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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,991 3,099 3,943
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.74% 10.49% 9.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.67% 11.56% 10.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,493 2,280 2,721
10th Percentile £382 £393 £400
25th Percentile £433 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £539 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.45% -2.00% -5.98%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £702 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £512 £530
% change year-on-year -2.39% -3.35% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 21 101
10th Percentile £39.53 £35.00 £56.00
25th Percentile £45.46 £56.25 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £73.23 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +12.65% -0.76%
75th Percentile £76.81 £82.96 £77.50
90th Percentile £90.05 £87.50 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.73 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -7.30% +5.77% -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 39,397 26,809 37,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 90.76% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,864 17,328 24,353
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £739 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,354 1,060 2,429
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.83 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £71.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.41% -20.00% -6.17%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +3 4,282 £525 -4.55% 1,223
UK excluding London +9 2,199 £500 -2.39% 971
London +2 2,186 £538 -6.52% 459
Work from Home -4 1,337 £523 -2.06% 746
North of England +6 748 £500 -3.85% 279
South East -1 454 £505 -8.18% 286
Yorkshire 0 407 £500 -4.28% 67
Midlands +3 391 £490 -2.00% 115
South West +14 300 £500 -11.89% 115
West Midlands +9 298 £500 -3.47% 58
North West +4 281 £500 -3.26% 152
Scotland +5 176 £475 +0.96% 50
East of England +21 128 £525 +1.94% 88
East Midlands 0 90 £465 -2.11% 56
North East +5 67 £475 -9.52% 60
Wales +7 37 £425 +47.70% 27
Northern Ireland -3 11 £475 +13.77% 29
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
1 288 (5.77%) Confluence
2 130 (2.60%) Apache Spark
3 113 (2.26%) SharePoint
4 91 (1.82%) Apache
5 77 (1.54%) SAS
6 74 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.76%) nginx
8 36 (0.72%) CMS
9 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
10 27 (0.54%) OpenStack
11 22 (0.44%) IIS
12 15 (0.30%) Mendix
13 11 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.22%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
14 10 (0.20%) WebLogic
14 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Camunda
15 8 (0.16%) JBoss
Applications
1 78 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
3 52 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.10%) Trello
7 5 (0.10%) Weka
8 3 (0.060%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.040%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.040%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 76 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 6 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.080%) Endur
8 4 (0.080%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.060%) Findur
9 3 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.060%) SAP CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.060%) SAP FI/CO
9 3 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 2 (0.040%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 2,722 (54.54%) Azure
2 1,709 (34.24%) AWS
3 1,504 (30.13%) Azure DevOps
4 868 (17.39%) GitHub
5 641 (12.84%) GCP
6 533 (10.68%) Serverless
7 502 (10.06%) GitHub Actions
8 417 (8.36%) Power Platform
9 290 (5.81%) AWS CloudFormation
10 272 (5.45%) Amazon S3
11 264 (5.29%) AWS Lambda
12 237 (4.75%) Azure AKS
13 230 (4.61%) Entra ID
14 229 (4.59%) Azure Data Factory
15 206 (4.13%) Amazon EKS
16 183 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
17 180 (3.61%) OpenShift
18 167 (3.35%) PaaS
19 158 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
20 152 (3.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 208 (4.17%) Firewall
2 112 (2.24%) DNS
3 95 (1.90%) Network Security
4 87 (1.74%) VPN
5 41 (0.82%) TCP/IP
6 31 (0.62%) HTTP
7 25 (0.50%) SSL
7 25 (0.50%) WAN
8 23 (0.46%) DHCP
8 23 (0.46%) SD-WAN
9 21 (0.42%) SAN
10 18 (0.36%) BGP
10 18 (0.36%) IPsec
11 16 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
12 15 (0.30%) MPLS
13 12 (0.24%) Internet
13 12 (0.24%) LAN
13 12 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
15 10 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.35%) Power BI
2 254 (5.09%) PostgreSQL
3 245 (4.91%) SQL Server
4 185 (3.71%) NoSQL
5 169 (3.39%) Data Lake
6 148 (2.97%) Relational Database
7 135 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
8 117 (2.34%) Azure SQL Database
9 115 (2.30%) MongoDB
10 105 (2.10%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (1.98%) DynamoDB
12 92 (1.84%) Metadata
13 88 (1.76%) Delta Lake
14 77 (1.54%) Big Data
15 72 (1.44%) Oracle Database
16 70 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
17 61 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
18 55 (1.10%) Tableau
19 53 (1.06%) MySQL
20 50 (1.00%) Redis
Development Applications
1 721 (14.45%) Jenkins
2 632 (12.66%) JIRA
3 631 (12.64%) Git
4 494 (9.90%) GitLab
5 110 (2.20%) Selenium
6 96 (1.92%) Postman
7 93 (1.86%) JUnit
8 81 (1.62%) SonarQube
9 78 (1.56%) Bitbucket
10 58 (1.16%) Cucumber
11 57 (1.14%) Maven
12 53 (1.06%) Artifactory
13 52 (1.04%) Cypress.io
13 52 (1.04%) REST Assured
14 49 (0.98%) JMeter
15 38 (0.76%) Mockito
15 38 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
16 37 (0.74%) Gatling
17 33 (0.66%) TestRail
18 31 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,309 (26.23%) Social Skills
2 908 (18.19%) Finance
3 642 (12.86%) Public Sector
4 405 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
5 334 (6.69%) Banking
6 157 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 71 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 67 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
9 62 (1.24%) Retail
10 55 (1.10%) Legal
10 55 (1.10%) Marketing
11 52 (1.04%) Financial Institution
12 48 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 46 (0.92%) Front Office
14 44 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
15 42 (0.84%) Investment Banking
16 39 (0.78%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.66%) Military
18 25 (0.50%) Law
19 24 (0.48%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 989 (19.82%) DevOps Engineer
2 762 (15.27%) Developer
3 690 (13.82%) Senior
4 564 (11.30%) Architect
5 417 (8.36%) Lead
6 338 (6.77%) Azure Engineer
7 296 (5.93%) Data Engineer
8 284 (5.69%) Analyst
9 247 (4.95%) AWS Engineer
10 194 (3.89%) AWS DevOps
11 180 (3.61%) Platform Engineer
12 177 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
13 175 (3.51%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 170 (3.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 169 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
16 152 (3.05%) Senior DevOps
17 149 (2.99%) Software Engineer
18 143 (2.87%) Business Analyst
19 142 (2.85%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 135 (2.70%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (9.40%) REST
2 452 (9.06%) .NET
3 298 (5.97%) Node.js
3 298 (5.97%) React
4 278 (5.57%) Spring
5 276 (5.53%) Kafka
6 261 (5.23%) Spring Boot
7 260 (5.21%) RESTful
8 182 (3.65%) AngularJS
9 154 (3.09%) OAuth
9 154 (3.09%) Playwright
10 148 (2.97%) JSON
11 144 (2.89%) PySpark
12 137 (2.74%) YAML
13 122 (2.44%) HTML
14 114 (2.28%) SOAP
15 111 (2.22%) Middleware
16 104 (2.08%) CSS
17 102 (2.04%) .NET Core
18 100 (2.00%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 769 (15.41%) Cloud Native
2 318 (6.37%) Product Ownership
3 185 (3.71%) Distributed Systems
4 129 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 113 (2.26%) Public Cloud
6 103 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
7 101 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
8 91 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
9 74 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.24%) Virtual Team
11 58 (1.16%) Management Information System
12 52 (1.04%) Data Centre
13 51 (1.02%) Private Cloud
14 49 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
15 47 (0.94%) NHS
16 41 (0.82%) AI Agents
16 41 (0.82%) Data Structures
17 40 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
18 39 (0.78%) Low-Code
19 38 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 449 (9.00%) Linux
2 250 (5.01%) Windows
3 87 (1.74%) Unix
4 79 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 45 (0.90%) Windows Server
6 43 (0.86%) VMS
7 23 (0.46%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.24%) Android
8 12 (0.24%) CentOS
9 11 (0.22%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.12%) Solaris
14 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.080%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.060%) Debian
16 3 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,810 (56.30%) CI/CD
2 1,886 (37.79%) Agile
3 1,254 (25.13%) Infrastructure as Code
4 838 (16.79%) Containerisation
5 820 (16.43%) Problem-Solving
6 736 (14.75%) Microservices
7 704 (14.11%) Test Automation
8 663 (13.28%) Continuous Improvement
9 609 (12.20%) Migration
10 605 (12.12%) Analytics
11 566 (11.34%) Observability
12 547 (10.96%) Scrum
13 518 (10.38%) AI
14 516 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
15 464 (9.30%) Software Engineering
16 461 (9.24%) Data Modelling
17 418 (8.38%) Platform Engineering
18 400 (8.01%) Mentoring
19 383 (7.67%) Data Pipeline
20 378 (7.57%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,403 (28.11%) Python
2 1,026 (20.56%) SQL
3 643 (12.88%) Java
4 515 (10.32%) C#
5 408 (8.17%) JavaScript
6 347 (6.95%) PowerShell
7 335 (6.71%) Bash
8 287 (5.75%) TypeScript
9 172 (3.45%) Bicep
10 111 (2.22%) Go
11 86 (1.72%) PL/SQL
12 72 (1.44%) Scala
13 63 (1.26%) Shell Script
14 44 (0.88%) Groovy
14 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.78%) Apex Code
15 39 (0.78%) C++
16 34 (0.68%) Ruby
17 29 (0.58%) Perl
18 22 (0.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,583 (31.72%) Security Cleared
2 1,319 (26.43%) SC Cleared
3 341 (6.83%) Degree
4 209 (4.19%) Azure Certification
5 159 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 151 (3.03%) DV Cleared
8 144 (2.89%) AWS Certification
9 78 (1.56%) CISSP
10 58 (1.16%) Master's Degree
11 57 (1.14%) CISM
12 56 (1.12%) ISTQB
13 55 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
14 51 (1.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 48 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 43 (0.86%) PMP
17 37 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
18 31 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 25 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
20 24 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (8.88%) QA
2 229 (4.59%) Data Quality
3 184 (3.69%) GDPR
4 139 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 124 (2.48%) Accessibility
5 124 (2.48%) NIST
6 66 (1.32%) NCSC
7 44 (0.88%) WCAG
8 42 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 37 (0.74%) PMO
10 32 (0.64%) SLA
11 30 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 17 (0.34%) GRC
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 13 (0.26%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.24%) PSD2
17 10 (0.20%) HL7
17 10 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,014 (20.32%) Docker
2 175 (3.51%) Active Directory
3 74 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (0.70%) vSphere
6 30 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 13 (0.26%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) Postfix
11 11 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) HDFS
12 8 (0.16%) Lustre
12 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.12%) Ceph
13 6 (0.12%) GPFS
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.10%) Corosync
14 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,423 (28.51%) Terraform
2 1,317 (26.39%) Kubernetes
3 481 (9.64%) Ansible
4 328 (6.57%) Grafana
5 272 (5.45%) Prometheus
6 101 (2.02%) Argo
7 73 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (1.38%) Puppet
9 63 (1.26%) Istio
10 30 (0.60%) Packer
11 27 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 25 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
12 25 (0.50%) vCenter Server
13 23 (0.46%) Kibana
14 21 (0.42%) HP ALM
14 21 (0.42%) Rancher
15 19 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 18 (0.36%) Consul
17 16 (0.32%) FortiGate
18 14 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 887 (17.77%) Microsoft
2 318 (6.37%) Oracle
3 284 (5.69%) Databricks
4 228 (4.57%) Google
5 194 (3.89%) Splunk
6 178 (3.57%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.89%) Salesforce
8 139 (2.79%) Red Hat
9 126 (2.52%) VMware
10 112 (2.24%) SAP
11 86 (1.72%) Dynatrace
12 81 (1.62%) OpenAI
13 62 (1.24%) Atlassian
14 57 (1.14%) CyberArk
15 48 (0.96%) IBM
16 45 (0.90%) Cisco
17 36 (0.72%) Foundry
18 34 (0.68%) Informatica
18 34 (0.68%) Talend
19 33 (0.66%) AppDynamics