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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 14
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,608 3,425 4,023
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.64% 10.49% 9.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.51% 11.61% 11.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,873 2,440 2,760
10th Percentile £385 £363 £385
25th Percentile £438 £425 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £525
% change year-on-year +1.01% -5.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 25 103
10th Percentile £35.90 £38.00 £56.30
25th Percentile £61.38 £52.50 £61.60
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +6.87%
75th Percentile £77.50 £87.50 £76.25
90th Percentile £93.63 £91.00 £85.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +6.87%

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 44,826 29,510 35,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.34% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,532 22,551
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,642 1,578 2,152
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.25
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.46 £17.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -36.33% -7.06%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.94 £62.76
90th Percentile £83.00 £69.13 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.88% -39.15% -1.45%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 4,772 £525 - 1,691
UK excluding London +5 2,462 £500 +1.01% 1,095
London +2 2,449 £550 - 792
Work from Home 0 1,605 £525 +2.44% 804
North of England +4 865 £500 +3.09% 331
South East -10 460 £525 +5.00% 289
Midlands +3 447 £488 +2.63% 162
Yorkshire +2 444 £500 +1.44% 91
West Midlands -1 359 £492 -1.57% 113
North West -1 340 £524 +10.32% 175
South West +15 318 £500 -5.21% 140
Scotland +2 203 £479 -1.19% 65
East of England +18 140 £510 +2.00% 68
North East +11 100 £425 -18.66% 67
East Midlands -3 83 £488 +5.41% 49
Wales -6 47 £425 +32.57% 26
Northern Ireland +22 22 £475 +7.95% 31
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
1 342 (6.10%) Confluence
2 134 (2.39%) Apache Spark
3 132 (2.35%) SharePoint
4 112 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
5 104 (1.85%) Apache
6 78 (1.39%) SAS
7 45 (0.80%) CMS
8 36 (0.64%) IIS
9 35 (0.62%) Jupyter
10 28 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
11 27 (0.48%) nginx
12 16 (0.29%) WebSphere
13 14 (0.25%) Camunda
13 14 (0.25%) OpenStack
14 13 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
17 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
17 8 (0.14%) Tomcat
17 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 66 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
2 63 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
4 35 (0.62%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 6 (0.11%) Trello
10 4 (0.071%) Notion
11 2 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
12 1 (0.018%) InDesign
12 1 (0.018%) Maya
12 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 66 (1.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
3 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
3 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.16%) Magento
4 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
5 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 6 (0.11%) Maximo
7 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
7 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
7 5 (0.089%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 4 (0.071%) Endur
8 4 (0.071%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.053%) Infor LN
9 3 (0.053%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.053%) Shopify
9 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,013 (53.73%) Azure
2 2,003 (35.72%) AWS
3 1,682 (29.99%) Azure DevOps
4 938 (16.73%) GitHub
5 716 (12.77%) GCP
6 575 (10.25%) GitHub Actions
7 455 (8.11%) Serverless
8 451 (8.04%) Power Platform
9 304 (5.42%) Amazon S3
10 274 (4.89%) AWS Lambda
11 253 (4.51%) AWS CloudFormation
12 252 (4.49%) Entra ID
13 228 (4.07%) Amazon EKS
13 228 (4.07%) Azure AKS
14 196 (3.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 194 (3.46%) Azure Monitor
16 182 (3.25%) Amazon EC2
17 178 (3.17%) Azure Data Factory
18 157 (2.80%) PaaS
19 153 (2.73%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 236 (4.21%) Firewall
2 153 (2.73%) DNS
3 118 (2.10%) Network Security
3 118 (2.10%) VPN
4 56 (1.00%) TCP/IP
5 48 (0.86%) WAN
6 40 (0.71%) SSL
7 37 (0.66%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.62%) DHCP
9 33 (0.59%) BGP
10 30 (0.53%) Internet
11 27 (0.48%) HTTP
11 27 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
12 25 (0.45%) OSPF
13 21 (0.37%) SAN
14 18 (0.32%) VLAN
14 18 (0.32%) VXLAN
15 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
15 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 17 (0.30%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (5.37%) Power BI
2 286 (5.10%) SQL Server
3 277 (4.94%) PostgreSQL
4 189 (3.37%) NoSQL
5 184 (3.28%) Relational Database
6 178 (3.17%) MongoDB
7 171 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
8 152 (2.71%) Data Lake
9 119 (2.12%) Amazon RDS
10 105 (1.87%) DynamoDB
10 105 (1.87%) Metadata
11 102 (1.82%) Azure SQL Database
12 85 (1.52%) Oracle Database
13 81 (1.44%) Delta Lake
14 74 (1.32%) Big Data
15 69 (1.23%) Redis
16 67 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
17 66 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
17 66 (1.18%) MySQL
18 56 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 812 (14.48%) Jenkins
2 756 (13.48%) Git
3 689 (12.29%) JIRA
4 573 (10.22%) GitLab
5 132 (2.35%) Selenium
6 105 (1.87%) Postman
7 100 (1.78%) JUnit
8 95 (1.69%) SonarQube
9 82 (1.46%) Maven
10 78 (1.39%) Bitbucket
11 75 (1.34%) REST Assured
12 61 (1.09%) Cucumber
12 61 (1.09%) Cypress.io
13 58 (1.03%) JMeter
14 54 (0.96%) Gradle
15 46 (0.82%) Mockito
16 44 (0.78%) Gatling
17 37 (0.66%) Visual Studio
18 35 (0.62%) Artifactory
18 35 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,374 (24.50%) Social Skills
2 1,014 (18.08%) Finance
3 808 (14.41%) Public Sector
4 466 (8.31%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (6.47%) Banking
6 128 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 114 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 93 (1.66%) Retail
9 69 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
9 69 (1.23%) Legal
10 65 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 57 (1.02%) Marketing
12 49 (0.87%) Military
13 45 (0.80%) Telecoms
14 44 (0.78%) Investment Banking
14 44 (0.78%) Law
15 40 (0.71%) Financial Institution
16 39 (0.70%) Front Office
16 39 (0.70%) Manufacturing
17 36 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,126 (20.08%) DevOps Engineer
2 927 (16.53%) Developer
3 791 (14.10%) Senior
4 629 (11.22%) Architect
5 515 (9.18%) Lead
6 336 (5.99%) Azure Engineer
7 312 (5.56%) Data Engineer
8 300 (5.35%) Analyst
9 281 (5.01%) AWS Engineer
10 230 (4.10%) Platform Engineer
11 208 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 203 (3.62%) Java Developer
13 199 (3.55%) Senior DevOps
14 198 (3.53%) AWS DevOps
15 185 (3.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 185 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
16 184 (3.28%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 183 (3.26%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 150 (2.67%) Business Analyst
19 148 (2.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 559 (9.97%) REST
2 489 (8.72%) .NET
3 331 (5.90%) RESTful
4 325 (5.80%) Kafka
5 323 (5.76%) Spring
6 306 (5.46%) Spring Boot
7 296 (5.28%) React
8 227 (4.05%) Node.js
9 167 (2.98%) JSON
10 165 (2.94%) OAuth
11 164 (2.92%) PySpark
12 162 (2.89%) Playwright
13 158 (2.82%) AngularJS
14 143 (2.55%) SOAP
15 137 (2.44%) .NET Framework
16 128 (2.28%) HTML
17 113 (2.01%) OAuth2
18 108 (1.93%) Middleware
19 106 (1.89%) CSS
19 106 (1.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 992 (17.69%) Cloud Native
2 396 (7.06%) Product Ownership
3 267 (4.76%) Distributed Systems
4 168 (3.00%) Onboarding
5 159 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
6 150 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.28%) Hybrid Cloud
8 97 (1.73%) Public Cloud
9 89 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
10 86 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 77 (1.37%) Data Centre
12 73 (1.30%) Management Information System
13 70 (1.25%) Data Structures
14 69 (1.23%) Security Posture
15 61 (1.09%) Replication
16 60 (1.07%) AI Agents
16 60 (1.07%) Virtual Team
17 55 (0.98%) Enterprise Cloud
18 53 (0.95%) Mobile App
19 50 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 488 (8.70%) Linux
2 293 (5.22%) Windows
3 104 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 83 (1.48%) Unix
5 71 (1.27%) Windows Server
6 34 (0.61%) VMS
7 28 (0.50%) Ubuntu
8 26 (0.46%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.30%) Android
10 11 (0.20%) Solaris
11 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.16%) zOS
13 7 (0.12%) CentOS
13 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.11%) AIX
14 6 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
14 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,290 (58.67%) CI/CD
2 2,225 (39.68%) Agile
3 1,511 (26.94%) Infrastructure as Code
4 933 (16.64%) Containerisation
5 857 (15.28%) Continuous Improvement
6 845 (15.07%) Problem-Solving
7 838 (14.94%) Test Automation
8 819 (14.60%) Microservices
9 736 (13.12%) Stakeholder Management
10 725 (12.93%) AI
11 696 (12.41%) Observability
12 689 (12.29%) Scrum
13 678 (12.09%) Migration
14 663 (11.82%) Platform Engineering
15 639 (11.39%) Software Engineering
16 596 (10.63%) Analytics
17 492 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 489 (8.72%) Technical Leadership
19 485 (8.65%) Data Modelling
20 461 (8.22%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,562 (27.85%) Python
2 1,016 (18.12%) SQL
3 788 (14.05%) Java
4 504 (8.99%) C#
5 445 (7.94%) Bash
6 425 (7.58%) JavaScript
7 412 (7.35%) PowerShell
8 296 (5.28%) TypeScript
9 205 (3.66%) Bicep
10 115 (2.05%) Go
11 68 (1.21%) Apex Code
11 68 (1.21%) PL/SQL
12 67 (1.19%) Shell Script
13 66 (1.18%) T-SQL
14 55 (0.98%) Groovy
15 51 (0.91%) Scala
16 29 (0.52%) C++
17 28 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 24 (0.43%) C
18 24 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,758 (31.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,474 (26.28%) SC Cleared
3 334 (5.96%) Degree
4 224 (3.99%) Azure Certification
5 207 (3.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 194 (3.46%) DV Cleared
7 188 (3.35%) AWS Certification
8 123 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
9 80 (1.43%) CISSP
10 79 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
11 58 (1.03%) ISTQB
12 57 (1.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 55 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
14 44 (0.78%) Master's Degree
14 44 (0.78%) PMP
15 42 (0.75%) PMI Certification
16 35 (0.62%) CISM
17 29 (0.52%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 26 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
19 24 (0.43%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (8.81%) QA
2 264 (4.71%) Data Quality
3 193 (3.44%) Accessibility
4 167 (2.98%) GDPR
5 96 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.52%) NIST
7 78 (1.39%) WCAG
8 57 (1.02%) NCSC
9 44 (0.78%) PMO
10 41 (0.73%) PCI DSS
11 36 (0.64%) SLA
12 29 (0.52%) GRC
13 27 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
15 11 (0.20%) SOC 2
16 10 (0.18%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.18%) PSD2
17 9 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
17 9 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,095 (19.53%) Docker
2 183 (3.26%) Active Directory
3 83 (1.48%) Virtual Machines
4 79 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.57%) vSphere
6 26 (0.46%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 16 (0.29%) Hyper-V
10 15 (0.27%) Squid
11 14 (0.25%) Postfix
12 12 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 7 (0.12%) IAG
15 6 (0.11%) Corosync
15 6 (0.11%) HDFS
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
15 6 (0.11%) RACF
16 5 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
16 5 (0.089%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 1,617 (28.83%) Terraform
2 1,443 (25.73%) Kubernetes
3 523 (9.33%) Ansible
4 376 (6.70%) Grafana
5 323 (5.76%) Prometheus
6 93 (1.66%) Argo
7 66 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
8 62 (1.11%) Puppet
9 45 (0.80%) Istio
10 42 (0.75%) Progress Chef
11 35 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
12 31 (0.55%) Packer
13 27 (0.48%) vCenter Server
14 20 (0.36%) HP ALM
15 17 (0.30%) Kibana
16 16 (0.29%) Kustomize
16 16 (0.29%) SCCM
17 15 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 15 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
18 13 (0.23%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,000 (17.83%) Microsoft
2 321 (5.72%) Oracle
3 264 (4.71%) Google
4 263 (4.69%) Databricks
5 202 (3.60%) ServiceNow
6 185 (3.30%) Salesforce
6 185 (3.30%) Splunk
7 132 (2.35%) SAP
8 131 (2.34%) Dynatrace
9 118 (2.10%) VMware
10 109 (1.94%) Red Hat
11 68 (1.21%) OpenAI
12 63 (1.12%) IBM
13 57 (1.02%) Informatica
14 54 (0.96%) Atlassian
15 49 (0.87%) MuleSoft
16 47 (0.84%) Cisco
17 44 (0.78%) Foundry
18 42 (0.75%) Okta
19 38 (0.68%) CyberArk