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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,571 3,652 3,815
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.25% 11.18% 9.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.16% 12.35% 11.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,881 2,541 2,555
10th Percentile £381 £363 £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 £622 £620 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 23 69
10th Percentile £38.25 £44.25 £57.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £56.50 £65.00
Median hourly rate £69.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £92.50 £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 45,811 29,562 32,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.30% 90.52% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,345 20,161
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
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 £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,152 1,818 1,440
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.00% -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 21 September 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 21 September 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 21 September 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 -1 4,731 £525 - 5,381
London 0 2,507 £550 - 2,949
UK excluding London -4 2,375 £500 - 2,825
Work from Home -1 1,577 £525 +2.34% 2,941
North of England -2 763 £500 +5.26% 816
South East -11 446 £537 +7.40% 635
Midlands -5 429 £488 -2.74% 332
Yorkshire -2 380 £500 +2.56% 218
West Midlands -8 340 £492 -6.08% 200
South West +5 319 £550 +4.76% 350
North West -7 290 £525 +14.69% 473
Scotland -1 224 £475 -2.16% 265
East of England +7 153 £504 -4.00% 256
North East +13 108 £450 -13.46% 131
East Midlands -1 86 £464 +3.06% 132
Wales -7 48 £425 +13.33% 73
Northern Ireland +22 22 £450 +2.27% 108
Channel Islands - 5 £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
1 329 (5.91%) Confluence
2 160 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
4 129 (2.32%) Apache Spark
5 113 (2.03%) Apache
6 61 (1.09%) SAS
7 44 (0.79%) CMS
8 42 (0.75%) Jupyter
9 28 (0.50%) nginx
10 25 (0.45%) IIS
11 20 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.27%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
14 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.18%) WebSphere
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 67 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
3 48 (0.86%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 34 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.11%) Trello
7 6 (0.11%) Windchill
8 5 (0.090%) Notion
9 2 (0.036%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.036%) Mingle
10 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.018%) Sketch
10 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 82 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.22%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.18%) Magento
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.11%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
9 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.090%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.090%) Oracle BPM
11 4 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
12 3 (0.054%) Endur
12 3 (0.054%) Maximo
12 3 (0.054%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.054%) SAP ERP
12 3 (0.054%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3,015 (54.12%) Azure
2 2,008 (36.04%) AWS
3 1,725 (30.96%) Azure DevOps
4 959 (17.21%) GitHub
5 731 (13.12%) GCP
6 609 (10.93%) GitHub Actions
7 483 (8.67%) Power Platform
8 460 (8.26%) Serverless
9 308 (5.53%) Amazon S3
10 289 (5.19%) AWS Lambda
11 254 (4.56%) Entra ID
12 249 (4.47%) Amazon EKS
13 245 (4.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 234 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
15 211 (3.79%) Azure AKS
16 206 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 199 (3.57%) Amazon EC2
18 190 (3.41%) Azure Data Factory
19 186 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
20 164 (2.94%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 241 (4.33%) Firewall
2 170 (3.05%) DNS
3 119 (2.14%) VPN
4 113 (2.03%) Network Security
5 71 (1.27%) TCP/IP
6 56 (1.01%) SSL
7 51 (0.92%) DHCP
8 47 (0.84%) WAN
9 37 (0.66%) HTTP
10 33 (0.59%) BGP
11 30 (0.54%) SD-WAN
12 28 (0.50%) Internet
13 27 (0.48%) SSH
14 24 (0.43%) OSPF
14 24 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
15 20 (0.36%) VLAN
16 18 (0.32%) LAN
16 18 (0.32%) SAN
17 17 (0.31%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.31%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (5.65%) Power BI
2 297 (5.33%) PostgreSQL
3 288 (5.17%) SQL Server
4 210 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
5 183 (3.28%) MongoDB
6 182 (3.27%) NoSQL
7 177 (3.18%) Data Lake
8 171 (3.07%) Relational Database
9 149 (2.67%) Amazon RDS
10 129 (2.32%) Metadata
11 96 (1.72%) DynamoDB
12 95 (1.71%) Azure SQL Database
13 89 (1.60%) Oracle Database
14 88 (1.58%) Delta Lake
14 88 (1.58%) MySQL
15 82 (1.47%) Redis
16 67 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (1.17%) Big Data
18 62 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 58 (1.04%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 834 (14.97%) Git
2 792 (14.22%) Jenkins
3 655 (11.76%) JIRA
4 638 (11.45%) GitLab
5 144 (2.58%) Selenium
6 101 (1.81%) SonarQube
7 97 (1.74%) Postman
8 96 (1.72%) JUnit
8 96 (1.72%) Maven
9 71 (1.27%) Cucumber
10 70 (1.26%) Bitbucket
10 70 (1.26%) Cypress.io
10 70 (1.26%) REST Assured
11 66 (1.18%) Gradle
12 64 (1.15%) JMeter
13 52 (0.93%) Claude Code
14 48 (0.86%) Mockito
15 43 (0.77%) Gatling
16 41 (0.74%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,444 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 983 (17.64%) Finance
3 794 (14.25%) Public Sector
4 518 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
5 386 (6.93%) Banking
6 172 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 108 (1.94%) Retail
8 84 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.11%) Legal
11 61 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 55 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 55 (0.99%) Marketing
12 55 (0.99%) Military
13 50 (0.90%) Telecoms
14 48 (0.86%) Investment Banking
15 46 (0.83%) Law
16 43 (0.77%) Manufacturing
17 40 (0.72%) Front Office
18 37 (0.66%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,130 (20.28%) DevOps Engineer
2 908 (16.30%) Developer
3 847 (15.20%) Senior
4 640 (11.49%) Architect
5 529 (9.50%) Lead
6 346 (6.21%) Azure Engineer
7 307 (5.51%) Data Engineer
8 261 (4.68%) Analyst
9 259 (4.65%) AWS Engineer
10 226 (4.06%) Platform Engineer
11 207 (3.72%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 207 (3.72%) Cloud Engineer
12 198 (3.55%) Senior DevOps
13 197 (3.54%) Java Developer
14 183 (3.28%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 182 (3.27%) AWS DevOps
16 179 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
17 171 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 154 (2.76%) Senior Developer
19 142 (2.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,660 (29.80%) Terraform
2 617 (11.08%) REST
3 469 (8.42%) .NET
4 385 (6.91%) Kafka
5 354 (6.35%) RESTful
6 309 (5.55%) Spring
7 304 (5.46%) Spring Boot
8 285 (5.12%) React
9 200 (3.59%) Node.js
10 185 (3.32%) OAuth
11 184 (3.30%) JSON
12 157 (2.82%) Playwright
13 156 (2.80%) PySpark
14 142 (2.55%) HTML
15 132 (2.37%) OAuth2
16 130 (2.33%) CSS
17 129 (2.32%) SOAP
18 125 (2.24%) .NET Framework
19 120 (2.15%) AngularJS
19 120 (2.15%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,022 (18.35%) Cloud Native
2 423 (7.59%) Product Ownership
3 261 (4.68%) Distributed Systems
4 204 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 201 (3.61%) Onboarding
6 148 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 105 (1.88%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.72%) Management Information System
10 84 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 78 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
12 76 (1.36%) Public Cloud
13 75 (1.35%) Data Structures
14 73 (1.31%) Replication
14 73 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 71 (1.27%) Data Centre
16 62 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 58 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
17 58 (1.04%) PKI
18 53 (0.95%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 550 (9.87%) Linux
2 315 (5.65%) Windows
3 118 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 107 (1.92%) Unix
5 95 (1.71%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.65%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.61%) VMS
8 31 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.38%) Android
10 14 (0.25%) CentOS
11 12 (0.22%) zOS
12 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) AIX
16 5 (0.090%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.072%) Alpine Linux
17 4 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,401 (61.05%) CI/CD
2 2,274 (40.82%) Agile
3 1,650 (29.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 951 (17.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 935 (16.78%) Containerisation
6 929 (16.68%) Stakeholder Management
7 890 (15.98%) Test Automation
8 880 (15.80%) Problem-Solving
9 855 (15.35%) AI
10 826 (14.83%) Microservices
11 775 (13.91%) Observability
12 758 (13.61%) Platform Engineering
13 735 (13.19%) Software Engineering
14 682 (12.24%) Scrum
15 671 (12.04%) Migration
16 615 (11.04%) Technical Leadership
17 580 (10.41%) Analytics
18 528 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 485 (8.71%) Data Modelling
20 482 (8.65%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,604 (28.79%) Python
2 978 (17.56%) SQL
3 823 (14.77%) Java
4 492 (8.83%) C#
5 484 (8.69%) PowerShell
6 483 (8.67%) Bash
7 460 (8.26%) JavaScript
8 311 (5.58%) TypeScript
9 251 (4.51%) Bicep
10 118 (2.12%) Go
11 78 (1.40%) Shell Script
12 66 (1.18%) Scala
12 66 (1.18%) T-SQL
13 64 (1.15%) Apex Code
13 64 (1.15%) Groovy
14 61 (1.09%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 35 (0.63%) Perl
17 31 (0.56%) C++
18 25 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,796 (32.24%) Security Cleared
2 1,507 (27.05%) SC Cleared
3 356 (6.39%) Degree
4 247 (4.43%) Azure Certification
5 237 (4.25%) BPSS Clearance
6 229 (4.11%) DV Cleared
7 190 (3.41%) AWS Certification
8 142 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
10 77 (1.38%) CISSP
11 60 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 51 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 45 (0.81%) PMP
15 43 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 41 (0.74%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.56%) CISM
18 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 23 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 542 (9.73%) QA
2 286 (5.13%) Data Quality
3 209 (3.75%) Accessibility
4 128 (2.30%) GDPR
5 87 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.49%) WCAG
7 75 (1.35%) NIST
8 55 (0.99%) NCSC
9 46 (0.83%) PMO
10 37 (0.66%) SLA
11 29 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.50%) GRC
13 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
16 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
16 13 (0.23%) SEPA
17 11 (0.20%) SOC 2
18 10 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,148 (20.61%) Docker
2 165 (2.96%) Active Directory
3 85 (1.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.52%) vSphere
6 26 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.29%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.22%) Squid
11 11 (0.20%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) Postfix
14 7 (0.13%) zsh
15 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 6 (0.11%) Corosync
15 6 (0.11%) KVM
15 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,527 (27.41%) Kubernetes
2 527 (9.46%) Ansible
3 366 (6.57%) Grafana
4 312 (5.60%) Prometheus
5 74 (1.33%) Argo
6 57 (1.02%) Puppet
7 49 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 45 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
10 36 (0.65%) Packer
11 31 (0.56%) Kibana
12 28 (0.50%) Istio
13 21 (0.38%) Kustomize
14 20 (0.36%) Kubeflow
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.31%) SCCM
17 16 (0.29%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,094 (19.64%) Microsoft
2 307 (5.51%) Oracle
3 303 (5.44%) Databricks
4 284 (5.10%) Google
5 211 (3.79%) ServiceNow
6 188 (3.37%) Splunk
7 179 (3.21%) Salesforce
8 143 (2.57%) Dynatrace
9 129 (2.32%) VMware
10 112 (2.01%) SAP
11 100 (1.80%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.31%) OpenAI
13 70 (1.26%) IBM
14 64 (1.15%) MuleSoft
15 56 (1.01%) Foundry
16 49 (0.88%) Cisco
16 49 (0.88%) Informatica
17 43 (0.77%) AppDynamics
18 40 (0.72%) Atlassian
18 40 (0.72%) Okta