Lead DevOps Contracts

Lead Development Operations
UK

The median Lead Development Operations daily rate in the UK is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 487 517 614
Rank change year-on-year +30 +97 +37
Contract jobs requiring a Lead DevOps 33 65 104
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.11% 0.15% 0.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.12% 0.16% 0.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 43 76
10th Percentile £420 £501 £514
25th Percentile £510 £538 £594
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £675 £675 £756
90th Percentile £688 £700 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £638 £715
% change year-on-year -9.80% -10.84% +19.17%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Lead DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Lead DevOps in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Lead DevOps in the UK

Lead DevOps
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Lead DevOps.

Daily rate trend for Lead DevOps in the UK

Lead DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead DevOps over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead DevOps in the UK

Lead DevOps
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Lead DevOps.

Hourly rate trend for Lead DevOps in the UK

Lead DevOps
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead DevOps within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 +24 26 £575 -8.00% 26
UK excluding London +66 14 £575 -9.80% 17
London +11 13 £608 -6.54% 13
Work from Home +27 11 £600 - 16
North of England +23 9 £565 -9.60% 4
Yorkshire +8 5 £575 -8.00% 2
North East - 4 £545 -
South East +46 2 £675 +3.85% 4
South West +45 1 £425 -31.31% 2
Midlands +22 1 £638 - 2
Scotland - 1 £685 -
East Midlands - 1 £638 -
North West - 1 £575 - 2

Lead DevOps Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Lead DevOps contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Lead DevOps in the job title.

1 33 (100.00%) DevOps
2 22 (66.67%) CI/CD
3 21 (63.64%) Kubernetes
4 20 (60.61%) AWS
5 19 (57.58%) Terraform
6 12 (36.36%) Azure
6 12 (36.36%) GitLab
6 12 (36.36%) Python
7 11 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
8 10 (30.30%) Linux
9 9 (27.27%) Bash
9 9 (27.27%) Security Cleared
9 9 (27.27%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (24.24%) SC Cleared
10 8 (24.24%) Docker
10 8 (24.24%) Jenkins
10 8 (24.24%) Finance
10 8 (24.24%) Agile
11 7 (21.21%) Ansible
11 7 (21.21%) Git
11 7 (21.21%) Containerisation
12 6 (18.18%) Social Skills
12 6 (18.18%) Public Sector
12 6 (18.18%) Technical Leadership
12 6 (18.18%) Packer
12 6 (18.18%) Test Automation
13 5 (15.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 5 (15.15%) Analytical Skills
13 5 (15.15%) Identity Management
14 4 (12.12%) Azure DevOps

Lead DevOps Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (6.06%) nginx
2 1 (3.03%) Apache
2 1 (3.03%) JBoss
2 1 (3.03%) Traefik
2 1 (3.03%) WebSphere
Cloud Services
1 20 (60.61%) AWS
2 12 (36.36%) Azure
3 4 (12.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 4 (12.12%) Azure DevOps
3 4 (12.12%) Kong
4 3 (9.09%) Amazon EC2
4 3 (9.09%) Amazon ECS
4 3 (9.09%) Amazon EKS
4 3 (9.09%) Datadog
4 3 (9.09%) Entra ID
5 2 (6.06%) Akamai
5 2 (6.06%) Amazon S3
5 2 (6.06%) AWS CloudFormation
5 2 (6.06%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (6.06%) Azure AI
5 2 (6.06%) Azure API Management
5 2 (6.06%) Azure Data Factory
5 2 (6.06%) Azure Monitor
5 2 (6.06%) Serverless
6 1 (3.03%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.03%) DNS
1 1 (3.03%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (6.06%) Amazon RDS
1 2 (6.06%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (3.03%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (3.03%) MariaDB
2 1 (3.03%) MongoDB
2 1 (3.03%) MySQL
2 1 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 12 (36.36%) GitLab
2 8 (24.24%) Jenkins
3 7 (21.21%) Git
4 1 (3.03%) Ant
4 1 (3.03%) Artifactory
4 1 (3.03%) JIRA
4 1 (3.03%) Maven
4 1 (3.03%) Octopus Deploy
4 1 (3.03%) Selenium
4 1 (3.03%) SonarQube
4 1 (3.03%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (3.03%) Spinnaker
4 1 (3.03%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 8 (24.24%) Finance
2 6 (18.18%) Public Sector
2 6 (18.18%) Social Skills
3 5 (15.15%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (9.09%) Electronics
4 3 (9.09%) Manufacturing
4 3 (9.09%) Marketing
4 3 (9.09%) Telecoms
5 2 (6.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (3.03%) Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (6.06%) cloud-init
1 2 (6.06%) Kafka
1 2 (6.06%) OAuth
2 1 (3.03%) ARM Templates
2 1 (3.03%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (3.03%) Keycloak
2 1 (3.03%) Middleware
2 1 (3.03%) pytest
2 1 (3.03%) RESTful
2 1 (3.03%) Serverless Framework
2 1 (3.03%) Spring
2 1 (3.03%) TypeORM
Miscellaneous
1 2 (6.06%) Data Centre
2 1 (3.03%) Cloud Native
2 1 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
2 1 (3.03%) Management Information System
2 1 (3.03%) NHS
2 1 (3.03%) PKI
2 1 (3.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 10 (30.30%) Linux
2 5 (15.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (12.12%) CentOS
4 2 (6.06%) Unix
5 1 (3.03%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (100.00%) DevOps
2 22 (66.67%) CI/CD
3 11 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 9 (27.27%) Problem-Solving
5 8 (24.24%) Agile
6 7 (21.21%) Containerisation
7 6 (18.18%) Technical Leadership
7 6 (18.18%) Test Automation
8 5 (15.15%) Identity Management
9 4 (12.12%) Continuous Integration
9 4 (12.12%) Deployment Automation
9 4 (12.12%) Infrastructure Automation
9 4 (12.12%) Microservices
10 3 (9.09%) Cloud Security
10 3 (9.09%) Cost Optimisation
10 3 (9.09%) Decision-Making
10 3 (9.09%) Digital Marketing
10 3 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 3 (9.09%) Platform Engineering
10 3 (9.09%) Release Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (36.36%) Python
2 9 (27.27%) Bash
3 4 (12.12%) PowerShell
4 2 (6.06%) Go
4 2 (6.06%) Java
4 2 (6.06%) JavaScript
5 1 (3.03%) Bicep
5 1 (3.03%) Groovy
5 1 (3.03%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 9 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 8 (24.24%) SC Cleared
3 3 (9.09%) AWS Certification
4 2 (6.06%) Azure Certification
5 1 (3.03%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
5 1 (3.03%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (3.03%) Degree
5 1 (3.03%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (12.12%) QA
2 2 (6.06%) NCSC
3 1 (3.03%) GDPR
3 1 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (3.03%) NIST
System Software
1 8 (24.24%) Docker
2 1 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 21 (63.64%) Kubernetes
2 19 (57.58%) Terraform
3 7 (21.21%) Ansible
4 6 (18.18%) Packer
5 3 (9.09%) Grafana
5 3 (9.09%) Kustomize
5 3 (9.09%) Prometheus
5 3 (9.09%) Puppet
6 1 (3.03%) Argo
6 1 (3.03%) Cilium
6 1 (3.03%) Consul
6 1 (3.03%) HAProxy
6 1 (3.03%) Istio
6 1 (3.03%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (3.03%) linkerd
6 1 (3.03%) Podman
6 1 (3.03%) Rancher
6 1 (3.03%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 3 (9.09%) SAP
1 3 (9.09%) Splunk
2 2 (6.06%) Databricks
2 2 (6.06%) Microsoft
3 1 (3.03%) Apple
3 1 (3.03%) ESET
3 1 (3.03%) Okta
3 1 (3.03%) Oracle
3 1 (3.03%) Red Hat
3 1 (3.03%) Rollbar
3 1 (3.03%) VMware