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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,600 3,643 3,768
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.26% 11.22% 9.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.17% 12.40% 11.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,902 2,536 2,522
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 £622 £619 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 23 68
10th Percentile £38.25 £44.25 £56.75
25th Percentile £56.25 £56.50 £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 £88.13 £74.11
90th Percentile £92.50 £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 46,027 29,389 32,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.49% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,906 18,237 19,938
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 £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,152 1,808 1,420
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -1.10%
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.61% -48.10% +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 22 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 22 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 22 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 4,754 £525 - 3,905
London 0 2,518 £550 - 1,938
UK excluding London -4 2,387 £500 - 2,199
Work from Home -1 1,587 £525 +1.94% 1,843
North of England -2 768 £500 +5.26% 670
South East -11 447 £537 +7.40% 539
Midlands -5 430 £488 -2.74% 267
Yorkshire -2 383 £500 +2.56% 184
West Midlands -7 342 £496 -5.33% 158
South West +4 320 £550 +4.76% 267
North West -6 293 £525 +14.69% 381
Scotland -2 226 £475 -2.16% 163
East of England +8 155 £504 -4.00% 180
North East +12 107 £450 -18.18% 108
East Midlands -2 85 £465 +3.33% 109
Wales -6 48 £425 +13.33% 63
Northern Ireland +22 22 £450 +2.27% 61
Channel Islands - 5 £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
1 333 (5.95%) Confluence
2 160 (2.86%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
4 129 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 113 (2.02%) Apache
6 61 (1.09%) SAS
7 44 (0.79%) CMS
8 42 (0.75%) Jupyter
9 28 (0.50%) nginx
10 25 (0.45%) IIS
11 20 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.27%) Camunda
13 13 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
14 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 12 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
17 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 67 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
3 49 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 34 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.13%) Windchill
8 6 (0.11%) Trello
9 5 (0.089%) Notion
10 2 (0.036%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.036%) Mingle
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Gliffy
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 82 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 41 (0.73%) 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 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.13%) 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
12 3 (0.054%) Endur
12 3 (0.054%) Maximo
12 3 (0.054%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.054%) SAP ERP
12 3 (0.054%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3,036 (54.21%) Azure
2 2,021 (36.09%) AWS
3 1,738 (31.04%) Azure DevOps
4 963 (17.20%) GitHub
5 739 (13.20%) GCP
6 612 (10.93%) GitHub Actions
7 488 (8.71%) Power Platform
8 462 (8.25%) Serverless
9 308 (5.50%) Amazon S3
10 290 (5.18%) AWS Lambda
11 260 (4.64%) Entra ID
12 251 (4.48%) Amazon EKS
13 248 (4.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 236 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
15 214 (3.82%) Azure AKS
16 208 (3.71%) Azure Monitor
17 199 (3.55%) Amazon EC2
18 190 (3.39%) Azure Data Factory
19 187 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
20 165 (2.95%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 243 (4.34%) Firewall
2 173 (3.09%) DNS
3 120 (2.14%) VPN
4 113 (2.02%) Network Security
5 72 (1.29%) TCP/IP
6 56 (1.00%) SSL
7 52 (0.93%) DHCP
8 47 (0.84%) WAN
9 37 (0.66%) HTTP
10 34 (0.61%) BGP
11 30 (0.54%) SD-WAN
12 28 (0.50%) Internet
13 27 (0.48%) SSH
14 25 (0.45%) OSPF
15 24 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
16 21 (0.38%) VLAN
17 19 (0.34%) LAN
18 18 (0.32%) SAN
19 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (5.70%) Power BI
2 299 (5.34%) PostgreSQL
3 289 (5.16%) SQL Server
4 212 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
5 185 (3.30%) MongoDB
6 182 (3.25%) NoSQL
7 177 (3.16%) Data Lake
8 172 (3.07%) Relational Database
9 149 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
10 130 (2.32%) Metadata
11 96 (1.71%) Azure SQL Database
11 96 (1.71%) DynamoDB
12 89 (1.59%) MySQL
12 89 (1.59%) Oracle Database
13 88 (1.57%) Delta Lake
14 82 (1.46%) Redis
15 67 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (1.16%) Big Data
17 62 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 58 (1.04%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 842 (15.04%) Git
2 798 (14.25%) Jenkins
3 660 (11.79%) JIRA
4 644 (11.50%) GitLab
5 145 (2.59%) Selenium
6 103 (1.84%) SonarQube
7 98 (1.75%) JUnit
8 97 (1.73%) Maven
8 97 (1.73%) Postman
9 72 (1.29%) Cucumber
10 70 (1.25%) Bitbucket
10 70 (1.25%) Cypress.io
10 70 (1.25%) REST Assured
11 67 (1.20%) Gradle
12 64 (1.14%) JMeter
13 52 (0.93%) Claude Code
14 49 (0.88%) Mockito
15 43 (0.77%) Gatling
16 41 (0.73%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,452 (25.93%) Social Skills
2 986 (17.61%) Finance
3 799 (14.27%) Public Sector
4 523 (9.34%) Analytical Skills
5 388 (6.93%) Banking
6 172 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 109 (1.95%) Retail
8 84 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.11%) Legal
11 61 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 56 (1.00%) Aerospace
13 55 (0.98%) Marketing
13 55 (0.98%) Military
14 51 (0.91%) Telecoms
15 49 (0.88%) Investment Banking
16 46 (0.82%) Law
17 45 (0.80%) Manufacturing
18 40 (0.71%) Front Office
19 38 (0.68%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,137 (20.30%) DevOps Engineer
2 914 (16.32%) Developer
3 852 (15.21%) Senior
4 642 (11.46%) Architect
5 530 (9.46%) Lead
6 350 (6.25%) Azure Engineer
7 307 (5.48%) Data Engineer
8 265 (4.73%) Analyst
9 260 (4.64%) AWS Engineer
10 227 (4.05%) Platform Engineer
11 209 (3.73%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 208 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
13 200 (3.57%) Senior DevOps
14 198 (3.54%) Java Developer
15 185 (3.30%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 183 (3.27%) AWS DevOps
17 179 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
18 172 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 154 (2.75%) Senior Developer
20 142 (2.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,673 (29.88%) Terraform
2 624 (11.14%) REST
3 469 (8.38%) .NET
4 387 (6.91%) Kafka
5 357 (6.38%) RESTful
6 310 (5.54%) Spring
7 305 (5.45%) Spring Boot
8 288 (5.14%) React
9 203 (3.63%) Node.js
10 188 (3.36%) OAuth
11 186 (3.32%) JSON
12 158 (2.82%) Playwright
13 156 (2.79%) PySpark
14 143 (2.55%) HTML
15 134 (2.39%) OAuth2
16 132 (2.36%) SOAP
17 131 (2.34%) CSS
18 125 (2.23%) .NET Framework
19 124 (2.21%) Middleware
20 121 (2.16%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,027 (18.34%) Cloud Native
2 423 (7.55%) Product Ownership
3 265 (4.73%) Distributed Systems
4 205 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 201 (3.59%) Onboarding
6 148 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
7 144 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
8 105 (1.88%) AI Agents
9 96 (1.71%) Management Information System
10 84 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
12 77 (1.38%) Public Cloud
13 75 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 74 (1.32%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.30%) Replication
16 72 (1.29%) Data Centre
17 62 (1.11%) Virtual Team
18 59 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
19 58 (1.04%) PKI
20 53 (0.95%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 554 (9.89%) Linux
2 316 (5.64%) Windows
3 118 (2.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 109 (1.95%) Unix
5 96 (1.71%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.61%) VMS
8 31 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.38%) Android
10 14 (0.25%) CentOS
11 12 (0.21%) zOS
12 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) AIX
16 5 (0.089%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.071%) Alpine Linux
17 4 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,421 (61.09%) CI/CD
2 2,285 (40.80%) Agile
3 1,663 (29.70%) Infrastructure as Code
4 956 (17.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 944 (16.86%) Containerisation
6 935 (16.70%) Stakeholder Management
7 896 (16.00%) Test Automation
8 883 (15.77%) Problem-Solving
9 862 (15.39%) AI
10 833 (14.88%) Microservices
11 781 (13.95%) Observability
12 763 (13.63%) Platform Engineering
13 737 (13.16%) Software Engineering
14 684 (12.21%) Scrum
15 676 (12.07%) Migration
16 616 (11.00%) Technical Leadership
17 584 (10.43%) Analytics
18 528 (9.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 487 (8.70%) Data Modelling
20 483 (8.63%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,612 (28.79%) Python
2 982 (17.54%) SQL
3 826 (14.75%) Java
4 493 (8.80%) C#
5 486 (8.68%) Bash
5 486 (8.68%) PowerShell
6 463 (8.27%) JavaScript
7 312 (5.57%) TypeScript
8 254 (4.54%) Bicep
9 121 (2.16%) Go
10 79 (1.41%) Shell Script
11 66 (1.18%) Scala
11 66 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 64 (1.14%) Apex Code
12 64 (1.14%) Groovy
13 61 (1.09%) PL/SQL
14 39 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 35 (0.63%) Perl
16 31 (0.55%) C++
17 26 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,804 (32.21%) Security Cleared
2 1,514 (27.04%) SC Cleared
3 360 (6.43%) Degree
4 248 (4.43%) Azure Certification
5 240 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 233 (4.16%) DV Cleared
7 191 (3.41%) AWS Certification
8 145 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
10 77 (1.38%) CISSP
11 60 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 51 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 46 (0.82%) PMP
15 43 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 42 (0.75%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.55%) CISM
18 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 23 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 543 (9.70%) QA
2 288 (5.14%) Data Quality
3 210 (3.75%) Accessibility
4 128 (2.29%) GDPR
5 91 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.48%) WCAG
7 76 (1.36%) NIST
8 56 (1.00%) NCSC
9 47 (0.84%) PMO
10 37 (0.66%) SLA
11 29 (0.52%) GRC
11 29 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 21 (0.38%) ISO 20022
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 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,155 (20.63%) Docker
2 165 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (0.54%) vSphere
6 26 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (0.41%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.29%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.21%) Squid
11 11 (0.20%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) Postfix
14 7 (0.13%) zsh
15 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 6 (0.11%) Corosync
15 6 (0.11%) KVM
15 6 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,537 (27.45%) Kubernetes
2 531 (9.48%) Ansible
3 368 (6.57%) Grafana
4 314 (5.61%) Prometheus
5 75 (1.34%) Argo
6 57 (1.02%) Puppet
7 49 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 46 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
10 36 (0.64%) Packer
11 31 (0.55%) Kibana
12 28 (0.50%) Istio
13 21 (0.38%) Kustomize
14 20 (0.36%) Kubeflow
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.30%) SCCM
17 16 (0.29%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,101 (19.66%) Microsoft
2 307 (5.48%) Oracle
3 306 (5.46%) Databricks
4 288 (5.14%) Google
5 213 (3.80%) ServiceNow
6 188 (3.36%) Splunk
7 179 (3.20%) Salesforce
8 143 (2.55%) Dynatrace
9 130 (2.32%) VMware
10 113 (2.02%) SAP
11 100 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.30%) OpenAI
13 72 (1.29%) IBM
14 64 (1.14%) MuleSoft
15 57 (1.02%) Foundry
16 49 (0.88%) Cisco
16 49 (0.88%) Informatica
17 43 (0.77%) AppDynamics
18 42 (0.75%) Okta
19 40 (0.71%) Atlassian