions
7 492 (8.72%) Power Platform
8 465 (8.24%) Serverless
9 310 (5.49%) Amazon S3
10 292 (5.18%) AWS Lambda
11 262 (4.64%) Entra ID
12 254 (4.50%) Amazon EKS
13 250 (4.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 238 (4.22%) AWS CloudFormation
15 216 (3.83%) Azure AKS
16 210 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
17 198 (3.51%) Amazon EC2
18 191 (3.39%) Azure Data Factory
19 187 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
20 168 (2.98%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 244 (4.32%) Firewall
2 174 (3.08%) DNS
3 120 (2.13%) VPN
4 114 (2.02%) Network Security
5 72 (1.28%) TCP/IP
6 57 (1.01%) SSL
7 52 (0.92%) DHCP
8 48 (0.85%) WAN
9 37 (0.66%) HTTP
10 35 (0.62%) BGP
11 30 (0.53%) SD-WAN
12 28 (0.50%) Internet
12 28 (0.50%) SSH
13 26 (0.46%) OSPF
14 23 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
15 21 (0.37%) VLAN
16 19 (0.34%) LAN
17 18 (0.32%) SAN
18 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (5.69%) Power BI
2 302 (5.35%) PostgreSQL
3 291 (5.16%) SQL Server
4 211 (3.74%) Data Warehouse
5 189 (3.35%) MongoDB
6 184 (3.26%) NoSQL
7 177 (3.14%) Data Lake
8 172 (3.05%) Relational Database
9 149 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
10 129 (2.29%) Metadata
11 96 (1.70%) Azure SQL Database
11 96 (1.70%) DynamoDB
12 90 (1.60%) Oracle Database
13 89 (1.58%) MySQL
14 88 (1.56%) Delta Lake
15 83 (1.47%) Redis
16 67 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (1.15%) Big Data
18 62 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 58 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 845 (14.98%) Git
2 802 (14.21%) Jenkins
3 663 (11.75%) JIRA
4 650 (11.52%) GitLab
5 147 (2.61%) Selenium
6 103 (1.83%) SonarQube
7 100 (1.77%) JUnit
8 98 (1.74%) Postman
9 97 (1.72%) Maven
10 73 (1.29%) Cucumber
11 72 (1.28%) REST Assured
12 71 (1.26%) Bitbucket
13 70 (1.24%) Cypress.io
14 67 (1.19%) Gradle
15 64 (1.13%) JMeter
16 52 (0.92%) Claude Code
17 49 (0.87%) Mockito
18 43 (0.76%) Gatling
19 42 (0.74%) Visual Studio
20 38 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,464 (25.95%) Social Skills
2 997 (17.67%) Finance
3 807 (14.30%) Public Sector
4 525 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
5 389 (6.89%) Banking
6 173 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 109 (1.93%) Retail
8 88 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.10%) Legal
11 61 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
12 56 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 56 (0.99%) Marketing
13 55 (0.97%) Military
14 51 (0.90%) Telecoms
15 49 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 46 (0.82%) Law
17 45 (0.80%) Manufacturing
18 40 (0.71%) Front Office
19 39 (0.69%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,143 (20.26%) DevOps Engineer
2 921 (16.32%) Developer
3 858 (15.21%) Senior
4 652 (11.56%) Architect
5 533 (9.45%) Lead
6 351 (6.22%) Azure Engineer
7 307 (5.44%) Data Engineer
8 267 (4.73%) Analyst
9 261 (4.63%) AWS Engineer
10 226 (4.01%) Platform Engineer
11 208 (3.69%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 208 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
12 200 (3.54%) Senior DevOps
13 198 (3.51%) Java Developer
14 185 (3.28%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 184 (3.26%) AWS DevOps
16 182 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
17 173 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 156 (2.76%) Senior Developer
19 144 (2.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,684 (29.85%) Terraform
2 635 (11.25%) REST
3 472 (8.37%) .NET
4 392 (6.95%) Kafka
5 362 (6.42%) RESTful
6 312 (5.53%) Spring
7 307 (5.44%) Spring Boot
8 290 (5.14%) React
9 207 (3.67%) Node.js
10 191 (3.39%) OAuth
11 187 (3.31%) JSON
12 159 (2.82%) Playwright
13 156 (2.76%) PySpark
14 143 (2.53%) HTML
15 135 (2.39%) OAuth2
16 132 (2.34%) SOAP
17 131 (2.32%) CSS
18 127 (2.25%) .NET Framework
19 123 (2.18%) Middleware
20 121 (2.14%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,039 (18.42%) Cloud Native
2 428 (7.59%) Product Ownership
3 268 (4.75%) Distributed Systems
4 210 (3.72%) Enterprise Software
5 206 (3.65%) Onboarding
6 149 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
7 144 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 106 (1.88%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 83 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
12 78 (1.38%) Public Cloud
13 74 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.31%) Replication
13 74 (1.31%) Security Posture
14 73 (1.29%) Data Centre
15 62 (1.10%) Virtual Team
16 60 (1.06%) Enterprise Cloud
17 59 (1.05%) PKI
18 53 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 558 (9.89%) Linux
2 316 (5.60%) Windows
3 120 (2.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 110 (1.95%) Unix
5 96 (1.70%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.60%) VMS
8 31 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 15 (0.27%) 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 3,448 (61.11%) CI/CD
2 2,304 (40.84%) Agile
3 1,674 (29.67%) Infrastructure as Code
4 965 (17.10%) Continuous Improvement
5 953 (16.89%) Containerisation
6 948 (16.80%) Stakeholder Management
7 907 (16.08%) Test Automation
8 883 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
9 871 (15.44%) AI
10 840 (14.89%) Microservices
11 787 (13.95%) Observability
12 767 (13.59%) Platform Engineering
13 740 (13.12%) Software Engineering
14 695 (12.32%) Scrum
15 680 (12.05%) Migration
16 622 (11.02%) Technical Leadership
17 584 (10.35%) Analytics
18 534 (9.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 490 (8.68%) Roadmaps
20 488 (8.65%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,619 (28.70%) Python
2 985 (17.46%) SQL
3 831 (14.73%) Java
4 497 (8.81%) C#
5 490 (8.68%) PowerShell
6 488 (8.65%) Bash
7 467 (8.28%) JavaScript
8 315 (5.58%) TypeScript
9 256 (4.54%) Bicep
10 122 (2.16%) Go
11 79 (1.40%) Shell Script
12 68 (1.21%) Scala
13 67 (1.19%) T-SQL
14 64 (1.13%) Apex Code
14 64 (1.13%) Groovy
15 61 (1.08%) PL/SQL
16 40 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 35 (0.62%) Perl
18 31 (0.55%) C++
19 26 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,818 (32.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,528 (27.08%) SC Cleared
3 364 (6.45%) Degree
4 251 (4.45%) Azure Certification
5 242 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 233 (4.13%) DV Cleared
7 193 (3.42%) AWS Certification
8 146 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 78 (1.38%) CISSP
11 61 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 53 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 49 (0.87%) PMP
15 45 (0.80%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.78%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.55%) CISM
18 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 551 (9.77%) QA
2 289 (5.12%) Data Quality
3 212 (3.76%) Accessibility
4 129 (2.29%) GDPR
5 92 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.47%) WCAG
7 76 (1.35%) NIST
8 57 (1.01%) NCSC
9 48 (0.85%) PMO
10 38 (0.67%) SLA
11 29 (0.51%) GRC
11 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.37%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.23%) SEPA
15 13 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,164 (20.63%) Docker
2 166 (2.94%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (0.53%) vSphere
6 26 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (0.41%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.21%) Squid
11 11 (0.19%) 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 1,547 (27.42%) Kubernetes
2 535 (9.48%) Ansible
3 371 (6.58%) Grafana
4 317 (5.62%) Prometheus
5 75 (1.33%) Argo
6 57 (1.01%) Puppet
7 49 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (0.85%) Progress Chef
9 47 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
10 36 (0.64%) Packer
11 32 (0.57%) Kibana
12 29 (0.51%) Istio
13 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
14 20 (0.35%) Kubeflow
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.30%) SCCM
17 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,108 (19.64%) Microsoft
2 309 (5.48%) Oracle
3 306 (5.42%) Databricks
4 290 (5.14%) Google
5 215 (3.81%) ServiceNow
6 189 (3.35%) Splunk
7 181 (3.21%) Salesforce
8 146 (2.59%) Dynatrace
9 130 (2.30%) VMware
10 116 (2.06%) SAP
11 101 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.31%) OpenAI
13 72 (1.28%) IBM
14 65 (1.15%) MuleSoft
15 58 (1.03%) Foundry
16 50 (0.89%) Cisco
17 49 (0.87%) Informatica
18 43 (0.76%) AppDynamics
19 42 (0.74%) Okta
20 40 (0.71%) Atlassian