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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,681 3,589 3,840
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.64% 10.89% 9.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 12.03% 11.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,934 2,555 2,615
10th Percentile £385 £361 £381
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -5.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £550
% change year-on-year +1.01% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 26 86
10th Percentile £37.24 £32.63 £58.75
25th Percentile £56.25 £51.56 £65.00
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -4.29% +6.87%
75th Percentile £77.50 £86.37 £74.33
90th Percentile £87.10 £93.75 £85.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +0.75% -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 45,292 29,826 33,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.48% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,883 18,657 21,289
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,827 1,696 1,836
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.51 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 4,865 £525 - 3,670
London +1 2,536 £550 - 2,142
UK excluding London 0 2,456 £500 +1.01% 1,882
Work from Home +1 1,642 £525 +2.44% 1,698
North of England 0 836 £500 +5.26% 528
South East -9 467 £525 +5.00% 475
Midlands -1 464 £488 -2.50% 244
Yorkshire -1 414 £500 +2.04% 134
West Midlands -3 381 £490 -4.85% 160
North West -4 328 £525 +11.11% 289
South West +11 318 £525 +0.96% 226
Scotland -3 191 £498 +0.71% 157
East of England +15 139 £505 +1.00% 134
North East +13 111 £425 -19.05% 109
East Midlands +3 78 £488 +7.26% 83
Wales -3 48 £513 +45.15% 54
Northern Ireland +21 23 £475 +7.95% 68
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1

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
1 337 (5.93%) Confluence
2 138 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.31%) Apache Spark
4 127 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
5 111 (1.95%) Apache
6 87 (1.53%) SAS
7 42 (0.74%) CMS
8 38 (0.67%) Jupyter
9 37 (0.65%) IIS
10 25 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
11 24 (0.42%) nginx
12 16 (0.28%) WebSphere
13 15 (0.26%) Camunda
14 13 (0.23%) Anypoint
15 12 (0.21%) OpenStack
15 12 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Mendix
18 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 62 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
2 58 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 39 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
4 37 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.16%) CPLEX
7 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.12%) Trello
9 5 (0.088%) Notion
10 1 (0.018%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.018%) InDesign
10 1 (0.018%) Maya
10 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 70 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
5 9 (0.16%) Magento
5 9 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 5 (0.088%) Maximo
8 5 (0.088%) OpenText MBPM
8 5 (0.088%) Oracle BPM
8 5 (0.088%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.070%) Endur
10 3 (0.053%) Findur
10 3 (0.053%) Shopify
10 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,077 (54.16%) Azure
2 2,011 (35.40%) AWS
3 1,758 (30.95%) Azure DevOps
4 981 (17.27%) GitHub
5 723 (12.73%) GCP
6 607 (10.68%) GitHub Actions
7 471 (8.29%) Power Platform
8 448 (7.89%) Serverless
9 303 (5.33%) Amazon S3
10 270 (4.75%) AWS Lambda
11 269 (4.74%) Entra ID
12 249 (4.38%) AWS CloudFormation
13 238 (4.19%) Amazon EKS
14 226 (3.98%) Azure AKS
15 214 (3.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 201 (3.54%) Azure Data Factory
17 200 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
18 183 (3.22%) Amazon EC2
19 164 (2.89%) Dynamics 365
20 154 (2.71%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 247 (4.35%) Firewall
2 162 (2.85%) DNS
3 122 (2.15%) VPN
4 114 (2.01%) Network Security
5 61 (1.07%) TCP/IP
6 50 (0.88%) WAN
7 45 (0.79%) SSL
8 43 (0.76%) DHCP
9 36 (0.63%) SD-WAN
10 33 (0.58%) HTTP
11 32 (0.56%) BGP
11 32 (0.56%) Internet
12 28 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
13 25 (0.44%) OSPF
14 21 (0.37%) SAN
14 21 (0.37%) SSH
15 20 (0.35%) VLAN
16 18 (0.32%) VXLAN
17 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (5.60%) Power BI
2 291 (5.12%) SQL Server
3 281 (4.95%) PostgreSQL
4 203 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
5 185 (3.26%) NoSQL
6 179 (3.15%) Relational Database
7 175 (3.08%) MongoDB
8 166 (2.92%) Data Lake
9 123 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
10 118 (2.08%) Metadata
11 111 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
12 92 (1.62%) DynamoDB
13 90 (1.58%) Delta Lake
14 81 (1.43%) Oracle Database
15 71 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
16 70 (1.23%) Redis
17 66 (1.16%) Big Data
17 66 (1.16%) MySQL
18 57 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
19 56 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 827 (14.56%) Jenkins
2 787 (13.85%) Git
3 686 (12.08%) JIRA
4 600 (10.56%) GitLab
5 133 (2.34%) Selenium
6 103 (1.81%) Postman
6 103 (1.81%) SonarQube
7 90 (1.58%) JUnit
8 87 (1.53%) Maven
9 85 (1.50%) Bitbucket
10 67 (1.18%) Cypress.io
11 66 (1.16%) JMeter
11 66 (1.16%) REST Assured
12 58 (1.02%) Cucumber
13 56 (0.99%) Gradle
14 49 (0.86%) Gatling
15 44 (0.77%) Mockito
16 43 (0.76%) LoadRunner
17 40 (0.70%) Claude Code
17 40 (0.70%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,437 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 1,011 (17.80%) Finance
3 836 (14.72%) Public Sector
4 505 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (6.58%) Banking
6 148 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 105 (1.85%) Retail
8 97 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
9 71 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
10 70 (1.23%) Legal
11 68 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 54 (0.95%) Marketing
13 51 (0.90%) Investment Banking
14 47 (0.83%) Military
14 47 (0.83%) Telecoms
15 46 (0.81%) Aerospace
16 45 (0.79%) Law
17 43 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 43 (0.76%) Front Office
18 40 (0.70%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,100 (19.36%) DevOps Engineer
2 929 (16.35%) Developer
3 835 (14.70%) Senior
4 624 (10.98%) Architect
5 551 (9.70%) Lead
6 345 (6.07%) Azure Engineer
7 329 (5.79%) Data Engineer
8 284 (5.00%) Analyst
9 274 (4.82%) AWS Engineer
10 235 (4.14%) Platform Engineer
11 214 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
12 207 (3.64%) Senior DevOps
13 193 (3.40%) Java Developer
14 192 (3.38%) AWS DevOps
15 190 (3.34%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 188 (3.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 179 (3.15%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 179 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
18 151 (2.66%) Senior Developer
18 151 (2.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 578 (10.17%) REST
2 489 (8.61%) .NET
3 347 (6.11%) Kafka
4 335 (5.90%) RESTful
5 299 (5.26%) Spring
6 287 (5.05%) React
7 279 (4.91%) Spring Boot
8 218 (3.84%) Node.js
9 177 (3.12%) JSON
10 169 (2.97%) Playwright
11 166 (2.92%) PySpark
12 165 (2.90%) OAuth
13 151 (2.66%) AngularJS
14 141 (2.48%) SOAP
15 137 (2.41%) .NET Framework
16 131 (2.31%) HTML
17 118 (2.08%) OAuth2
18 116 (2.04%) YAML
19 111 (1.95%) Middleware
20 107 (1.88%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 1,021 (17.97%) Cloud Native
2 408 (7.18%) Product Ownership
3 267 (4.70%) Distributed Systems
4 174 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
5 170 (2.99%) Onboarding
6 154 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
8 90 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
9 84 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
10 81 (1.43%) Public Cloud
11 76 (1.34%) Management Information System
12 72 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.25%) AI Agents
13 71 (1.25%) Data Centre
13 71 (1.25%) Security Posture
14 64 (1.13%) Replication
15 60 (1.06%) Enterprise Cloud
16 55 (0.97%) Virtual Team
17 51 (0.90%) Mobile App
18 48 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 517 (9.10%) Linux
2 308 (5.42%) Windows
3 113 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 88 (1.55%) Unix
5 84 (1.48%) Windows Server
6 34 (0.60%) VMS
7 29 (0.51%) Ubuntu
8 28 (0.49%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.32%) Android
10 10 (0.18%) Solaris
11 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.16%) zOS
12 8 (0.14%) AIX
12 8 (0.14%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.12%) CentOS
13 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
14 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,358 (59.11%) CI/CD
2 2,289 (40.29%) Agile
3 1,577 (27.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 933 (16.42%) Containerisation
5 932 (16.41%) Continuous Improvement
6 878 (15.46%) Test Automation
7 872 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
8 819 (14.42%) Microservices
9 803 (14.13%) Stakeholder Management
10 789 (13.89%) AI
11 716 (12.60%) Observability
12 702 (12.36%) Scrum
13 699 (12.30%) Platform Engineering
14 687 (12.09%) Software Engineering
15 684 (12.04%) Migration
16 612 (10.77%) Analytics
17 547 (9.63%) Technical Leadership
18 534 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 501 (8.82%) Data Modelling
20 466 (8.20%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,617 (28.46%) Python
2 1,045 (18.39%) SQL
3 798 (14.05%) Java
4 510 (8.98%) C#
5 474 (8.34%) Bash
6 464 (8.17%) JavaScript
7 462 (8.13%) PowerShell
8 311 (5.47%) TypeScript
9 228 (4.01%) Bicep
10 100 (1.76%) Go
11 72 (1.27%) Shell Script
12 70 (1.23%) Apex Code
13 69 (1.21%) T-SQL
14 65 (1.14%) PL/SQL
15 64 (1.13%) Scala
16 59 (1.04%) Groovy
17 35 (0.62%) C++
18 31 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.51%) Perl
20 27 (0.48%) C
Qualifications
1 1,823 (32.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,540 (27.11%) SC Cleared
3 327 (5.76%) Degree
4 226 (3.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 223 (3.93%) Azure Certification
6 195 (3.43%) DV Cleared
7 192 (3.38%) AWS Certification
8 123 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
9 86 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
10 80 (1.41%) CISSP
11 64 (1.13%) ISTQB
12 57 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 54 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
14 47 (0.83%) PMP
15 44 (0.77%) PMI Certification
16 36 (0.63%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.56%) CISM
18 30 (0.53%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 27 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
20 22 (0.39%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 515 (9.07%) QA
2 288 (5.07%) Data Quality
3 198 (3.49%) Accessibility
4 152 (2.68%) GDPR
5 97 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.41%) WCAG
7 78 (1.37%) NIST
8 55 (0.97%) NCSC
9 46 (0.81%) PMO
10 38 (0.67%) PCI DSS
11 37 (0.65%) SLA
12 29 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 28 (0.49%) GRC
14 13 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
16 11 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
17 10 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
17 10 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
18 9 (0.16%) PSD2
18 9 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,129 (19.87%) Docker
2 183 (3.22%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.46%) vSphere
6 25 (0.44%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
9 13 (0.23%) Squid
10 12 (0.21%) Postfix
11 9 (0.16%) IAG
12 8 (0.14%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) zsh
14 6 (0.11%) Corosync
14 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
15 5 (0.088%) Firmware
15 5 (0.088%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 1,658 (29.19%) Terraform
2 1,488 (26.19%) Kubernetes
3 533 (9.38%) Ansible
4 368 (6.48%) Grafana
5 314 (5.53%) Prometheus
6 85 (1.50%) Argo
7 66 (1.16%) Puppet
8 60 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
9 49 (0.86%) Progress Chef
10 45 (0.79%) Istio
11 37 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
12 34 (0.60%) Packer
13 20 (0.35%) Kibana
14 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.32%) Kustomize
15 18 (0.32%) SCCM
16 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
16 16 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 16 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
17 13 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,058 (18.62%) Microsoft
2 313 (5.51%) Oracle
3 276 (4.86%) Databricks
4 273 (4.81%) Google
5 208 (3.66%) ServiceNow
6 191 (3.36%) Salesforce
7 175 (3.08%) Splunk
8 143 (2.52%) Dynatrace
9 123 (2.17%) SAP
10 118 (2.08%) VMware
11 112 (1.97%) Red Hat
12 66 (1.16%) IBM
13 62 (1.09%) Informatica
14 58 (1.02%) OpenAI
15 57 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 53 (0.93%) Atlassian
17 49 (0.86%) Cisco
18 44 (0.77%) Foundry
18 44 (0.77%) Okta
19 42 (0.74%) AppDynamics