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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,643 3,714 3,794
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.28% 11.23% 9.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.19% 12.40% 11.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,923 2,595 2,525
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 £623 £623 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 23 67
10th Percentile £38.25 £44.25 £55.50
25th Percentile £56.50 £56.50 £65.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £78.00 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £91.60 £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 46,293 29,942 32,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,017 18,609 19,950
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
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 £630 £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 3,198 1,849 1,396
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £66.00 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.78% -47.67% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 4,795 £525 - 4,609
London 0 2,531 £550 - 2,371
UK excluding London -2 2,409 £500 - 2,518
Work from Home -1 1,600 £525 +2.34% 2,139
North of England -2 785 £500 +5.26% 735
South East -13 449 £536 +7.20% 597
Midlands -6 431 £488 -4.88% 304
Yorkshire -2 388 £500 +2.56% 218
West Midlands -7 346 £500 -4.76% 183
South West +5 323 £550 +4.76% 321
North West -5 304 £528 +16.45% 417
Scotland -3 226 £475 -4.81% 188
East of England +7 158 £504 -4.00% 224
North East +10 108 £450 -18.18% 104
East Midlands -6 82 £459 +1.94% 121
Wales -7 46 £425 +13.33% 80
Northern Ireland +19 23 £450 -4.26% 83
Channel Islands - 4 £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
1 338 (5.99%) Confluence
2 158 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 130 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 130 (2.30%) Apache Spark
4 113 (2.00%) Apache
5 61 (1.08%) SAS
6 45 (0.80%) CMS
7 44 (0.78%) Jupyter
8 28 (0.50%) nginx
9 26 (0.46%) IIS
10 20 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.28%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
13 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 11 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
14 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.16%) Appian
16 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 65 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (0.90%) MS Visio
3 48 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 33 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.14%) Windchill
8 5 (0.089%) Notion
8 5 (0.089%) Trello
9 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
9 2 (0.035%) Mingle
10 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.018%) Sketch
10 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 80 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 44 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.18%) Magento
7 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.11%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
9 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.089%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle BPM
11 4 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
11 4 (0.071%) Workday HCM
12 3 (0.053%) Endur
12 3 (0.053%) Maximo
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
12 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,048 (54.01%) Azure
2 2,037 (36.10%) AWS
3 1,742 (30.87%) Azure DevOps
4 972 (17.22%) GitHub
5 745 (13.20%) GCP
6 617 (10.93%) GitHub Actions
7 491 (8.70%) Power Platform
8 463 (8.20%) Serverless
9 307 (5.44%) Amazon S3
10 289 (5.12%) AWS Lambda
11 258 (4.57%) Entra ID
12 257 (4.55%) Amazon EKS
13 248 (4.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 237 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
15 214 (3.79%) Azure AKS
16 207 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
17 195 (3.46%) Amazon EC2
18 192 (3.40%) Azure Data Factory
19 188 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
20 169 (2.99%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 244 (4.32%) Firewall
2 172 (3.05%) DNS
3 120 (2.13%) VPN
4 113 (2.00%) Network Security
5 74 (1.31%) TCP/IP
6 58 (1.03%) SSL
7 52 (0.92%) DHCP
8 46 (0.82%) WAN
9 38 (0.67%) HTTP
10 37 (0.66%) BGP
11 28 (0.50%) Internet
11 28 (0.50%) OSPF
11 28 (0.50%) SD-WAN
11 28 (0.50%) SSH
12 23 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
13 21 (0.37%) LAN
13 21 (0.37%) VLAN
14 18 (0.32%) SAN
15 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
15 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (5.65%) Power BI
2 301 (5.33%) PostgreSQL
3 294 (5.21%) SQL Server
4 214 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
5 187 (3.31%) MongoDB
6 184 (3.26%) NoSQL
7 179 (3.17%) Data Lake
8 166 (2.94%) Relational Database
9 146 (2.59%) Amazon RDS
10 130 (2.30%) Metadata
11 95 (1.68%) Azure SQL Database
12 94 (1.67%) DynamoDB
13 90 (1.59%) Oracle Database
14 89 (1.58%) Delta Lake
15 88 (1.56%) MySQL
16 85 (1.51%) Redis
17 68 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
18 64 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 62 (1.10%) Big Data
20 57 (1.01%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 851 (15.08%) Git
2 796 (14.11%) Jenkins
3 662 (11.73%) JIRA
4 651 (11.54%) GitLab
5 145 (2.57%) Selenium
6 98 (1.74%) JUnit
6 98 (1.74%) Postman
7 97 (1.72%) SonarQube
8 95 (1.68%) Maven
9 75 (1.33%) REST Assured
10 74 (1.31%) Cucumber
11 71 (1.26%) Bitbucket
12 70 (1.24%) Cypress.io
13 68 (1.21%) Gradle
14 67 (1.19%) JMeter
15 53 (0.94%) Claude Code
16 48 (0.85%) Mockito
17 43 (0.76%) Gatling
17 43 (0.76%) Visual Studio
18 40 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,463 (25.93%) Social Skills
2 1,010 (17.90%) Finance
3 807 (14.30%) Public Sector
4 527 (9.34%) Analytical Skills
5 395 (7.00%) Banking
6 172 (3.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 110 (1.95%) Retail
8 89 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.13%) Legal
11 59 (1.05%) Aerospace
11 59 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
12 55 (0.97%) Marketing
13 54 (0.96%) Military
14 50 (0.89%) Telecoms
15 49 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 48 (0.85%) Manufacturing
17 44 (0.78%) Law
18 39 (0.69%) Financial Institution
18 39 (0.69%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,143 (20.26%) DevOps Engineer
2 923 (16.36%) Developer
3 855 (15.15%) Senior
4 646 (11.45%) Architect
5 535 (9.48%) Lead
6 351 (6.22%) Azure Engineer
7 310 (5.49%) Data Engineer
8 269 (4.77%) Analyst
9 259 (4.59%) AWS Engineer
10 231 (4.09%) Platform Engineer
11 207 (3.67%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 206 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
13 202 (3.58%) Senior DevOps
14 197 (3.49%) Java Developer
15 187 (3.31%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 183 (3.24%) AWS DevOps
17 179 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
18 172 (3.05%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 154 (2.73%) Senior Developer
20 144 (2.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,694 (30.02%) Terraform
2 639 (11.32%) REST
3 476 (8.44%) .NET
4 390 (6.91%) Kafka
5 364 (6.45%) RESTful
6 307 (5.44%) Spring
7 303 (5.37%) Spring Boot
8 297 (5.26%) React
9 201 (3.56%) Node.js
10 195 (3.46%) OAuth
11 183 (3.24%) JSON
12 160 (2.84%) Playwright
13 156 (2.76%) PySpark
14 147 (2.60%) HTML
15 137 (2.43%) OAuth2
16 134 (2.37%) SOAP
17 133 (2.36%) CSS
18 130 (2.30%) .NET Framework
19 125 (2.22%) Middleware
20 119 (2.11%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,046 (18.54%) Cloud Native
2 431 (7.64%) Product Ownership
3 267 (4.73%) Distributed Systems
4 212 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
5 209 (3.70%) Onboarding
6 150 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (1.91%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 87 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
11 78 (1.38%) Public Cloud
12 76 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 75 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
13 75 (1.33%) Replication
14 74 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.29%) Data Centre
16 62 (1.10%) Enterprise Cloud
17 61 (1.08%) PKI
18 60 (1.06%) Virtual Team
19 54 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 565 (10.01%) Linux
2 316 (5.60%) Windows
3 121 (2.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 109 (1.93%) Unix
5 98 (1.74%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 33 (0.58%) VMS
8 30 (0.53%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 17 (0.30%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 11 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.12%) AIX
16 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
17 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
18 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,462 (61.35%) CI/CD
2 2,304 (40.83%) Agile
3 1,685 (29.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 963 (17.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 959 (16.99%) Stakeholder Management
6 955 (16.92%) Containerisation
7 916 (16.23%) Test Automation
8 889 (15.75%) AI
9 888 (15.74%) Problem-Solving
10 838 (14.85%) Microservices
11 793 (14.05%) Observability
12 780 (13.82%) Platform Engineering
13 743 (13.17%) Software Engineering
14 696 (12.33%) Scrum
15 693 (12.28%) Migration
16 630 (11.16%) Technical Leadership
17 588 (10.42%) Analytics
18 533 (9.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 494 (8.75%) Roadmaps
20 491 (8.70%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,628 (28.85%) Python
2 988 (17.51%) SQL
3 827 (14.66%) Java
4 498 (8.83%) C#
5 493 (8.74%) Bash
5 493 (8.74%) PowerShell
6 467 (8.28%) JavaScript
7 318 (5.64%) TypeScript
8 263 (4.66%) Bicep
9 127 (2.25%) Go
10 78 (1.38%) Shell Script
11 68 (1.21%) Scala
12 67 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 61 (1.08%) Apex Code
13 61 (1.08%) PL/SQL
14 59 (1.05%) Groovy
15 39 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 34 (0.60%) Perl
17 32 (0.57%) C++
18 26 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,822 (32.29%) Security Cleared
2 1,530 (27.11%) SC Cleared
3 365 (6.47%) Degree
4 250 (4.43%) Azure Certification
5 243 (4.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 240 (4.25%) DV Cleared
7 195 (3.46%) AWS Certification
8 147 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 77 (1.36%) CISSP
11 63 (1.12%) ISTQB
12 54 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 50 (0.89%) PMP
14 45 (0.80%) PMI Certification
15 44 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 31 (0.55%) CISM
17 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 23 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 552 (9.78%) QA
2 286 (5.07%) Data Quality
3 212 (3.76%) Accessibility
4 128 (2.27%) GDPR
5 90 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 82 (1.45%) WCAG
7 72 (1.28%) NIST
8 55 (0.97%) NCSC
9 45 (0.80%) PMO
10 37 (0.66%) SLA
11 29 (0.51%) GRC
11 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 22 (0.39%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
14 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.23%) SEPA
15 13 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,168 (20.70%) Docker
2 163 (2.89%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (0.57%) vSphere
6 25 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (0.41%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 15 (0.27%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.21%) Squid
11 11 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.18%) IAG
13 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.14%) zsh
14 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 6 (0.11%) Corosync
14 6 (0.11%) KVM
14 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 5 (0.089%) NFS
Systems Management
1 1,551 (27.49%) Kubernetes
2 537 (9.52%) Ansible
3 371 (6.57%) Grafana
4 318 (5.64%) Prometheus
5 74 (1.31%) Argo
6 56 (0.99%) Puppet
7 48 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
8 47 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 46 (0.82%) Progress Chef
10 38 (0.67%) Packer
11 34 (0.60%) Kibana
12 29 (0.51%) Istio
13 22 (0.39%) Kubeflow
14 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.30%) SCCM
17 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,112 (19.71%) Microsoft
2 309 (5.48%) Databricks
3 308 (5.46%) Oracle
4 295 (5.23%) Google
5 207 (3.67%) ServiceNow
6 193 (3.42%) Splunk
7 173 (3.07%) Salesforce
8 148 (2.62%) Dynatrace
9 131 (2.32%) VMware
10 115 (2.04%) SAP
11 99 (1.75%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.31%) IBM
12 74 (1.31%) OpenAI
13 65 (1.15%) MuleSoft
14 57 (1.01%) Foundry
15 52 (0.92%) Cisco
16 45 (0.80%) Informatica
17 42 (0.74%) AppDynamics
18 41 (0.73%) Okta
19 37 (0.66%) Atlassian