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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,004 3,135 3,959
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.93% 10.73% 8.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.81% 11.84% 10.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,499 2,313 2,762
10th Percentile £381 £395 £401
25th Percentile £435 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% - -6.22%
75th Percentile £602 £650 £650
90th Percentile £707 £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 23 90
10th Percentile £39.53 £29.45 £54.63
25th Percentile £45.46 £57.82 £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 £81.86 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.50 £87.50 £87.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.59% +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 39,074 26,483 37,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.36% 90.62% 86.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,751 17,195 24,633
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 2,316 997 2,379
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £19.34 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.70 £31.64 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +15.99% -4.31% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.91
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.80 £70.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £30.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +22.37% -9.09% -8.08%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 4,290 £525 -4.55% 1,414
UK excluding London +9 2,232 £500 -2.44% 1,103
London 0 2,162 £541 -5.93% 512
Work from Home -2 1,369 £525 -0.38% 782
North of England +5 758 £500 -4.76% 306
South East 0 459 £525 -4.55% 307
Midlands +5 421 £492 -1.60% 142
Yorkshire +2 402 £500 -4.76% 86
West Midlands +8 327 £500 - 98
North West +3 295 £500 -4.76% 159
South West +13 290 £500 -12.66% 165
Scotland +5 174 £450 -2.70% 52
East of England +24 124 £550 +8.37% 92
East Midlands +4 91 £453 -7.18% 44
North East +6 68 £475 -9.52% 63
Wales +10 46 £468 +108.41% 43
Northern Ireland -6 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
1 304 (6.08%) Confluence
2 117 (2.34%) Apache Spark
3 109 (2.18%) SharePoint
4 101 (2.02%) SAS
5 87 (1.74%) Apache
6 67 (1.34%) 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 86 (1.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 56 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 25 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.12%) Weka
8 5 (0.100%) 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 (1.56%) 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 (0.100%) Dynamics AX
7 5 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.100%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.100%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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%) Findur
9 3 (0.060%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,693 (53.82%) Azure
2 1,715 (34.27%) AWS
3 1,499 (29.96%) Azure DevOps
4 898 (17.95%) GitHub
5 656 (13.11%) GCP
6 555 (11.09%) Serverless
7 504 (10.07%) GitHub Actions
8 420 (8.39%) Power Platform
9 302 (6.04%) AWS CloudFormation
10 281 (5.62%) AWS Lambda
11 275 (5.50%) Amazon S3
12 239 (4.78%) Azure Data Factory
13 232 (4.64%) Entra ID
14 226 (4.52%) Azure AKS
15 209 (4.18%) Amazon EKS
16 199 (3.98%) OpenShift
17 185 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
18 172 (3.44%) Dynamics 365
19 167 (3.34%) PaaS
20 156 (3.12%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 219 (4.38%) Firewall
2 116 (2.32%) DNS
3 103 (2.06%) Network Security
4 90 (1.80%) VPN
5 40 (0.80%) TCP/IP
6 27 (0.54%) HTTP
7 26 (0.52%) SSL
8 24 (0.48%) WAN
9 23 (0.46%) DHCP
9 23 (0.46%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.42%) SAN
11 18 (0.36%) BGP
11 18 (0.36%) IPsec
12 16 (0.32%) MPLS
12 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
13 13 (0.26%) Internet
14 12 (0.24%) 5G
15 11 (0.22%) LAN
15 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
15 11 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (5.30%) PostgreSQL
2 258 (5.16%) Power BI
3 235 (4.70%) SQL Server
4 186 (3.72%) NoSQL
5 172 (3.44%) Data Lake
6 150 (3.00%) Relational Database
7 131 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
8 119 (2.38%) Azure SQL Database
9 114 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
10 111 (2.22%) MongoDB
11 96 (1.92%) DynamoDB
12 91 (1.82%) Metadata
13 81 (1.62%) Delta Lake
14 78 (1.56%) Oracle Database
15 71 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
16 67 (1.34%) Big Data
17 60 (1.20%) MySQL
18 59 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
19 57 (1.14%) Tableau
20 51 (1.02%) Redis
Development Applications
1 760 (15.19%) Jenkins
2 652 (13.03%) JIRA
3 651 (13.01%) Git
4 522 (10.43%) GitLab
5 139 (2.78%) Selenium
6 109 (2.18%) JUnit
7 97 (1.94%) Postman
8 78 (1.56%) Bitbucket
9 76 (1.52%) SonarQube
10 62 (1.24%) Cucumber
11 56 (1.12%) JMeter
12 55 (1.10%) REST Assured
13 54 (1.08%) Artifactory
14 53 (1.06%) Maven
15 50 (1.00%) Cypress.io
16 41 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
17 39 (0.78%) Mockito
18 35 (0.70%) Visual Studio
19 34 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
20 30 (0.60%) Gatling
General
1 1,345 (26.88%) Social Skills
2 909 (18.17%) Finance
3 654 (13.07%) Public Sector
4 410 (8.19%) Analytical Skills
5 348 (6.95%) Banking
6 168 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
7 71 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
8 66 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 60 (1.20%) Marketing
10 59 (1.18%) Retail
11 53 (1.06%) Legal
11 53 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
12 52 (1.04%) Financial Institution
13 48 (0.96%) Front Office
14 43 (0.86%) Investment Banking
15 42 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 41 (0.82%) Telecoms
17 35 (0.70%) Military
18 27 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
19 26 (0.52%) Law
Job Titles
1 932 (18.63%) DevOps Engineer
2 786 (15.71%) Developer
3 705 (14.09%) Senior
4 554 (11.07%) Architect
5 430 (8.59%) Lead
6 324 (6.47%) Azure Engineer
7 296 (5.92%) Data Engineer
8 284 (5.68%) Analyst
9 246 (4.92%) AWS Engineer
10 193 (3.86%) AWS DevOps
11 182 (3.64%) Platform Engineer
12 175 (3.50%) Cloud Engineer
13 168 (3.36%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 158 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
15 153 (3.06%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 151 (3.02%) Software Engineer
17 149 (2.98%) Senior DevOps
18 147 (2.94%) Senior Developer
19 144 (2.88%) Business Analyst
20 141 (2.82%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 508 (10.15%) REST
2 433 (8.65%) .NET
3 315 (6.29%) Node.js
4 308 (6.16%) React
5 284 (5.68%) Kafka
6 281 (5.62%) Spring
7 268 (5.36%) RESTful
8 262 (5.24%) Spring Boot
9 178 (3.56%) AngularJS
10 154 (3.08%) JSON
11 150 (3.00%) OAuth
12 145 (2.90%) YAML
13 144 (2.88%) PySpark
14 140 (2.80%) Playwright
15 128 (2.56%) HTML
16 121 (2.42%) SOAP
17 112 (2.24%) Middleware
18 108 (2.16%) CSS
19 100 (2.00%) Elastic Stack
20 97 (1.94%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 744 (14.87%) Cloud Native
2 317 (6.33%) Product Ownership
3 175 (3.50%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 116 (2.32%) Public Cloud
6 101 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
8 97 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 74 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
10 64 (1.28%) Virtual Team
11 56 (1.12%) Management Information System
12 52 (1.04%) Data Centre
13 50 (1.00%) NHS
14 47 (0.94%) Private Cloud
15 46 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
16 42 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 41 (0.82%) Security Posture
18 40 (0.80%) AI Agents
18 40 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
19 37 (0.74%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 460 (9.19%) Linux
2 256 (5.12%) Windows
3 86 (1.72%) Unix
4 71 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 45 (0.90%) VMS
6 43 (0.86%) Windows Server
7 24 (0.48%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.26%) CentOS
9 11 (0.22%) Android
10 10 (0.20%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.100%) Solaris
12 5 (0.100%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.080%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.060%) Rocky
14 3 (0.060%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,838 (56.71%) CI/CD
2 1,927 (38.51%) Agile
3 1,262 (25.22%) Infrastructure as Code
4 882 (17.63%) Problem-Solving
5 862 (17.23%) Containerisation
6 745 (14.89%) Microservices
7 732 (14.63%) Test Automation
8 676 (13.51%) Continuous Improvement
9 630 (12.59%) Analytics
10 602 (12.03%) Migration
11 563 (11.25%) Scrum
12 562 (11.23%) Observability
13 531 (10.61%) Stakeholder Management
14 528 (10.55%) AI
15 471 (9.41%) Data Modelling
16 444 (8.87%) Software Engineering
17 402 (8.03%) Mentoring
18 399 (7.97%) Platform Engineering
19 387 (7.73%) Data Pipeline
20 363 (7.25%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,457 (29.12%) Python
2 1,043 (20.84%) SQL
3 649 (12.97%) Java
4 516 (10.31%) C#
5 434 (8.67%) JavaScript
6 378 (7.55%) PowerShell
7 348 (6.95%) Bash
8 296 (5.92%) TypeScript
9 171 (3.42%) Bicep
10 114 (2.28%) Go
11 87 (1.74%) PL/SQL
12 70 (1.40%) Scala
13 57 (1.14%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.96%) T-SQL
15 46 (0.92%) Groovy
16 41 (0.82%) C++
16 41 (0.82%) Ruby
17 36 (0.72%) Apex Code
18 28 (0.56%) Perl
19 24 (0.48%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,578 (31.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,303 (26.04%) SC Cleared
3 348 (6.95%) Degree
4 209 (4.18%) Azure Certification
5 162 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (3.14%) DV Cleared
7 151 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (2.86%) AWS Certification
9 83 (1.66%) CISSP
10 62 (1.24%) CISM
10 62 (1.24%) ISTQB
11 61 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
12 60 (1.20%) Master's Degree
13 55 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 48 (0.96%) 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
1 450 (8.99%) QA
2 230 (4.60%) Data Quality
3 192 (3.84%) GDPR
4 159 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 135 (2.70%) NIST
6 127 (2.54%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.48%) NCSC
8 43 (0.86%) WCAG
9 41 (0.82%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.70%) PMO
11 31 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 30 (0.60%) SLA
13 21 (0.42%) HIPAA
14 16 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 16 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 14 (0.28%) GRC
16 14 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.26%) PSD2
18 11 (0.22%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,064 (21.26%) Docker
2 189 (3.78%) Active Directory
3 83 (1.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
5 46 (0.92%) vSphere
6 34 (0.68%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.36%) 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 (0.100%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,439 (28.76%) Terraform
2 1,341 (26.80%) Kubernetes
3 482 (9.63%) Ansible
4 323 (6.45%) Grafana
5 265 (5.30%) Prometheus
6 105 (2.10%) Argo
7 73 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.38%) Puppet
9 64 (1.28%) Istio
10 30 (0.60%) Progress Chef
10 30 (0.60%) vCenter Server
11 29 (0.58%) Packer
12 24 (0.48%) Kibana
13 21 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 21 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
14 20 (0.40%) HP ALM
14 20 (0.40%) Rancher
15 18 (0.36%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.34%) Consul
16 17 (0.34%) Podman
Vendors
1 873 (17.45%) Microsoft
2 338 (6.75%) Oracle
3 295 (5.90%) Databricks
4 242 (4.84%) Google
5 193 (3.86%) Splunk
6 167 (3.34%) ServiceNow
7 142 (2.84%) Red Hat
8 140 (2.80%) Salesforce
9 136 (2.72%) VMware
10 108 (2.16%) SAP
11 84 (1.68%) OpenAI
12 76 (1.52%) Dynatrace
13 66 (1.32%) Atlassian
14 62 (1.24%) CyberArk
15 47 (0.94%) IBM
16 46 (0.92%) Cisco
16 46 (0.92%) Talend
17 39 (0.78%) Denodo
18 36 (0.72%) Foundry
19 34 (0.68%) Informatica