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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 5,644 3,704 3,763
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.28% 11.24% 9.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.18% 12.41% 11.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,928 2,587 2,505
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 £623 £621 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 23 67
10th Percentile £38.25 £44.25 £56.50
25th Percentile £56.50 £56.50 £65.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £78.00 £88.13 £74.00
90th Percentile £91.60 £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 46,342 29,835 32,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.50% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,074 18,533 19,873
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
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 £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,192 1,836 1,405
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.32 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -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 24 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 24 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 24 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 4,793 £525 - 4,534
London 0 2,538 £550 - 2,368
UK excluding London -4 2,405 £500 - 2,427
Work from Home -3 1,606 £525 +1.35% 2,062
North of England -2 783 £500 +5.26% 715
South East -12 449 £535 +7.00% 568
Midlands -6 431 £488 -2.50% 301
Yorkshire -2 387 £500 +3.09% 216
West Midlands -8 345 £500 -3.94% 184
South West +5 322 £550 +4.76% 311
North West -2 302 £528 +16.45% 401
Scotland -2 226 £475 -4.62% 190
East of England +4 155 £505 -3.35% 218
North East +8 109 £450 -18.18% 102
East Midlands -6 83 £464 +3.06% 117
Wales -7 48 £425 +13.33% 72
Northern Ireland +21 22 £450 +2.27% 65
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
1 338 (5.99%) Confluence
2 161 (2.85%) SharePoint
3 131 (2.32%) Apache Airflow
4 130 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 114 (2.02%) Apache
6 61 (1.08%) SAS
7 45 (0.80%) CMS
8 42 (0.74%) Jupyter
9 28 (0.50%) nginx
10 26 (0.46%) IIS
11 20 (0.35%) 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 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.16%) Appian
17 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 66 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (0.90%) MS Visio
3 49 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
5 34 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 8 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.12%) Windchill
9 5 (0.089%) Notion
9 5 (0.089%) Trello
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) Gliffy
10 2 (0.035%) Mingle
11 1 (0.018%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Sketch
11 1 (0.018%) Weka
Business Applications
1 81 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 43 (0.76%) 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 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) 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 (0.053%) Endur
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Payroll
12 3 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.053%) SAP ERP
12 3 (0.053%) Temenos T24
12 3 (0.053%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 3,058 (54.18%) Azure
2 2,044 (36.22%) AWS
3 1,748 (30.97%) Azure DevOps
4 968 (17.15%) GitHub
5 748 (13.25%) GCP
6 615 (10.90%) GitHub Actions
7 493 (8.73%) Power Platform
8 465 (8.24%) Serverless
9 310 (5.49%) Amazon S3
10 292 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
11 263 (4.66%) Entra ID
12 255 (4.52%) Amazon EKS
13 251 (4.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 237 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
15 216 (3.83%) Azure AKS
16 209 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 197 (3.49%) Amazon EC2
18 193 (3.42%) Azure Data Factory
19 185 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
20 169 (2.99%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 244 (4.32%) Firewall
2 174 (3.08%) DNS
3 120 (2.13%) VPN
4 112 (1.98%) Network Security
5 72 (1.28%) TCP/IP
6 57 (1.01%) SSL
7 52 (0.92%) DHCP
8 48 (0.85%) WAN
9 37 (0.66%) HTTP
10 35 (0.62%) BGP
11 30 (0.53%) SD-WAN
12 28 (0.50%) Internet
12 28 (0.50%) SSH
13 26 (0.46%) OSPF
14 23 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
15 21 (0.37%) VLAN
16 19 (0.34%) LAN
17 18 (0.32%) SAN
18 17 (0.30%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (5.69%) Power BI
2 303 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
3 291 (5.16%) SQL Server
4 214 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
5 191 (3.38%) MongoDB
6 185 (3.28%) NoSQL
7 177 (3.14%) Data Lake
8 169 (2.99%) Relational Database
9 148 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
10 132 (2.34%) Metadata
11 96 (1.70%) DynamoDB
12 95 (1.68%) Azure SQL Database
13 90 (1.59%) MySQL
13 90 (1.59%) Oracle Database
14 88 (1.56%) Delta Lake
15 84 (1.49%) Redis
16 67 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
17 64 (1.13%) Big Data
18 62 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 58 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 845 (14.97%) Git
2 798 (14.14%) Jenkins
3 663 (11.75%) JIRA
4 650 (11.52%) GitLab
5 147 (2.60%) Selenium
6 102 (1.81%) SonarQube
7 98 (1.74%) JUnit
7 98 (1.74%) Postman
8 97 (1.72%) Maven
9 72 (1.28%) Cucumber
9 72 (1.28%) REST Assured
10 71 (1.26%) Bitbucket
11 70 (1.24%) Cypress.io
12 67 (1.19%) Gradle
13 64 (1.13%) JMeter
14 52 (0.92%) Claude Code
15 49 (0.87%) Mockito
16 43 (0.76%) Gatling
16 43 (0.76%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,468 (26.01%) Social Skills
2 1,002 (17.75%) Finance
3 807 (14.30%) Public Sector
4 524 (9.28%) Analytical Skills
5 395 (7.00%) Banking
6 172 (3.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 109 (1.93%) Retail
8 88 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
10 61 (1.08%) Legal
11 60 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
12 57 (1.01%) Aerospace
13 56 (0.99%) Marketing
14 55 (0.97%) Military
15 51 (0.90%) Telecoms
16 49 (0.87%) Investment Banking
17 46 (0.82%) Law
17 46 (0.82%) Manufacturing
18 40 (0.71%) Financial Institution
18 40 (0.71%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,145 (20.29%) DevOps Engineer
2 921 (16.32%) Developer
3 859 (15.22%) Senior
4 655 (11.61%) Architect
5 532 (9.43%) Lead
6 351 (6.22%) Azure Engineer
7 308 (5.46%) Data Engineer
8 267 (4.73%) Analyst
9 260 (4.61%) AWS Engineer
10 226 (4.00%) Platform Engineer
11 208 (3.69%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 207 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
13 201 (3.56%) Senior DevOps
14 198 (3.51%) Java Developer
15 186 (3.30%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 184 (3.26%) AWS DevOps
17 183 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
18 173 (3.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 156 (2.76%) Senior Developer
20 142 (2.52%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,687 (29.89%) Terraform
2 637 (11.29%) REST
3 473 (8.38%) .NET
4 394 (6.98%) Kafka
5 365 (6.47%) RESTful
6 310 (5.49%) Spring
7 305 (5.40%) Spring Boot
8 291 (5.16%) React
9 206 (3.65%) Node.js
10 194 (3.44%) OAuth
11 188 (3.33%) JSON
12 159 (2.82%) Playwright
13 155 (2.75%) PySpark
14 143 (2.53%) HTML
15 137 (2.43%) OAuth2
16 133 (2.36%) SOAP
17 131 (2.32%) CSS
18 127 (2.25%) .NET Framework
19 123 (2.18%) Middleware
20 120 (2.13%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 1,040 (18.43%) Cloud Native
2 428 (7.58%) Product Ownership
3 269 (4.77%) Distributed Systems
4 212 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
5 208 (3.69%) Onboarding
6 149 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
7 144 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 106 (1.88%) AI Agents
9 97 (1.72%) Management Information System
10 83 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
11 79 (1.40%) Public Cloud
12 78 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 75 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 74 (1.31%) Replication
14 74 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.29%) Data Centre
16 62 (1.10%) Virtual Team
17 61 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
18 60 (1.06%) PKI
19 53 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 560 (9.92%) Linux
2 316 (5.60%) Windows
3 120 (2.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 112 (1.98%) Unix
5 96 (1.70%) Windows Server
6 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
7 34 (0.60%) VMS
8 31 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 21 (0.37%) Android
10 15 (0.27%) 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 (0.12%) 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 3,451 (61.14%) CI/CD
2 2,305 (40.84%) Agile
3 1,677 (29.71%) Infrastructure as Code
4 959 (16.99%) Continuous Improvement
5 950 (16.83%) Containerisation
5 950 (16.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 907 (16.07%) Test Automation
7 882 (15.63%) Problem-Solving
8 875 (15.50%) AI
9 839 (14.87%) Microservices
10 785 (13.91%) Observability
11 771 (13.66%) Platform Engineering
12 737 (13.06%) Software Engineering
13 695 (12.31%) Scrum
14 684 (12.12%) Migration
15 625 (11.07%) Technical Leadership
16 587 (10.40%) Analytics
17 535 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 492 (8.72%) Data Modelling
19 491 (8.70%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,627 (28.83%) Python
2 986 (17.47%) SQL
3 830 (14.71%) Java
4 498 (8.82%) C#
5 492 (8.72%) Bash
5 492 (8.72%) PowerShell
6 467 (8.27%) JavaScript
7 317 (5.62%) TypeScript
8 257 (4.55%) Bicep
9 124 (2.20%) Go
10 78 (1.38%) Shell Script
11 69 (1.22%) Scala
12 67 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 63 (1.12%) Apex Code
13 63 (1.12%) Groovy
14 61 (1.08%) PL/SQL
15 40 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 35 (0.62%) Perl
17 32 (0.57%) C++
18 26 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,818 (32.21%) Security Cleared
2 1,530 (27.11%) SC Cleared
3 366 (6.48%) Degree
4 251 (4.45%) Azure Certification
5 242 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 234 (4.15%) DV Cleared
7 193 (3.42%) AWS Certification
8 147 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 77 (1.36%) CISSP
11 61 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 53 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
13 50 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 50 (0.89%) PMP
14 45 (0.80%) PMI Certification
15 44 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 31 (0.55%) CISM
17 24 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 549 (9.73%) QA
2 286 (5.07%) Data Quality
3 212 (3.76%) Accessibility
4 129 (2.29%) GDPR
5 92 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.47%) WCAG
7 77 (1.36%) NIST
8 56 (0.99%) NCSC
9 47 (0.83%) PMO
10 38 (0.67%) SLA
11 29 (0.51%) GRC
11 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 22 (0.39%) 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 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,162 (20.59%) Docker
2 165 (2.92%) Active Directory
3 86 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (0.53%) vSphere
6 26 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (0.41%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.21%) Squid
11 11 (0.19%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) Postfix
14 7 (0.12%) 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 1,546 (27.39%) Kubernetes
2 535 (9.48%) Ansible
3 370 (6.56%) Grafana
4 316 (5.60%) Prometheus
5 75 (1.33%) Argo
6 56 (0.99%) Puppet
7 49 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
8 47 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
9 46 (0.82%) Progress Chef
10 36 (0.64%) Packer
11 32 (0.57%) Kibana
12 29 (0.51%) Istio
13 21 (0.37%) Kustomize
14 20 (0.35%) Kubeflow
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.30%) SCCM
17 16 (0.28%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.23%) Consul
18 13 (0.23%) systemd
Vendors
1 1,110 (19.67%) Microsoft
2 309 (5.47%) Oracle
3 308 (5.46%) Databricks
4 292 (5.17%) Google
5 214 (3.79%) ServiceNow
6 190 (3.37%) Splunk
7 178 (3.15%) Salesforce
8 147 (2.60%) Dynatrace
9 130 (2.30%) VMware
10 114 (2.02%) SAP
11 101 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.31%) OpenAI
13 73 (1.29%) IBM
14 65 (1.15%) MuleSoft
15 58 (1.03%) Foundry
16 50 (0.89%) Cisco
17 46 (0.82%) Informatica
18 43 (0.76%) AppDynamics
19 41 (0.73%) Okta
20 40 (0.71%) Atlassian