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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 14 14
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,688 3,759 3,716
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.36% 11.39% 9.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.25% 12.57% 11.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,959 2,611 2,468
10th Percentile £381 £361 £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 £625 £619 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 23 66
10th Percentile £37.75 £44.25 £49.34
25th Percentile £59.81 £54.88 £65.31
Median hourly rate £69.50 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.73% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.63 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £90.88 £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 46,438 29,893 32,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.54% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,948 18,567 19,512
10th Percentile £325 £295 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,331 1,864 1,314
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.35 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.08 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.87 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.56% -39.40% -2.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.20 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.13 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +70.85% -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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 0 4,831 £525 - 4,837
London -1 2,560 £550 - 2,484
UK excluding London -2 2,410 £500 - 2,635
Work from Home -2 1,627 £525 +2.44% 2,196
North of England -2 802 £500 +5.04% 769
South East -10 455 £525 +5.00% 652
Midlands -7 414 £488 -5.34% 321
Yorkshire -3 383 £500 +0.70% 231
South West +5 333 £550 - 293
West Midlands -9 332 £500 -4.76% 207
North West -2 320 £525 +16.67% 411
Scotland -5 223 £475 -4.81% 200
East of England +3 154 £505 -6.05% 250
North East +13 115 £450 -18.18% 132
East Midlands -7 80 £455 +9.31% 114
Wales -5 42 £375 - 82
Northern Ireland +26 24 £525 - 80
Channel Islands - 2 £500 -

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
1 348 (6.12%) Confluence
2 162 (2.85%) SharePoint
3 137 (2.41%) Apache Spark
4 123 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
5 122 (2.14%) Apache
6 48 (0.84%) SAS
7 44 (0.77%) CMS
7 44 (0.77%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.60%) nginx
9 31 (0.55%) IIS
10 22 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.28%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
13 12 (0.21%) WebLogic
14 11 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
15 10 (0.18%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
16 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 72 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
3 53 (0.93%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
5 38 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.14%) Windchill
8 5 (0.088%) Notion
8 5 (0.088%) Trello
9 3 (0.053%) Mingle
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 84 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.16%) Magento
6 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.088%) Aladdin
9 5 (0.088%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.088%) OpenText MBPM
9 5 (0.088%) Oracle BPM
9 5 (0.088%) Temenos T24
10 4 (0.070%) Oracle Payroll
10 4 (0.070%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.070%) Workday HCM
11 3 (0.053%) Endur
11 3 (0.053%) FLEXCUBE
11 3 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 3,083 (54.20%) Azure
2 2,051 (36.06%) AWS
3 1,765 (31.03%) Azure DevOps
4 1,000 (17.58%) GitHub
5 774 (13.61%) GCP
6 629 (11.06%) GitHub Actions
7 500 (8.79%) Power Platform
8 474 (8.33%) Serverless
9 317 (5.57%) Amazon S3
10 288 (5.06%) AWS Lambda
11 273 (4.80%) Amazon EKS
12 266 (4.68%) Entra ID
13 257 (4.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 237 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
15 220 (3.87%) Azure AKS
16 219 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
17 210 (3.69%) Amazon EC2
18 198 (3.48%) Azure Data Factory
19 195 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
20 181 (3.18%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 243 (4.27%) Firewall
2 176 (3.09%) DNS
3 125 (2.20%) VPN
4 121 (2.13%) Network Security
5 79 (1.39%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.95%) DHCP
6 54 (0.95%) SSL
7 45 (0.79%) WAN
8 38 (0.67%) BGP
8 38 (0.67%) HTTP
9 30 (0.53%) SSH
10 29 (0.51%) Internet
11 28 (0.49%) OSPF
12 27 (0.47%) SD-WAN
13 21 (0.37%) LAN
13 21 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
14 20 (0.35%) VLAN
15 18 (0.32%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 18 (0.32%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (5.64%) Power BI
2 308 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
3 301 (5.29%) SQL Server
4 212 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
5 188 (3.31%) MongoDB
6 184 (3.23%) NoSQL
7 181 (3.18%) Data Lake
8 166 (2.92%) Relational Database
9 157 (2.76%) Amazon RDS
10 129 (2.27%) Metadata
11 109 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
12 88 (1.55%) Delta Lake
12 88 (1.55%) DynamoDB
12 88 (1.55%) MySQL
12 88 (1.55%) Oracle Database
13 86 (1.51%) Redis
14 67 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
15 65 (1.14%) Big Data
15 65 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 57 (1.00%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 871 (15.31%) Git
2 829 (14.57%) Jenkins
3 674 (11.85%) GitLab
4 671 (11.80%) JIRA
5 145 (2.55%) Selenium
6 100 (1.76%) JUnit
7 97 (1.71%) Maven
7 97 (1.71%) Postman
8 96 (1.69%) SonarQube
9 81 (1.42%) Cucumber
10 75 (1.32%) REST Assured
11 72 (1.27%) Bitbucket
12 71 (1.25%) Cypress.io
13 66 (1.16%) Gradle
14 64 (1.13%) JMeter
15 55 (0.97%) Claude Code
16 49 (0.86%) Mockito
17 45 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
18 43 (0.76%) Visual Studio
19 39 (0.69%) Gatling
General
1 1,499 (26.35%) Social Skills
2 1,041 (18.30%) Finance
3 817 (14.36%) Public Sector
4 546 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
5 415 (7.30%) Banking
6 170 (2.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 113 (1.99%) Retail
8 93 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
9 81 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.09%) Aerospace
11 59 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
12 58 (1.02%) Military
13 57 (1.00%) Investment Banking
13 57 (1.00%) Legal
13 57 (1.00%) Marketing
14 53 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 51 (0.90%) Manufacturing
16 47 (0.83%) Law
17 45 (0.79%) Financial Institution
18 43 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,152 (20.25%) DevOps Engineer
2 931 (16.37%) Developer
3 872 (15.33%) Senior
4 643 (11.30%) Architect
5 547 (9.62%) Lead
6 347 (6.10%) Azure Engineer
7 312 (5.49%) Data Engineer
8 270 (4.75%) Analyst
9 264 (4.64%) AWS Engineer
10 227 (3.99%) Platform Engineer
11 210 (3.69%) Senior DevOps
12 206 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 201 (3.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 196 (3.45%) Java Developer
15 192 (3.38%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 188 (3.31%) AWS DevOps
17 178 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
18 177 (3.11%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 146 (2.57%) Senior Developer
19 146 (2.57%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,739 (30.57%) Terraform
2 678 (11.92%) REST
3 494 (8.68%) .NET
4 402 (7.07%) Kafka
5 365 (6.42%) RESTful
6 306 (5.38%) Spring
7 300 (5.27%) Spring Boot
8 297 (5.22%) React
9 199 (3.50%) OAuth
10 197 (3.46%) Node.js
11 189 (3.32%) JSON
12 159 (2.80%) Playwright
13 153 (2.69%) PySpark
14 150 (2.64%) HTML
15 136 (2.39%) .NET Framework
15 136 (2.39%) CSS
15 136 (2.39%) OAuth2
16 130 (2.29%) Middleware
17 129 (2.27%) SOAP
18 123 (2.16%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,066 (18.74%) Cloud Native
2 423 (7.44%) Product Ownership
3 271 (4.76%) Distributed Systems
4 234 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
5 215 (3.78%) Onboarding
6 158 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
7 150 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 114 (2.00%) AI Agents
9 106 (1.86%) Management Information System
10 86 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 81 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
11 81 (1.42%) Public Cloud
12 77 (1.35%) Replication
13 76 (1.34%) Security Posture
14 75 (1.32%) Data Centre
14 75 (1.32%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.21%) PKI
16 64 (1.13%) Enterprise Cloud
17 56 (0.98%) Virtual Team
18 54 (0.95%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 595 (10.46%) Linux
2 333 (5.85%) Windows
3 125 (2.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 113 (1.99%) Unix
5 102 (1.79%) Windows Server
6 37 (0.65%) Ubuntu
7 35 (0.62%) VMS
8 29 (0.51%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 17 (0.30%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 11 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.12%) AIX
14 7 (0.12%) Solaris
15 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
15 4 (0.070%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.070%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,528 (62.03%) CI/CD
2 2,322 (40.82%) Agile
3 1,720 (30.24%) Infrastructure as Code
4 995 (17.49%) Stakeholder Management
5 985 (17.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 963 (16.93%) Containerisation
7 943 (16.58%) Test Automation
8 925 (16.26%) AI
9 907 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
10 852 (14.98%) Microservices
11 812 (14.28%) Observability
12 801 (14.08%) Platform Engineering
13 768 (13.50%) Software Engineering
14 700 (12.31%) Scrum
15 695 (12.22%) Migration
16 634 (11.15%) Technical Leadership
17 581 (10.21%) Analytics
18 534 (9.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 502 (8.83%) Roadmaps
20 494 (8.68%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 1,679 (29.52%) Python
2 992 (17.44%) SQL
3 825 (14.50%) Java
4 532 (9.35%) Bash
5 516 (9.07%) PowerShell
6 513 (9.02%) C#
7 472 (8.30%) JavaScript
8 328 (5.77%) TypeScript
9 274 (4.82%) Bicep
10 131 (2.30%) Go
11 83 (1.46%) Shell Script
12 70 (1.23%) Scala
13 69 (1.21%) T-SQL
14 66 (1.16%) Groovy
15 59 (1.04%) Apex Code
15 59 (1.04%) PL/SQL
16 38 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 35 (0.62%) Perl
18 34 (0.60%) C++
19 28 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,835 (32.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,532 (26.93%) SC Cleared
3 377 (6.63%) Degree
4 256 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 253 (4.45%) Azure Certification
6 249 (4.38%) DV Cleared
7 205 (3.60%) AWS Certification
8 151 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
9 112 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
10 79 (1.39%) CISSP
11 61 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 57 (1.00%) PMP
13 54 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
14 52 (0.91%) PMI Certification
15 49 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 42 (0.74%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.56%) CISM
18 28 (0.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 24 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 24 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 563 (9.90%) QA
2 286 (5.03%) Data Quality
3 225 (3.96%) Accessibility
4 122 (2.14%) GDPR
5 94 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.46%) WCAG
7 70 (1.23%) NIST
8 57 (1.00%) NCSC
9 47 (0.83%) PMO
10 35 (0.62%) SLA
11 33 (0.58%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.49%) GRC
13 23 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 18 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 15 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
15 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
15 15 (0.26%) SEPA
15 15 (0.26%) SOC 2
16 14 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,190 (20.92%) Docker
2 168 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.58%) vSphere
6 25 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
7 24 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.40%) Hyper-V
9 14 (0.25%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.19%) Squid
11 10 (0.18%) IAG
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.14%) zsh
13 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 6 (0.11%) Corosync
13 6 (0.11%) KVM
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Postfix
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
13 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,580 (27.78%) Kubernetes
2 558 (9.81%) Ansible
3 384 (6.75%) Grafana
4 325 (5.71%) Prometheus
5 77 (1.35%) Argo
6 59 (1.04%) Puppet
7 50 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
8 49 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 43 (0.76%) Kibana
10 39 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
11 38 (0.67%) Packer
12 30 (0.53%) Istio
13 23 (0.40%) Kubeflow
14 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
15 19 (0.33%) SCCM
15 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 16 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
17 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,142 (20.08%) Microsoft
2 318 (5.59%) Databricks
3 315 (5.54%) Google
4 296 (5.20%) Oracle
5 204 (3.59%) ServiceNow
6 189 (3.32%) Splunk
7 167 (2.94%) Salesforce
8 152 (2.67%) Dynatrace
9 129 (2.27%) VMware
10 116 (2.04%) SAP
11 97 (1.71%) Red Hat
12 75 (1.32%) OpenAI
13 69 (1.21%) IBM
13 69 (1.21%) MuleSoft
14 62 (1.09%) Foundry
15 46 (0.81%) Cisco
15 46 (0.81%) Informatica
16 40 (0.70%) AppDynamics
17 39 (0.69%) Atlassian
18 38 (0.67%) Okta