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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 13 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,752 3,818 3,747
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.40% 11.50% 9.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.27% 12.71% 11.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,018 2,655 2,507
10th Percentile £381 £363 £375
25th Percentile £433 £425 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £623 £618 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 24 59
10th Percentile £37.25 £45.13 £46.18
25th Percentile £56.25 £55.81 £65.00
Median hourly rate £69.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £90.00 £73.50
90th Percentile £93.75 £95.00 £79.15
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 46,870 30,047 32,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 90.49% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,156 18,700 19,515
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,444 1,888 1,247
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.94 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.18 £65.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 0 4,883 £525 - 4,050
London -1 2,614 £550 - 2,041
UK excluding London -3 2,401 £500 - 2,180
Work from Home -2 1,644 £525 +0.38% 2,147
North of England -4 807 £500 +4.17% 659
South East -10 452 £544 +8.75% 508
Midlands -7 422 £482 -6.41% 245
Yorkshire -3 387 £500 - 223
West Midlands -7 343 £490 -6.67% 144
South West +5 326 £550 - 231
North West -5 323 £510 +13.33% 331
Scotland -9 221 £475 -5.00% 168
East of England +1 144 £505 -6.05% 211
North East +11 111 £450 -18.18% 110
East Midlands -8 77 £436 +5.70% 101
Wales -10 41 £375 -8.54% 83
Northern Ireland +22 23 £600 - 86
Channel Islands - 2 £500 -

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
1 347 (6.03%) Confluence
2 160 (2.78%) SharePoint
3 137 (2.38%) Apache Spark
4 128 (2.23%) Apache
5 124 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
6 56 (0.97%) SAS
7 46 (0.80%) Jupyter
8 42 (0.73%) CMS
9 34 (0.59%) nginx
10 31 (0.54%) IIS
11 20 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.28%) Camunda
13 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
13 12 (0.21%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.21%) WebLogic
13 12 (0.21%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 11 (0.19%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.16%) Appian
15 9 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 74 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
2 56 (0.97%) MS Visio
3 43 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
5 14 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 9 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.14%) Windchill
8 7 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.087%) Notion
9 5 (0.087%) Trello
10 3 (0.052%) Gliffy
10 3 (0.052%) Mingle
11 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.017%) EngageOne
12 1 (0.017%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 1 (0.017%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 81 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 45 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.21%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.16%) Magento
8 7 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.10%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.087%) Dynamics AX
10 5 (0.087%) OpenText MBPM
10 5 (0.087%) Oracle BPM
10 5 (0.087%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.087%) Temenos T24
11 4 (0.070%) Maximo
11 4 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
11 4 (0.070%) Oracle Payroll
11 4 (0.070%) Workday HCM
12 3 (0.052%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 3,136 (54.52%) Azure
2 2,057 (35.76%) AWS
3 1,799 (31.28%) Azure DevOps
4 1,036 (18.01%) GitHub
5 790 (13.73%) GCP
6 653 (11.35%) GitHub Actions
7 507 (8.81%) Power Platform
8 492 (8.55%) Serverless
9 315 (5.48%) Amazon S3
10 293 (5.09%) AWS Lambda
11 279 (4.85%) Entra ID
12 273 (4.75%) Amazon EKS
13 265 (4.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 242 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
15 229 (3.98%) Azure AKS
15 229 (3.98%) Azure Monitor
16 206 (3.58%) Amazon EC2
17 204 (3.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 202 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
19 191 (3.32%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 242 (4.21%) Firewall
2 192 (3.34%) DNS
3 125 (2.17%) Network Security
4 123 (2.14%) VPN
5 83 (1.44%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.97%) DHCP
7 55 (0.96%) SSL
8 46 (0.80%) WAN
9 39 (0.68%) BGP
9 39 (0.68%) HTTP
10 32 (0.56%) Internet
11 30 (0.52%) SSH
12 28 (0.49%) OSPF
12 28 (0.49%) SD-WAN
13 21 (0.37%) LAN
13 21 (0.37%) VLAN
14 19 (0.33%) BIG-IP
14 19 (0.33%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 18 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
16 16 (0.28%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (5.55%) Power BI
2 314 (5.46%) PostgreSQL
3 308 (5.35%) SQL Server
4 206 (3.58%) Data Warehouse
5 196 (3.41%) MongoDB
6 182 (3.16%) Data Lake
7 181 (3.15%) NoSQL
8 168 (2.92%) Relational Database
9 160 (2.78%) Amazon RDS
10 126 (2.19%) Metadata
11 111 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
12 90 (1.56%) DynamoDB
12 90 (1.56%) MySQL
12 90 (1.56%) Oracle Database
13 87 (1.51%) Delta Lake
14 86 (1.50%) Redis
15 65 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 63 (1.10%) Big Data
17 61 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
18 59 (1.03%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 901 (15.66%) Git
2 857 (14.90%) Jenkins
3 680 (11.82%) GitLab
4 675 (11.74%) JIRA
5 155 (2.69%) Selenium
6 104 (1.81%) JUnit
7 99 (1.72%) Postman
8 98 (1.70%) Maven
9 89 (1.55%) SonarQube
10 86 (1.50%) Cucumber
11 78 (1.36%) REST Assured
12 77 (1.34%) Cypress.io
13 75 (1.30%) Bitbucket
14 69 (1.20%) Gradle
15 65 (1.13%) JMeter
16 59 (1.03%) Claude Code
17 51 (0.89%) Mockito
18 46 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
18 46 (0.80%) Visual Studio
19 39 (0.68%) Gatling
General
1 1,549 (26.93%) Social Skills
2 1,085 (18.86%) Finance
3 840 (14.60%) Public Sector
4 563 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 437 (7.60%) Banking
6 173 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 116 (2.02%) Retail
8 91 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
9 80 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.08%) Aerospace
10 62 (1.08%) Legal
11 60 (1.04%) Investment Banking
11 60 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
12 56 (0.97%) Marketing
12 56 (0.97%) Military
13 53 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 51 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 49 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 47 (0.82%) Local Government
17 46 (0.80%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,141 (19.84%) DevOps Engineer
2 953 (16.57%) Developer
3 875 (15.21%) Senior
4 649 (11.28%) Architect
5 560 (9.74%) Lead
6 358 (6.22%) Azure Engineer
7 326 (5.67%) Data Engineer
8 265 (4.61%) AWS Engineer
9 256 (4.45%) Analyst
10 238 (4.14%) Platform Engineer
11 210 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
12 201 (3.49%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 201 (3.49%) Senior DevOps
13 195 (3.39%) Java Developer
14 189 (3.29%) AWS DevOps
15 184 (3.20%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 177 (3.08%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 176 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
18 157 (2.73%) Senior Developer
19 147 (2.56%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,778 (30.91%) Terraform
2 722 (12.55%) REST
3 519 (9.02%) .NET
4 412 (7.16%) Kafka
5 375 (6.52%) RESTful
6 314 (5.46%) Spring
7 309 (5.37%) Spring Boot
8 307 (5.34%) React
9 211 (3.67%) OAuth
10 199 (3.46%) Node.js
11 190 (3.30%) JSON
12 163 (2.83%) Playwright
13 159 (2.76%) PySpark
14 147 (2.56%) HTML
15 143 (2.49%) OAuth2
16 137 (2.38%) .NET Framework
16 137 (2.38%) Middleware
17 136 (2.36%) SOAP
18 133 (2.31%) CSS
19 130 (2.26%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,091 (18.97%) Cloud Native
2 436 (7.58%) Product Ownership
3 286 (4.97%) Distributed Systems
4 244 (4.24%) Enterprise Software
5 226 (3.93%) Onboarding
6 162 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
7 151 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (2.07%) AI Agents
9 108 (1.88%) Management Information System
10 86 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
11 83 (1.44%) Public Cloud
12 79 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
12 79 (1.37%) Security Posture
13 77 (1.34%) Data Centre
14 76 (1.32%) Data Structures
15 72 (1.25%) Replication
16 70 (1.22%) PKI
17 66 (1.15%) Enterprise Cloud
18 56 (0.97%) Virtual Team
19 53 (0.92%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 597 (10.38%) Linux
2 341 (5.93%) Windows
3 125 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 118 (2.05%) Unix
5 106 (1.84%) Windows Server
6 39 (0.68%) Ubuntu
7 35 (0.61%) VMS
8 26 (0.45%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.31%) Android
9 18 (0.31%) CentOS
10 12 (0.21%) zOS
11 11 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
12 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
12 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
13 8 (0.14%) AIX
13 8 (0.14%) macOS
14 7 (0.12%) Solaris
15 5 (0.087%) Alpine Linux
16 4 (0.070%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.052%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,604 (62.66%) CI/CD
2 2,360 (41.03%) Agile
3 1,759 (30.58%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,031 (17.92%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,016 (17.66%) Continuous Improvement
6 981 (17.05%) Test Automation
7 979 (17.02%) Containerisation
8 947 (16.46%) AI
9 925 (16.08%) Problem-Solving
10 863 (15.00%) Microservices
11 836 (14.53%) Observability
12 821 (14.27%) Platform Engineering
13 792 (13.77%) Software Engineering
14 720 (12.52%) Migration
15 703 (12.22%) Scrum
16 647 (11.25%) Technical Leadership
17 584 (10.15%) Analytics
18 534 (9.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 521 (9.06%) Roadmaps
20 516 (8.97%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 1,712 (29.76%) Python
2 1,003 (17.44%) SQL
3 845 (14.69%) Java
4 541 (9.41%) Bash
4 541 (9.41%) C#
5 535 (9.30%) PowerShell
6 490 (8.52%) JavaScript
7 354 (6.15%) TypeScript
8 288 (5.01%) Bicep
9 134 (2.33%) Go
10 87 (1.51%) Shell Script
11 74 (1.29%) Scala
12 68 (1.18%) Groovy
12 68 (1.18%) T-SQL
13 60 (1.04%) Apex Code
14 58 (1.01%) PL/SQL
15 38 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 36 (0.63%) Perl
17 35 (0.61%) C++
18 34 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,842 (32.02%) Security Cleared
2 1,534 (26.67%) SC Cleared
3 379 (6.59%) Degree
4 266 (4.62%) Azure Certification
5 260 (4.52%) DV Cleared
6 255 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 222 (3.86%) AWS Certification
8 153 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 110 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
10 83 (1.44%) CISSP
11 68 (1.18%) ISTQB
12 60 (1.04%) PMP
13 57 (0.99%) PMI Certification
14 56 (0.97%) Cisco Certification
15 49 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 42 (0.73%) Master's Degree
17 33 (0.57%) CISM
18 28 (0.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 26 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 24 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 571 (9.93%) QA
2 292 (5.08%) Data Quality
3 223 (3.88%) Accessibility
4 132 (2.29%) GDPR
5 101 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.44%) WCAG
7 67 (1.16%) NIST
8 58 (1.01%) NCSC
9 48 (0.83%) PMO
10 36 (0.63%) SLA
11 35 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 26 (0.45%) GRC
13 23 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 18 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 16 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 16 (0.28%) SOC 2
16 15 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
16 15 (0.26%) SEPA
17 14 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
18 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,215 (21.12%) Docker
2 175 (3.04%) Active Directory
3 84 (1.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (0.56%) vSphere
6 24 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.24%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.19%) Squid
10 10 (0.17%) IAG
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.14%) zsh
12 7 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.10%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.10%) RACF
14 5 (0.087%) KVM
14 5 (0.087%) Postfix
15 4 (0.070%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,610 (27.99%) Kubernetes
2 553 (9.61%) Ansible
3 383 (6.66%) Grafana
4 321 (5.58%) Prometheus
5 74 (1.29%) Argo
6 55 (0.96%) Puppet
7 51 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
8 49 (0.85%) Progress Chef
9 43 (0.75%) Kibana
10 42 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 38 (0.66%) Packer
12 32 (0.56%) Istio
13 25 (0.43%) Kubeflow
14 23 (0.40%) Kustomize
15 21 (0.37%) SCCM
16 17 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 15 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
18 13 (0.23%) Control-M
18 13 (0.23%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,177 (20.46%) Microsoft
2 334 (5.81%) Google
3 330 (5.74%) Databricks
4 307 (5.34%) Oracle
5 196 (3.41%) ServiceNow
6 193 (3.36%) Splunk
7 168 (2.92%) Salesforce
8 159 (2.76%) Dynatrace
9 125 (2.17%) VMware
10 115 (2.00%) SAP
11 101 (1.76%) Red Hat
12 80 (1.39%) OpenAI
13 71 (1.23%) IBM
13 71 (1.23%) MuleSoft
14 64 (1.11%) Foundry
15 46 (0.80%) Informatica
16 44 (0.76%) Cisco
17 40 (0.70%) Atlassian
17 40 (0.70%) Okta
18 38 (0.66%) AppDynamics