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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 -4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,128 2,972 4,013
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.61% 10.31% 9.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.58% 11.33% 10.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,582 2,164 2,778
10th Percentile £385 £384 £400
25th Percentile £438 £447 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -6.14%
75th Percentile £605 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 18 109
10th Percentile £39.53 £33.58 £56.25
25th Percentile £56.50 £52.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.50 £71.61 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +10.17% -0.76%
75th Percentile £77.50 £86.37 £77.50
90th Percentile £92.50 £89.00 £87.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £71.61 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.74% +10.17% -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 40,767 26,234 36,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 91.05% 86.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,562 16,839 23,562
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.66% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,067 2,440
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.82% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.95 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 +5 4,367 £525 -2.33% 1,282
UK excluding London +9 2,265 £500 - 982
London +5 2,225 £550 -2.22% 505
Work from Home -3 1,372 £525 - 706
North of England +8 776 £500 - 285
South East +3 484 £513 +2.65% 278
Yorkshire 0 430 £500 -1.96% 77
Midlands +5 400 £488 -2.50% 97
West Midlands +3 309 £500 -4.58% 67
South West +16 284 £525 -4.55% 126
North West +1 284 £500 - 161
Scotland +2 181 £475 - 68
East of England +24 128 £525 +5.00% 75
East Midlands -1 87 £465 +0.54% 30
North East +3 76 £450 -16.28% 50
Wales +5 47 £425 +39.13% 34
Northern Ireland -1 15 £531 +27.25% 36
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
1 288 (5.62%) Confluence
2 132 (2.57%) Apache Spark
3 115 (2.24%) SharePoint
4 88 (1.72%) Apache
5 78 (1.52%) SAS
6 75 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
7 40 (0.78%) CMS
8 30 (0.59%) nginx
9 28 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
10 25 (0.49%) IIS
11 21 (0.41%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.27%) Mendix
13 13 (0.25%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.25%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.21%) Camunda
15 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
16 9 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
17 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
18 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 72 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
3 46 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
5 25 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.098%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.078%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.078%) Trello
8 3 (0.059%) Notion
9 2 (0.039%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.039%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
10 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 62 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 11 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
6 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.098%) Endur
8 5 (0.098%) Magento
8 5 (0.098%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.098%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.078%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.059%) Findur
10 3 (0.059%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.059%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 2 (0.039%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.039%) SAP FI/CO
11 2 (0.039%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,773 (54.08%) Azure
2 1,735 (33.83%) AWS
3 1,503 (29.31%) Azure DevOps
4 863 (16.83%) GitHub
5 667 (13.01%) GCP
6 509 (9.93%) GitHub Actions
7 487 (9.50%) Serverless
8 433 (8.44%) Power Platform
9 270 (5.27%) Amazon S3
10 256 (4.99%) AWS CloudFormation
11 245 (4.78%) AWS Lambda
12 230 (4.49%) Entra ID
13 223 (4.35%) Azure AKS
14 220 (4.29%) Azure Data Factory
15 196 (3.82%) Amazon EKS
16 177 (3.45%) OpenShift
17 164 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
18 162 (3.16%) PaaS
19 153 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 153 (2.98%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 220 (4.29%) Firewall
2 126 (2.46%) DNS
3 102 (1.99%) Network Security
4 95 (1.85%) VPN
5 44 (0.86%) TCP/IP
6 36 (0.70%) WAN
7 32 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 28 (0.55%) BGP
9 27 (0.53%) SSL
10 26 (0.51%) HTTP
11 23 (0.45%) DHCP
11 23 (0.45%) SAN
12 22 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (0.37%) IPsec
13 19 (0.37%) OSPF
14 16 (0.31%) MPLS
14 16 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
15 14 (0.27%) Internet
15 14 (0.27%) LAN
15 14 (0.27%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (5.48%) Power BI
2 254 (4.95%) SQL Server
3 248 (4.84%) PostgreSQL
4 184 (3.59%) NoSQL
5 175 (3.41%) Data Lake
6 162 (3.16%) Relational Database
7 137 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
8 133 (2.59%) MongoDB
9 113 (2.20%) Azure SQL Database
10 103 (2.01%) Amazon RDS
11 97 (1.89%) DynamoDB
12 94 (1.83%) Metadata
13 91 (1.77%) Delta Lake
14 73 (1.42%) Big Data
15 71 (1.38%) Oracle Database
16 67 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
17 61 (1.19%) Amazon Athena
18 55 (1.07%) Redis
19 52 (1.01%) BigQuery
20 50 (0.98%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 734 (14.31%) Jenkins
2 647 (12.62%) Git
3 606 (11.82%) JIRA
4 525 (10.24%) GitLab
5 112 (2.18%) Selenium
6 106 (2.07%) Postman
7 86 (1.68%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.58%) JUnit
9 66 (1.29%) REST Assured
10 63 (1.23%) Bitbucket
11 60 (1.17%) Maven
12 58 (1.13%) Cucumber
13 56 (1.09%) JMeter
14 51 (0.99%) Cypress.io
15 50 (0.98%) Artifactory
16 43 (0.84%) Gatling
17 36 (0.70%) Mockito
18 35 (0.68%) Gradle
19 31 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
19 31 (0.60%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,245 (24.28%) Social Skills
2 911 (17.77%) Finance
3 644 (12.56%) Public Sector
4 401 (7.82%) Analytical Skills
5 326 (6.36%) Banking
6 140 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 74 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
8 68 (1.33%) Legal
9 67 (1.31%) Retail
10 53 (1.03%) Financial Institution
11 52 (1.01%) Marketing
12 51 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
13 42 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
14 41 (0.80%) Military
15 38 (0.74%) Front Office
16 37 (0.72%) Investment Banking
17 29 (0.57%) Telecoms
18 27 (0.53%) Law
19 24 (0.47%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,057 (20.61%) DevOps Engineer
2 759 (14.80%) Developer
3 710 (13.85%) Senior
4 592 (11.54%) Architect
5 436 (8.50%) Lead
6 345 (6.73%) Azure Engineer
7 305 (5.95%) Data Engineer
8 304 (5.93%) Analyst
9 240 (4.68%) AWS Engineer
10 185 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
11 181 (3.53%) Platform Engineer
12 175 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
13 174 (3.39%) AWS DevOps
14 169 (3.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 167 (3.26%) Senior DevOps
16 161 (3.14%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 154 (3.00%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 151 (2.94%) Software Engineer
19 150 (2.93%) Business Analyst
20 148 (2.89%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 464 (9.05%) REST
2 458 (8.93%) .NET
3 311 (6.06%) React
4 287 (5.60%) Spring
5 285 (5.56%) Kafka
6 273 (5.32%) Spring Boot
7 264 (5.15%) RESTful
8 259 (5.05%) Node.js
9 171 (3.33%) AngularJS
10 158 (3.08%) Playwright
11 155 (3.02%) PySpark
12 153 (2.98%) OAuth
13 138 (2.69%) JSON
14 128 (2.50%) YAML
15 114 (2.22%) Middleware
15 114 (2.22%) SOAP
16 112 (2.18%) HTML
17 101 (1.97%) .NET Framework
18 100 (1.95%) OpenID
19 97 (1.89%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 820 (15.99%) Cloud Native
2 322 (6.28%) Product Ownership
3 202 (3.94%) Distributed Systems
4 134 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 113 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
6 104 (2.03%) Public Cloud
7 100 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
8 95 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
9 81 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
10 71 (1.38%) Data Centre
11 57 (1.11%) Management Information System
12 55 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
13 48 (0.94%) Virtual Team
14 45 (0.88%) Data Structures
14 45 (0.88%) NHS
15 44 (0.86%) AI Agents
15 44 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
15 44 (0.86%) Low-Code
15 44 (0.86%) Private Cloud
16 42 (0.82%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 444 (8.66%) Linux
2 253 (4.93%) Windows
3 83 (1.62%) Unix
4 78 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 48 (0.94%) Windows Server
6 43 (0.84%) VMS
7 24 (0.47%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.35%) Apple iOS
9 14 (0.27%) Android
10 12 (0.23%) CentOS
11 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.098%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.098%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.098%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.078%) zOS
17 3 (0.059%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,948 (57.49%) CI/CD
2 1,856 (36.19%) Agile
3 1,309 (25.53%) Infrastructure as Code
4 831 (16.21%) Containerisation
5 769 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
6 743 (14.49%) Microservices
7 722 (14.08%) Test Automation
8 677 (13.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 620 (12.09%) Migration
10 616 (12.01%) Observability
11 577 (11.25%) Analytics
12 554 (10.80%) Stakeholder Management
13 551 (10.74%) AI
14 547 (10.67%) Scrum
15 488 (9.52%) Software Engineering
16 487 (9.50%) Data Modelling
17 474 (9.24%) Platform Engineering
18 409 (7.98%) Mentoring
19 400 (7.80%) Technical Leadership
20 395 (7.70%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,390 (27.11%) Python
2 995 (19.40%) SQL
3 683 (13.32%) Java
4 496 (9.67%) C#
5 382 (7.45%) JavaScript
6 347 (6.77%) Bash
6 347 (6.77%) PowerShell
7 275 (5.36%) TypeScript
8 175 (3.41%) Bicep
9 108 (2.11%) Go
10 70 (1.37%) Scala
11 64 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 56 (1.09%) Apex Code
13 52 (1.01%) PL/SQL
14 45 (0.88%) Groovy
14 45 (0.88%) T-SQL
15 36 (0.70%) C++
16 26 (0.51%) Ruby
17 25 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 24 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,612 (31.44%) Security Cleared
2 1,340 (26.13%) SC Cleared
3 318 (6.20%) Degree
4 206 (4.02%) Azure Certification
5 155 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
6 153 (2.98%) DV Cleared
7 140 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
8 133 (2.59%) AWS Certification
9 73 (1.42%) CISSP
10 59 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
11 55 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 50 (0.98%) CISM
13 49 (0.96%) Master's Degree
14 45 (0.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 44 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
16 43 (0.84%) PMI Certification
17 40 (0.78%) PMP
18 27 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
19 25 (0.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
20 21 (0.41%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (8.60%) QA
2 239 (4.66%) Data Quality
3 179 (3.49%) GDPR
4 138 (2.69%) Accessibility
5 127 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 117 (2.28%) NIST
7 66 (1.29%) NCSC
8 54 (1.05%) WCAG
9 48 (0.94%) PCI DSS
10 36 (0.70%) SLA
11 34 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 33 (0.64%) PMO
13 22 (0.43%) GRC
14 18 (0.35%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.25%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.23%) PSD2
16 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.20%) SEPA
18 9 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 979 (19.09%) Docker
2 170 (3.32%) Active Directory
3 76 (1.48%) Virtual Machines
4 68 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
5 33 (0.64%) vSphere
6 26 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 19 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.35%) Squid
9 14 (0.27%) Postfix
10 12 (0.23%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) HDFS
14 6 (0.12%) Corosync
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) RACF
15 5 (0.098%) Ceph
15 5 (0.098%) NFS
16 4 (0.078%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 4 (0.078%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,442 (28.12%) Terraform
2 1,311 (25.57%) Kubernetes
3 499 (9.73%) Ansible
4 357 (6.96%) Grafana
5 294 (5.73%) Prometheus
6 91 (1.77%) Argo
7 72 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (1.38%) Puppet
9 61 (1.19%) Istio
10 30 (0.59%) Progress Chef
11 29 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
12 27 (0.53%) Packer
13 24 (0.47%) Kibana
14 23 (0.45%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.41%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.33%) Consul
17 15 (0.29%) SCCM
18 14 (0.27%) FortiGate
18 14 (0.27%) Rancher
Vendors
1 883 (17.22%) Microsoft
2 293 (5.71%) Databricks
3 279 (5.44%) Oracle
4 235 (4.58%) Google
5 200 (3.90%) Splunk
6 184 (3.59%) ServiceNow
7 162 (3.16%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.71%) Red Hat
9 117 (2.28%) SAP
10 114 (2.22%) VMware
11 105 (2.05%) Dynatrace
12 74 (1.44%) OpenAI
13 50 (0.98%) Atlassian
14 47 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 46 (0.90%) IBM
16 44 (0.86%) Informatica
17 43 (0.84%) Cisco
18 38 (0.74%) AppDynamics
19 37 (0.72%) Foundry
20 32 (0.62%) Okta