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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 15
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,680 3,579 3,841
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.63% 10.87% 9.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.54% 12.01% 11.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,934 2,550 2,616
10th Percentile £385 £360 £381
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -5.86% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £550
% change year-on-year +1.11% -10.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 26 86
10th Percentile £37.24 £32.63 £58.75
25th Percentile £56.25 £51.56 £65.00
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -4.29% +6.87%
75th Percentile £77.50 £86.37 £74.33
90th Percentile £87.10 £93.75 £85.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +0.75% -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 45,312 29,789 33,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.84% 90.47% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,626 21,285
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,829 1,693 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +17.24%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 4,861 £525 - 2,485
London +1 2,534 £550 - 1,336
UK excluding London 0 2,456 £500 +1.11% 1,379
Work from Home +1 1,638 £525 +2.44% 1,128
North of England 0 835 £500 +5.26% 390
South East -11 466 £525 +5.00% 383
Midlands -1 463 £488 -2.50% 191
Yorkshire +1 412 £500 +3.36% 110
West Midlands -3 380 £490 -4.85% 125
North West -3 329 £525 +10.53% 202
South West +11 318 £525 +0.96% 174
Scotland -3 192 £495 - 91
East of England +14 140 £505 +1.00% 79
North East +13 111 £425 -19.05% 80
East Midlands 0 78 £488 +7.26% 66
Wales -3 49 £513 +45.15% 43
Northern Ireland +21 23 £475 +7.95% 32
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
1 338 (5.95%) Confluence
2 138 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.31%) Apache Spark
4 126 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
5 110 (1.94%) Apache
6 87 (1.53%) SAS
7 43 (0.76%) CMS
8 38 (0.67%) Jupyter
9 37 (0.65%) IIS
10 25 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
11 24 (0.42%) nginx
12 16 (0.28%) WebSphere
13 15 (0.26%) Camunda
14 13 (0.23%) Anypoint
14 13 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.21%) OpenStack
16 11 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
17 9 (0.16%) Appian
18 8 (0.14%) Mendix
18 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 62 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
2 57 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
4 37 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.16%) CPLEX
7 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.12%) Trello
9 5 (0.088%) Notion
10 1 (0.018%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.018%) InDesign
10 1 (0.018%) Maya
10 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 70 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
3 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
3 10 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.16%) Magento
4 9 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 5 (0.088%) Maximo
7 5 (0.088%) OpenText MBPM
7 5 (0.088%) Oracle BPM
7 5 (0.088%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.070%) Endur
9 3 (0.053%) Findur
9 3 (0.053%) Shopify
9 3 (0.053%) Teamcenter
9 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 3,082 (54.26%) Azure
2 2,006 (35.32%) AWS
3 1,759 (30.97%) Azure DevOps
4 978 (17.22%) GitHub
5 723 (12.73%) GCP
6 605 (10.65%) GitHub Actions
7 473 (8.33%) Power Platform
8 451 (7.94%) Serverless
9 302 (5.32%) Amazon S3
10 270 (4.75%) AWS Lambda
11 268 (4.72%) Entra ID
12 249 (4.38%) AWS CloudFormation
13 238 (4.19%) Amazon EKS
14 228 (4.01%) Azure AKS
15 213 (3.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 200 (3.52%) Azure Data Factory
16 200 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
17 182 (3.20%) Amazon EC2
18 165 (2.90%) Dynamics 365
19 154 (2.71%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 247 (4.35%) Firewall
2 164 (2.89%) DNS
3 123 (2.17%) VPN
4 115 (2.02%) Network Security
5 62 (1.09%) TCP/IP
6 50 (0.88%) WAN
7 44 (0.77%) SSL
8 43 (0.76%) DHCP
9 36 (0.63%) SD-WAN
10 33 (0.58%) BGP
11 32 (0.56%) HTTP
11 32 (0.56%) Internet
12 28 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
13 25 (0.44%) OSPF
14 21 (0.37%) SAN
14 21 (0.37%) SSH
15 20 (0.35%) VLAN
16 18 (0.32%) VXLAN
17 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (5.62%) Power BI
2 293 (5.16%) SQL Server
3 278 (4.89%) PostgreSQL
4 203 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
5 188 (3.31%) NoSQL
6 180 (3.17%) Relational Database
7 175 (3.08%) MongoDB
8 166 (2.92%) Data Lake
9 121 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
10 117 (2.06%) Metadata
11 112 (1.97%) Azure SQL Database
12 92 (1.62%) Delta Lake
12 92 (1.62%) DynamoDB
13 82 (1.44%) Oracle Database
14 71 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
14 71 (1.25%) Redis
15 66 (1.16%) Big Data
15 66 (1.16%) MySQL
16 57 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 823 (14.49%) Jenkins
2 790 (13.91%) Git
3 686 (12.08%) JIRA
4 599 (10.55%) GitLab
5 132 (2.32%) Selenium
6 103 (1.81%) Postman
6 103 (1.81%) SonarQube
7 90 (1.58%) JUnit
8 86 (1.51%) Maven
9 85 (1.50%) Bitbucket
10 67 (1.18%) REST Assured
11 66 (1.16%) Cypress.io
11 66 (1.16%) JMeter
12 58 (1.02%) Cucumber
13 56 (0.99%) Gradle
14 49 (0.86%) Gatling
15 44 (0.77%) Mockito
16 43 (0.76%) LoadRunner
17 40 (0.70%) Claude Code
17 40 (0.70%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,425 (25.09%) Social Skills
2 1,010 (17.78%) Finance
3 836 (14.72%) Public Sector
4 503 (8.86%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (6.58%) Banking
6 148 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 105 (1.85%) Retail
8 97 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
9 70 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
9 70 (1.23%) Legal
10 69 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 54 (0.95%) Marketing
12 51 (0.90%) Investment Banking
13 48 (0.85%) Telecoms
14 47 (0.83%) Military
15 46 (0.81%) Aerospace
16 44 (0.77%) Law
17 43 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 43 (0.76%) Front Office
18 40 (0.70%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,096 (19.30%) DevOps Engineer
2 933 (16.43%) Developer
3 838 (14.75%) Senior
4 628 (11.06%) Architect
5 549 (9.67%) Lead
6 349 (6.14%) Azure Engineer
7 330 (5.81%) Data Engineer
8 282 (4.96%) Analyst
9 274 (4.82%) AWS Engineer
10 236 (4.15%) Platform Engineer
11 216 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 207 (3.64%) Senior DevOps
13 194 (3.42%) Java Developer
14 192 (3.38%) AWS DevOps
15 191 (3.36%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 188 (3.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 179 (3.15%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 179 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
18 152 (2.68%) Software Engineer
19 151 (2.66%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 575 (10.12%) REST
2 494 (8.70%) .NET
3 343 (6.04%) Kafka
4 337 (5.93%) RESTful
5 300 (5.28%) Spring
6 290 (5.11%) React
7 280 (4.93%) Spring Boot
8 218 (3.84%) Node.js
9 176 (3.10%) JSON
10 168 (2.96%) PySpark
11 167 (2.94%) Playwright
12 165 (2.90%) OAuth
13 153 (2.69%) AngularJS
14 140 (2.46%) SOAP
15 139 (2.45%) .NET Framework
16 132 (2.32%) HTML
17 119 (2.10%) OAuth2
18 114 (2.01%) YAML
19 110 (1.94%) Middleware
20 108 (1.90%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 1,021 (17.98%) Cloud Native
2 408 (7.18%) Product Ownership
3 267 (4.70%) Distributed Systems
4 175 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
5 170 (2.99%) Onboarding
6 155 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
7 146 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
8 89 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
9 84 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
10 81 (1.43%) Public Cloud
11 77 (1.36%) Management Information System
12 72 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.25%) AI Agents
13 71 (1.25%) Data Centre
13 71 (1.25%) Security Posture
14 64 (1.13%) Replication
15 59 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
16 53 (0.93%) Virtual Team
17 51 (0.90%) Mobile App
18 48 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 512 (9.01%) Linux
2 307 (5.40%) Windows
3 112 (1.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 87 (1.53%) Unix
5 84 (1.48%) Windows Server
6 34 (0.60%) VMS
7 29 (0.51%) Ubuntu
8 28 (0.49%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.32%) Android
10 10 (0.18%) Solaris
11 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.16%) zOS
12 8 (0.14%) AIX
12 8 (0.14%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.12%) CentOS
13 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS
14 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,354 (59.05%) CI/CD
2 2,284 (40.21%) Agile
3 1,576 (27.75%) Infrastructure as Code
4 934 (16.44%) Containerisation
5 925 (16.29%) Continuous Improvement
6 884 (15.56%) Test Automation
7 872 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
8 827 (14.56%) Microservices
9 794 (13.98%) Stakeholder Management
10 791 (13.93%) AI
11 717 (12.62%) Observability
12 705 (12.41%) Scrum
13 696 (12.25%) Platform Engineering
14 690 (12.15%) Software Engineering
15 681 (11.99%) Migration
16 615 (10.83%) Analytics
17 542 (9.54%) Technical Leadership
18 535 (9.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 503 (8.86%) Data Modelling
20 465 (8.19%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,618 (28.49%) Python
2 1,049 (18.47%) SQL
3 797 (14.03%) Java
4 516 (9.08%) C#
5 474 (8.35%) Bash
6 464 (8.17%) JavaScript
7 459 (8.08%) PowerShell
8 311 (5.48%) TypeScript
9 229 (4.03%) Bicep
10 101 (1.78%) Go
11 71 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 69 (1.21%) Apex Code
12 69 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 65 (1.14%) PL/SQL
14 63 (1.11%) Scala
15 58 (1.02%) Groovy
16 35 (0.62%) C++
17 31 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.49%) C
18 28 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,823 (32.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,539 (27.10%) SC Cleared
3 328 (5.77%) Degree
4 227 (4.00%) Azure Certification
4 227 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 195 (3.43%) AWS Certification
6 194 (3.42%) DV Cleared
7 126 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 86 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 83 (1.46%) CISSP
10 62 (1.09%) ISTQB
11 59 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 56 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
13 47 (0.83%) PMP
14 44 (0.77%) PMI Certification
15 37 (0.65%) Master's Degree
16 33 (0.58%) CISM
17 31 (0.55%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 26 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
19 24 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (9.03%) QA
2 290 (5.11%) Data Quality
3 198 (3.49%) Accessibility
4 153 (2.69%) GDPR
5 97 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 80 (1.41%) WCAG
7 79 (1.39%) NIST
8 56 (0.99%) NCSC
9 46 (0.81%) PMO
10 38 (0.67%) PCI DSS
11 37 (0.65%) SLA
12 29 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 28 (0.49%) GRC
14 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
14 12 (0.21%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
16 10 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
16 10 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
17 9 (0.16%) PSD2
17 9 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,132 (19.93%) Docker
2 183 (3.22%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.46%) vSphere
6 25 (0.44%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
8 17 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
9 13 (0.23%) Squid
10 12 (0.21%) Postfix
11 8 (0.14%) IAG
11 8 (0.14%) KVM
12 7 (0.12%) zsh
13 6 (0.11%) Corosync
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
14 5 (0.088%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 5 (0.088%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,654 (29.12%) Terraform
2 1,484 (26.13%) Kubernetes
3 530 (9.33%) Ansible
4 366 (6.44%) Grafana
5 313 (5.51%) Prometheus
6 85 (1.50%) Argo
7 65 (1.14%) Puppet
8 59 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
9 49 (0.86%) Progress Chef
10 45 (0.79%) Istio
11 37 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
12 34 (0.60%) Packer
13 19 (0.33%) Kibana
13 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
14 18 (0.32%) Kustomize
14 18 (0.32%) SCCM
15 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
15 16 (0.28%) Kubeflow
15 16 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
16 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,057 (18.61%) Microsoft
2 313 (5.51%) Oracle
3 277 (4.88%) Databricks
4 270 (4.75%) Google
5 206 (3.63%) ServiceNow
6 189 (3.33%) Salesforce
7 174 (3.06%) Splunk
8 142 (2.50%) Dynatrace
9 125 (2.20%) SAP
10 118 (2.08%) VMware
11 110 (1.94%) Red Hat
12 66 (1.16%) IBM
13 62 (1.09%) Informatica
14 58 (1.02%) OpenAI
15 57 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 53 (0.93%) Atlassian
17 49 (0.86%) Cisco
18 45 (0.79%) Foundry
19 44 (0.77%) Okta
20 42 (0.74%) AppDynamics