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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 15 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 4,929 3,135 3,967
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.01% 10.79% 8.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.87% 11.92% 10.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,443 2,304 2,780
10th Percentile £381 £393 £400
25th Percentile £431 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% - -6.38%
75th Percentile £602 £650 £650
90th Percentile £710 £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 94 24 91
10th Percentile £39.53 £29.55 £55.00
25th Percentile £45.46 £55.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £63.73 £71.61 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.01% +10.17% -0.76%
75th Percentile £75.00 £81.30 £69.00
90th Percentile £92.50 £87.50 £85.65
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 38,313 26,307 38,195
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.58% 90.51% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,289 17,086 24,815
10th Percentile £313 £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 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,251 967 2,341
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.24 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.85 £31.08 £31.65
% change year-on-year +12.13% -1.80% -12.39%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 4,231 £525 -4.55% 1,414
UK excluding London +8 2,183 £500 -2.44% 1,103
London -1 2,139 £550 -4.35% 512
Work from Home -3 1,354 £525 -1.59% 782
North of England +6 755 £500 -4.76% 306
South East -3 442 £525 -4.55% 307
Midlands +9 424 £494 -0.75% 142
Yorkshire +1 403 £500 -4.76% 86
West Midlands +8 331 £500 - 98
North West +4 297 £490 -6.67% 159
South West +13 283 £523 -9.13% 165
Scotland +4 170 £450 -0.11% 52
East of England +20 116 £550 +10.00% 92
East Midlands +5 90 £450 -5.26% 44
North East +5 60 £475 -9.52% 63
Wales +11 43 £425 +89.47% 43
Northern Ireland -5 10 £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
1 303 (6.15%) Confluence
2 119 (2.41%) Apache Spark
3 102 (2.07%) SharePoint
4 98 (1.99%) SAS
5 92 (1.87%) Apache
6 72 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.71%) CMS
8 33 (0.67%) nginx
9 32 (0.65%) OpenStack
10 28 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
11 24 (0.49%) 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 9 (0.18%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.16%) Camunda
16 7 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 7 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 88 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 53 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
5 23 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.12%) Weka
8 5 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.041%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.041%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.041%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Maya
Business Applications
1 73 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.30%) 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 6 (0.12%) Endur
5 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
6 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.081%) SAP BPC
7 4 (0.081%) SAP CO
7 4 (0.081%) SAP FI
7 4 (0.081%) SAP FI/CO
7 4 (0.081%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 3 (0.061%) Findur
8 3 (0.061%) Magento
8 3 (0.061%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 2,650 (53.76%) Azure
2 1,704 (34.57%) AWS
3 1,468 (29.78%) Azure DevOps
4 917 (18.60%) GitHub
5 681 (13.82%) GCP
6 565 (11.46%) Serverless
7 508 (10.31%) GitHub Actions
8 413 (8.38%) Power Platform
9 298 (6.05%) AWS CloudFormation
10 279 (5.66%) AWS Lambda
11 272 (5.52%) Amazon S3
12 236 (4.79%) Azure Data Factory
13 224 (4.54%) Entra ID
14 223 (4.52%) Azure AKS
15 206 (4.18%) Amazon EKS
16 198 (4.02%) OpenShift
17 182 (3.69%) Azure Monitor
18 169 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
19 161 (3.27%) PaaS
20 157 (3.19%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 218 (4.42%) Firewall
2 118 (2.39%) DNS
3 102 (2.07%) Network Security
4 90 (1.83%) VPN
5 42 (0.85%) TCP/IP
6 28 (0.57%) WAN
7 27 (0.55%) HTTP
7 27 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 26 (0.53%) SSL
9 20 (0.41%) DHCP
10 19 (0.39%) SAN
11 18 (0.37%) BGP
12 17 (0.34%) IPsec
13 16 (0.32%) MPLS
14 14 (0.28%) Reverse Proxy
15 12 (0.24%) 5G
16 11 (0.22%) Internet
16 11 (0.22%) OpenVPN
17 10 (0.20%) HTTPS
17 10 (0.20%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (5.62%) PostgreSQL
2 252 (5.11%) Power BI
3 230 (4.67%) SQL Server
4 196 (3.98%) NoSQL
5 170 (3.45%) Data Lake
6 147 (2.98%) Relational Database
7 127 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
8 120 (2.43%) Amazon RDS
9 119 (2.41%) Azure SQL Database
10 111 (2.25%) MongoDB
11 93 (1.89%) DynamoDB
12 86 (1.74%) Metadata
13 80 (1.62%) Delta Lake
14 76 (1.54%) Oracle Database
15 72 (1.46%) Elasticsearch
16 66 (1.34%) Big Data
17 58 (1.18%) MySQL
18 57 (1.16%) Tableau
19 55 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
20 51 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 790 (16.03%) Jenkins
2 649 (13.17%) Git
3 643 (13.05%) JIRA
4 550 (11.16%) GitLab
5 138 (2.80%) Selenium
6 108 (2.19%) JUnit
7 95 (1.93%) Postman
8 80 (1.62%) Bitbucket
9 73 (1.48%) SonarQube
10 62 (1.26%) Cucumber
11 53 (1.08%) Artifactory
11 53 (1.08%) Cypress.io
11 53 (1.08%) JMeter
12 52 (1.05%) Maven
12 52 (1.05%) REST Assured
13 42 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
14 38 (0.77%) Mockito
15 37 (0.75%) Visual Studio
16 34 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
17 33 (0.67%) Liquibase
General
1 1,338 (27.15%) Social Skills
2 909 (18.44%) Finance
3 647 (13.13%) Public Sector
4 403 (8.18%) Analytical Skills
5 361 (7.32%) Banking
6 169 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
8 65 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 61 (1.24%) Financial Institution
10 60 (1.22%) Retail
11 59 (1.20%) Marketing
12 52 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
13 51 (1.03%) Legal
14 50 (1.01%) Front Office
15 46 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 45 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
17 41 (0.83%) Telecoms
18 29 (0.59%) Military
19 26 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
20 24 (0.49%) Law
Job Titles
1 906 (18.38%) DevOps Engineer
2 786 (15.95%) Developer
3 687 (13.94%) Senior
4 546 (11.08%) Architect
5 416 (8.44%) Lead
6 316 (6.41%) Azure Engineer
7 293 (5.94%) Data Engineer
8 268 (5.44%) Analyst
9 248 (5.03%) AWS Engineer
10 190 (3.85%) AWS DevOps
11 183 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 181 (3.67%) Platform Engineer
13 165 (3.35%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 157 (3.19%) Software Engineer
15 155 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
16 149 (3.02%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 149 (3.02%) Senior Developer
17 142 (2.88%) Senior DevOps
18 133 (2.70%) Business Analyst
18 133 (2.70%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 525 (10.65%) REST
2 430 (8.72%) .NET
3 312 (6.33%) Node.js
3 312 (6.33%) React
4 281 (5.70%) Kafka
5 273 (5.54%) RESTful
6 271 (5.50%) Spring
7 254 (5.15%) Spring Boot
8 180 (3.65%) AngularJS
9 154 (3.12%) JSON
10 153 (3.10%) OAuth
11 143 (2.90%) PySpark
11 143 (2.90%) YAML
12 140 (2.84%) Playwright
13 126 (2.56%) HTML
14 122 (2.48%) Elastic Stack
15 121 (2.45%) SOAP
16 116 (2.35%) Middleware
17 105 (2.13%) CSS
18 99 (2.01%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 732 (14.85%) Cloud Native
2 302 (6.13%) Product Ownership
3 192 (3.90%) Distributed Systems
4 132 (2.68%) Public Cloud
5 126 (2.56%) Onboarding
6 100 (2.03%) Hybrid Cloud
6 100 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
7 88 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
8 69 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
9 62 (1.26%) Virtual Team
10 57 (1.16%) Management Information System
11 51 (1.03%) Data Centre
12 46 (0.93%) NHS
12 46 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (0.89%) Private Cloud
14 43 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 42 (0.85%) AI Agents
16 40 (0.81%) Security Posture
17 37 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
18 36 (0.73%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 476 (9.66%) Linux
2 255 (5.17%) Windows
3 89 (1.81%) Unix
4 70 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 47 (0.95%) VMS
6 45 (0.91%) Windows Server
7 24 (0.49%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.28%) CentOS
9 10 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.14%) Android
10 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.12%) Apple iOS
12 5 (0.10%) Solaris
12 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.081%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.061%) Debian
14 3 (0.061%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.061%) Rocky
14 3 (0.061%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.061%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,804 (56.89%) CI/CD
2 1,896 (38.47%) Agile
3 1,260 (25.56%) Infrastructure as Code
4 876 (17.77%) Containerisation
5 866 (17.57%) Problem-Solving
6 745 (15.11%) Microservices
7 744 (15.09%) Test Automation
8 645 (13.09%) Continuous Improvement
9 619 (12.56%) Analytics
10 582 (11.81%) Migration
11 544 (11.04%) Observability
12 543 (11.02%) Scrum
13 527 (10.69%) Stakeholder Management
14 522 (10.59%) AI
15 452 (9.17%) Data Modelling
16 443 (8.99%) Software Engineering
17 396 (8.03%) Mentoring
18 389 (7.89%) Data Pipeline
19 379 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
20 353 (7.16%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,479 (30.01%) Python
2 1,026 (20.82%) SQL
3 640 (12.98%) Java
4 513 (10.41%) C#
5 433 (8.78%) JavaScript
6 377 (7.65%) PowerShell
7 352 (7.14%) Bash
8 304 (6.17%) TypeScript
9 164 (3.33%) Bicep
10 131 (2.66%) Go
11 83 (1.68%) PL/SQL
12 69 (1.40%) Scala
13 60 (1.22%) Shell Script
14 47 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 44 (0.89%) Groovy
16 42 (0.85%) C++
17 41 (0.83%) Ruby
18 35 (0.71%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.57%) Perl
20 24 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,545 (31.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,270 (25.77%) SC Cleared
3 363 (7.36%) Degree
4 204 (4.14%) Azure Certification
5 178 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 158 (3.21%) DV Cleared
7 144 (2.92%) AWS Certification
8 140 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
9 87 (1.77%) CISSP
10 75 (1.52%) Master's Degree
11 63 (1.28%) CISM
11 63 (1.28%) ISTQB
12 56 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 56 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
13 47 (0.95%) PMI Certification
14 39 (0.79%) PMP
15 36 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
16 31 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 26 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 24 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 436 (8.85%) QA
2 223 (4.52%) Data Quality
3 189 (3.83%) GDPR
4 164 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 130 (2.64%) NIST
6 121 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 76 (1.54%) NCSC
8 42 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 42 (0.85%) WCAG
9 39 (0.79%) PMO
10 31 (0.63%) SLA
11 30 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.45%) HIPAA
13 16 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 15 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 14 (0.28%) SOC 2
16 13 (0.26%) GRC
16 13 (0.26%) PSD2
17 11 (0.22%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,077 (21.85%) Docker
2 183 (3.71%) Active Directory
3 77 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
5 46 (0.93%) vSphere
6 35 (0.71%) VMware NSX
7 16 (0.32%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.24%) Squid
10 10 (0.20%) Postfix
11 9 (0.18%) Lustre
11 9 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 8 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.14%) GPFS
13 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.12%) Ceph
14 6 (0.12%) HDFS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.10%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,433 (29.07%) Terraform
2 1,343 (27.25%) Kubernetes
3 494 (10.02%) Ansible
4 342 (6.94%) Grafana
5 280 (5.68%) Prometheus
6 102 (2.07%) Argo
7 72 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (1.42%) Puppet
9 62 (1.26%) Istio
10 32 (0.65%) Progress Chef
11 30 (0.61%) Packer
12 29 (0.59%) vCenter Server
13 24 (0.49%) Kibana
14 21 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.43%) HP ALM
15 19 (0.39%) Rancher
16 18 (0.37%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
16 18 (0.37%) Podman
17 16 (0.32%) Consul
Vendors
1 850 (17.24%) Microsoft
2 333 (6.76%) Oracle
3 292 (5.92%) Databricks
4 254 (5.15%) Google
5 200 (4.06%) Splunk
6 164 (3.33%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.92%) Red Hat
8 136 (2.76%) Salesforce
9 130 (2.64%) VMware
10 110 (2.23%) SAP
11 83 (1.68%) OpenAI
12 74 (1.50%) Dynatrace
13 69 (1.40%) Atlassian
14 62 (1.26%) CyberArk
15 48 (0.97%) Cisco
15 48 (0.97%) IBM
16 45 (0.91%) Talend
17 38 (0.77%) Denodo
18 34 (0.69%) Foundry
18 34 (0.69%) Informatica