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 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 14 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +2 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,225 3,302 3,951
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.55% 10.53% 9.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.15% 11.87% 10.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,961 2,265 2,883
10th Percentile £370 £388 £410
25th Percentile £425 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £563 £563
Median % change year-on-year -7.11% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £615 £675 £656
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 26 81
10th Percentile - £37.13 £46.18
25th Percentile £45.46 £46.18 £52.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £83.50 £79.62 £70.00
90th Percentile £94.88 £80.75 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -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 32,128 27,808 37,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.80% 88.68% 87.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,262 16,883 24,972
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £743 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,977 884 1,589
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.16
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.69 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.64% -21.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £56.00 £61.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.39 £74.66 £76.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year -20.58% -31.43% +51.38%

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 13 January 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 13 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in the UK

DevOps
Top 17 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 13 January 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 +2 3,626 £525 -8.70% 1,693
UK excluding London +6 1,896 £500 -4.76% 1,459
London -2 1,805 £545 -9.17% 467
Work from Home 0 1,215 £525 -2.78% 857
North of England +5 646 £488 -4.15% 351
South East 0 388 £525 -12.50% 445
Midlands +23 386 £515 -1.67% 184
Yorkshire +1 335 £500 -1.72% 154
West Midlands +23 314 £525 - 89
North West +6 267 £455 -9.00% 152
South West +6 233 £525 -11.02% 191
Scotland +6 182 £475 +5.56% 65
East of England +17 96 £550 +8.37% 164
East Midlands +18 72 £425 -10.53% 90
North East -7 45 £475 -17.21% 46
Wales +3 31 £506 +87.50% 62
Northern Ireland -6 8 - - 25

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
1 253 (5.99%) Confluence
2 85 (2.01%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.92%) Apache
4 76 (1.80%) SAS
5 65 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
6 64 (1.51%) Apache Spark
7 32 (0.76%) CMS
7 32 (0.76%) nginx
7 32 (0.76%) OpenStack
8 24 (0.57%) IIS
9 20 (0.47%) JBoss
9 20 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 19 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.38%) CICS
12 10 (0.24%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.24%) Mendix
12 10 (0.24%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.21%) iPlanet
13 9 (0.21%) Mule
13 9 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 85 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 31 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 27 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.36%) Chatbot
5 15 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 9 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 8 (0.19%) Weka
8 5 (0.12%) Trello
9 1 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.024%) Moqups
9 1 (0.024%) Revit
Business Applications
1 62 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.33%) VisionPLUS
4 11 (0.26%) Aladdin
4 11 (0.26%) Endur
5 9 (0.21%) Maximo
6 8 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
7 7 (0.17%) NEC Housing
7 7 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
8 5 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 5 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.095%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.095%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.095%) Payment Gateway
9 4 (0.095%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.095%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.071%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.071%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.071%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,130 (50.41%) Azure
2 1,539 (36.43%) AWS
3 1,143 (27.05%) Azure DevOps
4 782 (18.51%) GitHub
5 607 (14.37%) GCP
6 510 (12.07%) Serverless
7 460 (10.89%) GitHub Actions
8 329 (7.79%) Power Platform
9 264 (6.25%) AWS CloudFormation
10 257 (6.08%) AWS Lambda
11 244 (5.78%) Amazon S3
12 201 (4.76%) Azure AKS
13 199 (4.71%) Azure Data Factory
14 192 (4.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 175 (4.14%) Amazon EKS
16 171 (4.05%) OpenShift
17 165 (3.91%) Amazon EC2
18 164 (3.88%) Dynamics 365
19 161 (3.81%) Amazon ECS
20 156 (3.69%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 204 (4.83%) Firewall
2 116 (2.75%) DNS
3 87 (2.06%) VPN
4 75 (1.78%) Network Security
5 57 (1.35%) TCP/IP
6 55 (1.30%) SSL
7 44 (1.04%) HTTP
8 34 (0.80%) HTTPS
9 22 (0.52%) WAN
10 20 (0.47%) SSH
11 19 (0.45%) BGP
12 18 (0.43%) FTP
12 18 (0.43%) SMTP
13 17 (0.40%) DHCP
13 17 (0.40%) MPLS
14 15 (0.36%) Kerberos
14 15 (0.36%) SD-WAN
15 13 (0.31%) Internet
15 13 (0.31%) OpenLDAP
16 10 (0.24%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (6.15%) PostgreSQL
2 216 (5.11%) Power BI
3 163 (3.86%) NoSQL
3 163 (3.86%) SQL Server
4 141 (3.34%) Amazon RDS
5 127 (3.01%) Data Lake
6 110 (2.60%) MongoDB
6 110 (2.60%) Relational Database
7 102 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
8 89 (2.11%) Azure SQL Database
9 88 (2.08%) Oracle Database
10 67 (1.59%) MySQL
11 66 (1.56%) DynamoDB
12 58 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
13 55 (1.30%) Amazon Aurora
13 55 (1.30%) Redis
14 52 (1.23%) Tableau
15 46 (1.09%) Metadata
16 40 (0.95%) Big Data
16 40 (0.95%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 775 (18.34%) Jenkins
2 620 (14.67%) Git
3 590 (13.96%) JIRA
4 555 (13.14%) GitLab
5 133 (3.15%) Selenium
6 97 (2.30%) JUnit
7 85 (2.01%) Postman
8 80 (1.89%) SonarQube
9 73 (1.73%) Sonatype Nexus
10 72 (1.70%) Cypress.io
11 71 (1.68%) Bitbucket
12 60 (1.42%) Cucumber
13 50 (1.18%) Artifactory
14 49 (1.16%) Liquibase
15 46 (1.09%) CircleCI
16 44 (1.04%) Gradle
16 44 (1.04%) JMeter
17 39 (0.92%) Maven
18 38 (0.90%) Oracle APEX
19 33 (0.78%) REST Assured
General
1 1,281 (30.32%) Social Skills
2 759 (17.96%) Finance
3 543 (12.85%) Public Sector
4 359 (8.50%) Banking
5 334 (7.91%) Analytical Skills
6 137 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
7 69 (1.63%) Financial Institution
8 67 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 65 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 59 (1.40%) Marketing
11 51 (1.21%) Investment Banking
12 46 (1.09%) Front Office
13 45 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
13 45 (1.07%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.04%) Retail
15 34 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
16 33 (0.78%) Military
17 30 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
18 27 (0.64%) Back Office
19 24 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 829 (19.62%) DevOps Engineer
2 741 (17.54%) Developer
3 587 (13.89%) Senior
4 360 (8.52%) Architect
5 325 (7.69%) Lead
6 244 (5.78%) AWS Engineer
6 244 (5.78%) Azure Engineer
7 212 (5.02%) Data Engineer
8 205 (4.85%) Analyst
9 188 (4.45%) AWS DevOps
10 172 (4.07%) Software Engineer
11 163 (3.86%) AWS DevOps Engineer
12 155 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
13 154 (3.64%) Senior Developer
14 144 (3.41%) Platform Engineer
15 122 (2.89%) Consultant
15 122 (2.89%) Senior DevOps
16 121 (2.86%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 113 (2.67%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 110 (2.60%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 490 (11.60%) REST
2 364 (8.62%) .NET
3 272 (6.44%) React
4 266 (6.30%) Node.js
5 265 (6.27%) RESTful
6 251 (5.94%) Kafka
7 206 (4.88%) Spring
8 196 (4.64%) JSON
9 191 (4.52%) Spring Boot
10 152 (3.60%) OAuth
11 144 (3.41%) SOAP
12 143 (3.38%) AngularJS
13 141 (3.34%) Elastic Stack
14 139 (3.29%) XML
15 129 (3.05%) HTML
15 129 (3.05%) YAML
16 99 (2.34%) Playwright
17 93 (2.20%) CSS
18 89 (2.11%) Middleware
19 86 (2.04%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 583 (13.80%) Cloud Native
2 228 (5.40%) Product Ownership
3 162 (3.83%) Distributed Systems
4 116 (2.75%) Onboarding
5 109 (2.58%) Public Cloud
6 91 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
7 76 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
8 68 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
9 58 (1.37%) Virtual Team
10 55 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
11 50 (1.18%) Data Centre
11 50 (1.18%) Replication
12 49 (1.16%) Management Information System
13 46 (1.09%) Mobile App
14 44 (1.04%) Security Posture
15 42 (0.99%) CMDB
15 42 (0.99%) NHS
15 42 (0.99%) Private Cloud
15 42 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
16 37 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 488 (11.55%) Linux
2 239 (5.66%) Windows
3 110 (2.60%) Unix
4 55 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 54 (1.28%) Windows Server
6 52 (1.23%) VMS
7 30 (0.71%) Android
8 29 (0.69%) Ubuntu
9 26 (0.62%) Apple iOS
10 19 (0.45%) Windows 10
11 17 (0.40%) CentOS
12 15 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.24%) Solaris
14 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
14 6 (0.14%) zOS
15 5 (0.12%) Mac OS
16 2 (0.047%) Debian
16 2 (0.047%) Windows Server 2012
17 1 (0.024%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,399 (56.78%) CI/CD
2 1,721 (40.73%) Agile
3 1,098 (25.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 825 (19.53%) Containerisation
5 803 (19.01%) Problem-Solving
6 645 (15.27%) Microservices
7 642 (15.20%) Test Automation
8 482 (11.41%) Continuous Improvement
9 480 (11.36%) Migration
10 470 (11.12%) Scrum
11 464 (10.98%) Analytics
12 434 (10.27%) Observability
13 416 (9.85%) Software Engineering
14 409 (9.68%) AI
15 352 (8.33%) Stakeholder Management
16 317 (7.50%) Mentoring
17 308 (7.29%) Data Modelling
18 284 (6.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 282 (6.67%) Data Pipeline
20 279 (6.60%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 1,321 (31.27%) Python
2 835 (19.76%) SQL
3 583 (13.80%) Java
4 416 (9.85%) JavaScript
5 407 (9.63%) C#
6 372 (8.80%) PowerShell
7 350 (8.28%) Bash
8 299 (7.08%) TypeScript
9 155 (3.67%) Go
10 139 (3.29%) Bicep
11 85 (2.01%) PL/SQL
12 76 (1.80%) Shell Script
13 53 (1.25%) Groovy
13 53 (1.25%) Ruby
14 48 (1.14%) C++
15 46 (1.09%) Scala
16 44 (1.04%) Perl
17 41 (0.97%) T-SQL
18 26 (0.62%) PHP
19 24 (0.57%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,251 (29.61%) Security Cleared
2 1,039 (24.59%) SC Cleared
3 358 (8.47%) Degree
4 194 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 177 (4.19%) Azure Certification
6 136 (3.22%) AWS Certification
6 136 (3.22%) DV Cleared
7 100 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 86 (2.04%) Master's Degree
9 71 (1.68%) CISSP
10 62 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
11 53 (1.25%) CISM
12 45 (1.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 44 (1.04%) ISTQB
14 36 (0.85%) PMI Certification
15 29 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
15 29 (0.69%) PMP
16 27 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 18 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 18 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (9.18%) QA
2 159 (3.76%) GDPR
3 144 (3.41%) Data Quality
4 138 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 120 (2.84%) Accessibility
6 111 (2.63%) NIST
7 56 (1.33%) NCSC
8 35 (0.83%) WCAG
9 32 (0.76%) PCI DSS
10 27 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.57%) PMO
11 24 (0.57%) SLA
12 22 (0.52%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.36%) PSD2
14 14 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.26%) SEPA
17 9 (0.21%) HL7
17 9 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 9 (0.21%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,095 (25.92%) Docker
2 168 (3.98%) Active Directory
3 64 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 59 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.69%) vSphere
6 18 (0.43%) DFS Replication
7 16 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.28%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 12 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 11 (0.26%) Squid
10 11 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
11 10 (0.24%) Lustre
12 9 (0.21%) Dovecot
12 9 (0.21%) Postfix
13 8 (0.19%) GPFS
13 8 (0.19%) NFS
13 8 (0.19%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 7 (0.17%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,333 (31.55%) Terraform
2 1,245 (29.47%) Kubernetes
3 527 (12.47%) Ansible
4 329 (7.79%) Grafana
5 297 (7.03%) Prometheus
6 82 (1.94%) Argo
7 78 (1.85%) Puppet
8 50 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
9 47 (1.11%) Progress Chef
10 41 (0.97%) Istio
11 40 (0.95%) Kibana
12 30 (0.71%) Packer
13 25 (0.59%) Podman
14 19 (0.45%) SCCM
15 16 (0.38%) Proxmox
15 16 (0.38%) Rancher
16 15 (0.36%) Data Guard
16 15 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
17 14 (0.33%) Nessus
17 14 (0.33%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 717 (16.97%) Microsoft
2 320 (7.57%) Oracle
3 232 (5.49%) Google
4 221 (5.23%) Databricks
5 213 (5.04%) Splunk
6 162 (3.83%) ServiceNow
7 126 (2.98%) Red Hat
8 110 (2.60%) Salesforce
9 108 (2.56%) VMware
10 101 (2.39%) SAP
11 76 (1.80%) Dynatrace
12 59 (1.40%) OpenAI
13 48 (1.14%) IBM
14 47 (1.11%) F5
15 43 (1.02%) Atlassian
15 43 (1.02%) Cisco
16 39 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 39 (0.92%) Palo Alto
17 38 (0.90%) Talend
18 37 (0.88%) MuleSoft