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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 14 16
Rank change year-on-year +1 +2 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,055 3,028 3,969
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.59% 10.38% 9.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 11.41% 10.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,538 2,224 2,738
10th Percentile £381 £392 £400
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -4.97%
75th Percentile £603 £650 £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 108 19 106
10th Percentile £39.53 £34.05 £56.25
25th Percentile £55.94 £53.75 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.82% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £78.55 £85.23 £78.44
90th Percentile £95.00 £88.50 £87.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.57% +7.69% -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 40,321 26,530 37,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.95% 86.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,358 17,078 23,948
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,401 1,077 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.47 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +7.14%

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 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 9 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 9 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 +3 4,314 £525 -4.55% 1,353
UK excluding London +11 2,217 £500 - 983
London +1 2,211 £541 -5.93% 545
Work from Home -4 1,360 £525 - 717
North of England +7 738 £500 -3.80% 286
South East +2 476 £510 -2.11% 304
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 -3.80% 78
Midlands +3 403 £488 -2.50% 104
West Midlands +2 308 £500 -3.24% 54
South West +16 285 £525 -4.55% 113
North West +2 273 £500 - 145
Scotland +2 181 £475 +0.42% 51
East of England +25 128 £525 +3.45% 90
East Midlands 0 92 £465 -2.11% 50
North East +8 71 £453 -15.81% 64
Wales +4 39 £425 +39.13% 39
Northern Ireland -1 11 £475 +13.77% 15
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
1 285 (5.64%) Confluence
2 132 (2.61%) Apache Spark
3 115 (2.27%) SharePoint
4 85 (1.68%) Apache
5 81 (1.60%) SAS
6 69 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.71%) CMS
8 31 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
9 30 (0.59%) nginx
10 26 (0.51%) OpenStack
11 23 (0.45%) IIS
12 15 (0.30%) Mendix
13 10 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.20%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.18%) Camunda
14 9 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 73 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
3 47 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.099%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.079%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.079%) Trello
8 3 (0.059%) Weka
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 65 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 25 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.099%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.079%) Endur
7 4 (0.079%) SAP BPC
8 3 (0.059%) Findur
8 3 (0.059%) Magento
8 3 (0.059%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.059%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.059%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.059%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.059%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,771 (54.82%) Azure
2 1,718 (33.99%) AWS
3 1,515 (29.97%) Azure DevOps
4 865 (17.11%) GitHub
5 659 (13.04%) GCP
6 509 (10.07%) GitHub Actions
7 505 (9.99%) Serverless
8 430 (8.51%) Power Platform
9 272 (5.38%) Amazon S3
10 269 (5.32%) AWS CloudFormation
11 255 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
12 232 (4.59%) Azure AKS
13 231 (4.57%) Entra ID
14 222 (4.39%) Azure Data Factory
15 202 (4.00%) Amazon EKS
16 176 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
17 175 (3.46%) OpenShift
18 166 (3.28%) PaaS
19 156 (3.09%) Dynamics 365
20 152 (3.01%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 215 (4.25%) Firewall
2 122 (2.41%) DNS
3 99 (1.96%) Network Security
4 90 (1.78%) VPN
5 40 (0.79%) TCP/IP
6 34 (0.67%) WAN
7 30 (0.59%) SD-WAN
8 28 (0.55%) HTTP
9 25 (0.49%) BGP
9 25 (0.49%) SSL
10 22 (0.44%) DHCP
11 21 (0.42%) SAN
12 19 (0.38%) IPsec
12 19 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
13 16 (0.32%) MPLS
13 16 (0.32%) OSPF
13 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
14 14 (0.28%) LAN
15 11 (0.22%) Internet
15 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (5.62%) Power BI
2 251 (4.97%) SQL Server
3 246 (4.87%) PostgreSQL
4 180 (3.56%) NoSQL
5 172 (3.40%) Data Lake
6 151 (2.99%) Relational Database
7 138 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
8 118 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 115 (2.27%) MongoDB
10 109 (2.16%) Amazon RDS
11 96 (1.90%) DynamoDB
12 93 (1.84%) Metadata
13 90 (1.78%) Delta Lake
14 75 (1.48%) Big Data
15 71 (1.40%) Oracle Database
16 70 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
17 62 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
18 55 (1.09%) Redis
19 51 (1.01%) BigQuery
20 49 (0.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 734 (14.52%) Jenkins
2 646 (12.78%) Git
3 611 (12.09%) JIRA
4 512 (10.13%) GitLab
5 100 (1.98%) Selenium
6 96 (1.90%) Postman
7 82 (1.62%) SonarQube
8 81 (1.60%) JUnit
9 73 (1.44%) Bitbucket
10 60 (1.19%) Maven
11 53 (1.05%) JMeter
12 51 (1.01%) Artifactory
13 50 (0.99%) REST Assured
14 48 (0.95%) Cucumber
14 48 (0.95%) Cypress.io
15 37 (0.73%) Gatling
16 36 (0.71%) Mockito
17 33 (0.65%) Gradle
18 32 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
19 28 (0.55%) NUnit
General
1 1,272 (25.16%) Social Skills
2 923 (18.26%) Finance
3 642 (12.70%) Public Sector
4 410 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
5 324 (6.41%) Banking
6 149 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 67 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
9 63 (1.25%) Legal
10 60 (1.19%) Retail
11 55 (1.09%) Marketing
12 54 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 51 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 44 (0.87%) Front Office
15 42 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
16 38 (0.75%) Investment Banking
17 36 (0.71%) Military
18 35 (0.69%) Telecoms
19 24 (0.47%) Law
19 24 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,025 (20.28%) DevOps Engineer
2 757 (14.98%) Developer
3 709 (14.03%) Senior
4 584 (11.55%) Architect
5 408 (8.07%) Lead
6 343 (6.79%) Azure Engineer
7 311 (6.15%) Data Engineer
8 300 (5.93%) Analyst
9 239 (4.73%) AWS Engineer
10 183 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 178 (3.52%) AWS DevOps
11 178 (3.52%) Platform Engineer
12 173 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
13 169 (3.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 163 (3.22%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 158 (3.13%) Senior DevOps
16 150 (2.97%) Software Engineer
17 147 (2.91%) Business Analyst
17 147 (2.91%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 140 (2.77%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 456 (9.02%) .NET
2 454 (8.98%) REST
3 299 (5.91%) React
4 282 (5.58%) Kafka
5 280 (5.54%) Spring
6 276 (5.46%) Node.js
7 267 (5.28%) Spring Boot
8 256 (5.06%) RESTful
9 181 (3.58%) AngularJS
10 152 (3.01%) PySpark
11 151 (2.99%) OAuth
12 148 (2.93%) Playwright
13 139 (2.75%) JSON
14 133 (2.63%) YAML
15 118 (2.33%) Middleware
16 115 (2.27%) HTML
17 109 (2.16%) SOAP
18 102 (2.02%) .NET Framework
19 101 (2.00%) CSS
20 99 (1.96%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 814 (16.10%) Cloud Native
2 322 (6.37%) Product Ownership
3 191 (3.78%) Distributed Systems
4 135 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 109 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
6 105 (2.08%) Public Cloud
7 99 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
8 91 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
9 83 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
10 59 (1.17%) Data Centre
11 56 (1.11%) Management Information System
12 50 (0.99%) Virtual Team
13 49 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 48 (0.95%) Private Cloud
15 43 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 43 (0.85%) Replication
16 41 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
16 41 (0.81%) Low-Code
16 41 (0.81%) Mobile App
16 41 (0.81%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 446 (8.82%) Linux
2 257 (5.08%) Windows
3 80 (1.58%) Unix
4 79 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 46 (0.91%) Windows Server
6 42 (0.83%) VMS
7 22 (0.44%) Ubuntu
8 17 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.30%) Android
10 11 (0.22%) 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 (0.099%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.099%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.079%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
17 3 (0.059%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,882 (57.01%) CI/CD
2 1,866 (36.91%) Agile
3 1,285 (25.42%) Infrastructure as Code
4 855 (16.91%) Containerisation
5 801 (15.85%) Problem-Solving
6 737 (14.58%) Microservices
7 723 (14.30%) Test Automation
8 659 (13.04%) Continuous Improvement
9 611 (12.09%) Migration
10 592 (11.71%) Observability
11 586 (11.59%) Analytics
12 541 (10.70%) Stakeholder Management
13 534 (10.56%) Scrum
14 511 (10.11%) AI
15 476 (9.42%) Data Modelling
16 475 (9.40%) Software Engineering
17 439 (8.68%) Platform Engineering
18 391 (7.73%) Data Pipeline
18 391 (7.73%) Roadmaps
19 389 (7.70%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,397 (27.64%) Python
2 1,012 (20.02%) SQL
3 662 (13.10%) Java
4 504 (9.97%) C#
5 385 (7.62%) JavaScript
6 358 (7.08%) PowerShell
7 338 (6.69%) Bash
8 289 (5.72%) TypeScript
9 172 (3.40%) Bicep
10 112 (2.22%) Go
11 70 (1.38%) Scala
12 63 (1.25%) PL/SQL
12 63 (1.25%) Shell Script
13 47 (0.93%) Groovy
14 45 (0.89%) T-SQL
15 43 (0.85%) Apex Code
16 39 (0.77%) C++
17 31 (0.61%) Ruby
18 27 (0.53%) Perl
19 25 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,608 (31.81%) Security Cleared
2 1,343 (26.57%) SC Cleared
3 321 (6.35%) Degree
4 212 (4.19%) Azure Certification
5 155 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 150 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 149 (2.95%) DV Cleared
8 141 (2.79%) AWS Certification
9 80 (1.58%) CISSP
10 60 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 56 (1.11%) CISM
12 54 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 54 (1.07%) Master's Degree
13 49 (0.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 46 (0.91%) PMI Certification
15 41 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 41 (0.81%) PMP
16 30 (0.59%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 27 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
18 22 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (8.88%) QA
2 242 (4.79%) Data Quality
3 187 (3.70%) GDPR
4 138 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 131 (2.59%) Accessibility
6 128 (2.53%) NIST
7 66 (1.31%) NCSC
8 48 (0.95%) WCAG
9 46 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.69%) PMO
11 33 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 33 (0.65%) SLA
12 19 (0.38%) GRC
13 18 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 14 (0.28%) PSD2
16 12 (0.24%) SEPA
16 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 991 (19.60%) Docker
2 178 (3.52%) Active Directory
3 78 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
4 70 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.63%) vSphere
6 27 (0.53%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
8 14 (0.28%) Squid
9 13 (0.26%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.24%) Postfix
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) HDFS
13 6 (0.12%) Corosync
13 6 (0.12%) Lustre
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 5 (0.099%) Ceph
14 5 (0.099%) NFS
14 5 (0.099%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,434 (28.37%) Terraform
2 1,319 (26.09%) Kubernetes
3 485 (9.59%) Ansible
4 346 (6.84%) Grafana
5 286 (5.66%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.96%) Argo
7 71 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.36%) Puppet
9 63 (1.25%) Istio
10 28 (0.55%) Progress Chef
11 26 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 26 (0.51%) Packer
12 24 (0.47%) Kibana
13 22 (0.44%) HP ALM
13 22 (0.44%) vCenter Server
14 20 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 17 (0.34%) Rancher
16 15 (0.30%) SCCM
17 14 (0.28%) Consul
17 14 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 885 (17.51%) Microsoft
2 293 (5.80%) Oracle
3 285 (5.64%) Databricks
4 237 (4.69%) Google
5 197 (3.90%) Splunk
6 176 (3.48%) ServiceNow
7 149 (2.95%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.75%) Red Hat
9 116 (2.29%) SAP
9 116 (2.29%) VMware
10 102 (2.02%) Dynatrace
11 72 (1.42%) OpenAI
12 60 (1.19%) CyberArk
13 50 (0.99%) Atlassian
14 43 (0.85%) IBM
14 43 (0.85%) Informatica
15 39 (0.77%) AppDynamics
15 39 (0.77%) Cisco
16 36 (0.71%) Denodo
16 36 (0.71%) Foundry