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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,980 3,112 3,964
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.88% 10.65% 9.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.76% 11.75% 10.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,481 2,291 2,754
10th Percentile £381 £393 £400
25th Percentile £435 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% - -6.14%
75th Percentile £604 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 22 89
10th Percentile £39.53 £29.35 £55.00
25th Percentile £45.46 £58.75 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £76.75 £82.41 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.50 £87.50 £87.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -7.30% +5.77% -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 39,019 26,482 37,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.25% 90.62% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,692 17,180 24,590
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,006 2,380
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.38 £19.05 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.58
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.38 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £29.12 £33.03
% change year-on-year +27.08% -11.86% -6.76%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 4,267 £525 -4.55% 1,414
UK excluding London +9 2,213 £500 -2.44% 1,103
London 0 2,158 £541 -5.93% 512
Work from Home -2 1,356 £525 -0.38% 782
North of England +6 748 £500 -4.76% 306
South East -1 455 £525 -4.55% 307
Midlands +4 416 £492 -1.59% 142
Yorkshire +1 399 £500 -4.76% 86
West Midlands +7 325 £500 - 98
South West +13 292 £500 -12.28% 165
North West +3 289 £500 -4.76% 159
Scotland +6 176 £450 -3.23% 52
East of England +24 123 £550 +8.37% 92
East Midlands -1 88 £455 -4.21% 44
North East +6 67 £475 -9.52% 63
Wales +10 44 £468 +81.96% 43
Northern Ireland -7 11 £475 +13.77% 10
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
1 303 (6.08%) Confluence
2 118 (2.37%) Apache Spark
3 108 (2.17%) SharePoint
4 101 (2.03%) SAS
5 87 (1.75%) Apache
6 67 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.70%) CMS
8 34 (0.68%) nginx
9 31 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 31 (0.62%) OpenStack
10 22 (0.44%) IIS
11 15 (0.30%) Mendix
12 11 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
13 9 (0.18%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.16%) Camunda
15 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 83 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 55 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.12%) Weka
8 5 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 78 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 6 (0.12%) Endur
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 4 (0.080%) Dynamics AX
8 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.080%) SAP CO
8 4 (0.080%) SAP FI
8 4 (0.080%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.060%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,691 (54.04%) Azure
2 1,704 (34.22%) AWS
3 1,494 (30.00%) Azure DevOps
4 884 (17.75%) GitHub
5 654 (13.13%) GCP
6 544 (10.92%) Serverless
7 496 (9.96%) GitHub Actions
8 419 (8.41%) Power Platform
9 293 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
10 272 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
11 269 (5.40%) Amazon S3
12 237 (4.76%) Azure Data Factory
13 230 (4.62%) Entra ID
14 224 (4.50%) Azure AKS
15 210 (4.22%) Amazon EKS
16 194 (3.90%) OpenShift
17 182 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
18 168 (3.37%) Dynamics 365
19 165 (3.31%) PaaS
20 155 (3.11%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 216 (4.34%) Firewall
2 114 (2.29%) DNS
3 103 (2.07%) Network Security
4 85 (1.71%) VPN
5 39 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 27 (0.54%) HTTP
7 25 (0.50%) SSL
8 23 (0.46%) WAN
9 22 (0.44%) DHCP
9 22 (0.44%) SD-WAN
10 20 (0.40%) SAN
11 18 (0.36%) BGP
11 18 (0.36%) IPsec
12 16 (0.32%) MPLS
12 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
13 12 (0.24%) 5G
13 12 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.22%) Internet
14 11 (0.22%) LAN
14 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (5.24%) PostgreSQL
2 259 (5.20%) Power BI
3 235 (4.72%) SQL Server
4 184 (3.69%) NoSQL
5 166 (3.33%) Data Lake
6 146 (2.93%) Relational Database
7 132 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
8 117 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 112 (2.25%) Amazon RDS
10 110 (2.21%) MongoDB
11 97 (1.95%) DynamoDB
12 94 (1.89%) Metadata
13 82 (1.65%) Delta Lake
14 78 (1.57%) Oracle Database
15 70 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (1.37%) Big Data
17 60 (1.20%) Amazon Athena
18 57 (1.14%) MySQL
19 55 (1.10%) Tableau
20 52 (1.04%) Redis
Development Applications
1 752 (15.10%) Jenkins
2 650 (13.05%) Git
2 650 (13.05%) JIRA
3 515 (10.34%) GitLab
4 139 (2.79%) Selenium
5 110 (2.21%) JUnit
6 97 (1.95%) Postman
7 78 (1.57%) Bitbucket
8 77 (1.55%) SonarQube
9 62 (1.24%) Cucumber
10 56 (1.12%) JMeter
11 55 (1.10%) REST Assured
12 54 (1.08%) Maven
13 52 (1.04%) Artifactory
14 50 (1.00%) Cypress.io
15 41 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
16 40 (0.80%) Mockito
17 35 (0.70%) Visual Studio
18 34 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
19 30 (0.60%) Gatling
General
1 1,333 (26.77%) Social Skills
2 907 (18.21%) Finance
3 649 (13.03%) Public Sector
4 406 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
5 345 (6.93%) Banking
6 168 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
7 69 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
8 65 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 60 (1.20%) Marketing
10 58 (1.16%) Retail
11 53 (1.06%) Legal
12 51 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 51 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 49 (0.98%) Front Office
14 43 (0.86%) Investment Banking
14 43 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 41 (0.82%) Telecoms
16 34 (0.68%) Military
17 27 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
18 25 (0.50%) Law
Job Titles
1 927 (18.61%) DevOps Engineer
2 788 (15.82%) Developer
3 705 (14.16%) Senior
4 551 (11.06%) Architect
5 421 (8.45%) Lead
6 326 (6.55%) Azure Engineer
7 297 (5.96%) Data Engineer
8 286 (5.74%) Analyst
9 242 (4.86%) AWS Engineer
10 190 (3.82%) AWS DevOps
11 179 (3.59%) Platform Engineer
12 173 (3.47%) Cloud Engineer
13 168 (3.37%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 157 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
15 156 (3.13%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 151 (3.03%) Software Engineer
17 148 (2.97%) Senior DevOps
18 147 (2.95%) Senior Developer
19 146 (2.93%) Business Analyst
20 140 (2.81%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 507 (10.18%) REST
2 435 (8.73%) .NET
3 313 (6.29%) Node.js
4 304 (6.10%) React
5 282 (5.66%) Kafka
6 280 (5.62%) Spring
7 266 (5.34%) RESTful
8 261 (5.24%) Spring Boot
9 180 (3.61%) AngularJS
10 154 (3.09%) JSON
11 150 (3.01%) OAuth
12 145 (2.91%) PySpark
13 144 (2.89%) YAML
14 141 (2.83%) Playwright
15 127 (2.55%) HTML
16 122 (2.45%) SOAP
17 111 (2.23%) Middleware
18 107 (2.15%) CSS
19 98 (1.97%) .NET Core
20 97 (1.95%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 743 (14.92%) Cloud Native
2 314 (6.31%) Product Ownership
3 177 (3.55%) Distributed Systems
4 125 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 115 (2.31%) Public Cloud
6 99 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
6 99 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
7 97 (1.95%) Hybrid Cloud
8 73 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
9 64 (1.29%) Virtual Team
10 55 (1.10%) Management Information System
11 52 (1.04%) Data Centre
12 47 (0.94%) NHS
12 47 (0.94%) Private Cloud
12 47 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
13 42 (0.84%) Data Structures
13 42 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
14 40 (0.80%) AI Agents
14 40 (0.80%) Security Posture
15 37 (0.74%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 455 (9.14%) Linux
2 254 (5.10%) Windows
3 85 (1.71%) Unix
4 72 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (0.88%) VMS
6 42 (0.84%) Windows Server
7 24 (0.48%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.26%) CentOS
9 11 (0.22%) Android
10 10 (0.20%) Apple iOS
11 9 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 5 (0.10%) Solaris
13 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.080%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.060%) Rocky
15 3 (0.060%) Windows Server 2008
15 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,822 (56.67%) CI/CD
2 1,915 (38.45%) Agile
3 1,248 (25.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 872 (17.51%) Problem-Solving
5 854 (17.15%) Containerisation
6 743 (14.92%) Microservices
7 730 (14.66%) Test Automation
8 675 (13.55%) Continuous Improvement
9 626 (12.57%) Analytics
10 594 (11.93%) Migration
11 559 (11.22%) Scrum
12 556 (11.16%) Observability
13 523 (10.50%) Stakeholder Management
14 522 (10.48%) AI
15 469 (9.42%) Data Modelling
16 441 (8.86%) Software Engineering
17 397 (7.97%) Mentoring
17 397 (7.97%) Platform Engineering
18 387 (7.77%) Data Pipeline
19 359 (7.21%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,446 (29.04%) Python
2 1,044 (20.96%) SQL
3 646 (12.97%) Java
4 519 (10.42%) C#
5 430 (8.63%) JavaScript
6 372 (7.47%) PowerShell
7 340 (6.83%) Bash
8 293 (5.88%) TypeScript
9 169 (3.39%) Bicep
10 113 (2.27%) Go
11 87 (1.75%) PL/SQL
12 71 (1.43%) Scala
13 57 (1.14%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.96%) T-SQL
15 44 (0.88%) Groovy
16 41 (0.82%) C++
17 40 (0.80%) Ruby
18 37 (0.74%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.54%) Perl
20 24 (0.48%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,570 (31.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,297 (26.04%) SC Cleared
3 345 (6.93%) Degree
4 207 (4.16%) Azure Certification
5 160 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (3.11%) DV Cleared
7 151 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
8 141 (2.83%) AWS Certification
9 83 (1.67%) CISSP
10 62 (1.24%) CISM
10 62 (1.24%) ISTQB
11 60 (1.20%) Master's Degree
12 57 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
13 53 (1.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (0.94%) PMI Certification
15 42 (0.84%) PMP
16 35 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
17 31 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 26 (0.52%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (8.98%) QA
2 230 (4.62%) Data Quality
3 188 (3.78%) GDPR
4 157 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 134 (2.69%) NIST
6 125 (2.51%) Accessibility
7 72 (1.45%) NCSC
8 43 (0.86%) WCAG
9 41 (0.82%) PCI DSS
10 34 (0.68%) PMO
11 31 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 30 (0.60%) SLA
13 20 (0.40%) HIPAA
14 16 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 15 (0.30%) GRC
15 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 13 (0.26%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.24%) PSD2
18 10 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,055 (21.18%) Docker
2 185 (3.71%) Active Directory
3 82 (1.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 45 (0.90%) vSphere
6 34 (0.68%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.24%) Squid
10 10 (0.20%) Postfix
10 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.18%) Lustre
11 9 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) GPFS
13 7 (0.14%) HDFS
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) Ceph
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.10%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,422 (28.55%) Terraform
2 1,332 (26.75%) Kubernetes
3 476 (9.56%) Ansible
4 319 (6.41%) Grafana
5 262 (5.26%) Prometheus
6 102 (2.05%) Argo
7 72 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
8 66 (1.33%) Puppet
9 64 (1.29%) Istio
10 30 (0.60%) vCenter Server
11 29 (0.58%) Packer
12 27 (0.54%) Progress Chef
13 23 (0.46%) Kibana
14 21 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
15 20 (0.40%) HP ALM
15 20 (0.40%) Rancher
16 18 (0.36%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.34%) Consul
18 15 (0.30%) Podman
Vendors
1 866 (17.39%) Microsoft
2 337 (6.77%) Oracle
3 292 (5.86%) Databricks
4 241 (4.84%) Google
5 190 (3.82%) Splunk
6 169 (3.39%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.89%) Salesforce
8 142 (2.85%) Red Hat
9 134 (2.69%) VMware
10 110 (2.21%) SAP
11 83 (1.67%) OpenAI
12 76 (1.53%) Dynatrace
13 67 (1.35%) Atlassian
14 62 (1.24%) CyberArk
15 48 (0.96%) IBM
16 46 (0.92%) Talend
17 45 (0.90%) Cisco
18 39 (0.78%) Denodo
19 36 (0.72%) Foundry
20 34 (0.68%) Informatica