Senior DevOps Contract Job Trends

Senior Development Operations
UK

The median Senior Development Operations daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 October 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 499 458 420
Rank change year-on-year -41 -38 +82
Contract jobs requiring a Senior DevOps 201 103 143
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.36% 0.31% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.40% 0.34% 0.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 61 98
10th Percentile £450 £450 £509
25th Percentile £488 £500 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £578 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -11.15% +4.00%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £745
90th Percentile £750 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £543 £600
% change year-on-year +1.38% -9.58% -11.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 9
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £73.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 - £74.00
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 - £74.00

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 50,841 30,184 35,017
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 90.90% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,834 19,073 21,148
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,158 1,652 1,437
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.80 £15.09
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.30 £68.52 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +64.24% -41.18% -4.49%

Senior DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Senior DevOps' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Senior DevOps job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior DevOps
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior DevOps job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior DevOps job vacancies in the UK

Senior DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior DevOps over the 6 months to 15 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Senior DevOps in the UK

Senior DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior DevOps job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior DevOps job vacancies in the UK

Senior DevOps
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior 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 -27 179 £563 -2.39% 248
London -28 96 £600 -2.64% 111
UK excluding London -52 80 £550 +1.38% 154
Work from Home -60 55 £575 +3.09% 124
North of England -66 31 £550 +3.77% 58
North West -36 21 £700 +42.28% 31
South West - 18 £550 - 15
Midlands -42 15 £580 -34.98% 11
West Midlands -43 10 £695 -22.09% 5
South East -59 9 £461 - 33
Yorkshire -51 6 £470 -24.76% 14
East Midlands - 5 £488 - 6
Scotland -20 4 - - 13
North East -34 4 £453 -19.56% 13
East of England -25 3 £850 - 7

Senior DevOps Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 October 2026, Senior DevOps contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Senior DevOps in the job title.

1 201 (100.00%) DevOps
2 128 (63.68%) Terraform
3 125 (62.19%) CI/CD
4 103 (51.24%) Infrastructure as Code
5 92 (45.77%) Kubernetes
6 85 (42.29%) AWS
7 78 (38.81%) Python
8 72 (35.82%) Azure
9 69 (34.33%) Security Cleared
10 63 (31.34%) SC Cleared
11 60 (29.85%) GitHub
12 58 (28.86%) Docker
13 50 (24.88%) Containerisation
13 50 (24.88%) Platform Engineering
14 47 (23.38%) Azure DevOps
15 42 (20.90%) GitHub Actions
15 42 (20.90%) Linux
16 41 (20.40%) Observability
17 39 (19.40%) Agile
18 36 (17.91%) Bash
18 36 (17.91%) GitLab
18 36 (17.91%) Jenkins
19 32 (15.92%) AI
19 32 (15.92%) Ansible
20 31 (15.42%) Continuous Improvement
21 29 (14.43%) Software Engineering
22 26 (12.94%) Deployment Automation
22 26 (12.94%) Git
23 24 (11.94%) Migration
23 24 (11.94%) Serverless

Senior DevOps Skill Set
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 4 (1.99%) Apache
2 3 (1.49%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.50%) nginx
3 1 (0.50%) Traefik
Cloud Services
1 85 (42.29%) AWS
2 72 (35.82%) Azure
3 60 (29.85%) GitHub
4 47 (23.38%) Azure DevOps
5 42 (20.90%) GitHub Actions
6 24 (11.94%) Serverless
7 23 (11.44%) Amazon S3
8 20 (9.95%) Azure AKS
8 20 (9.95%) GCP
9 19 (9.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 19 (9.45%) Amazon EC2
9 19 (9.45%) AWS Lambda
10 18 (8.96%) Amazon ECS
11 17 (8.46%) Amazon EKS
12 15 (7.46%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (6.47%) Azure Key Vault
13 13 (6.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 12 (5.97%) Azure Monitor
15 9 (4.48%) OpenShift
16 7 (3.48%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.99%) DNS
2 3 (1.49%) Firewall
2 3 (1.49%) OpenLDAP
3 2 (1.00%) Multicast
3 2 (1.00%) Network Security
3 2 (1.00%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.00%) VPN
4 1 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.98%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (4.48%) Amazon RDS
3 8 (3.98%) MongoDB
4 6 (2.99%) MySQL
4 6 (2.99%) Relational Database
5 4 (1.99%) DynamoDB
5 4 (1.99%) Redis
6 3 (1.49%) KDB
6 3 (1.49%) Oracle Database
7 2 (1.00%) Amazon Aurora
7 2 (1.00%) Big Data
7 2 (1.00%) Kdb+
7 2 (1.00%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (1.00%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.50%) DocumentDB
8 1 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.50%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.50%) Power BI
8 1 (0.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 36 (17.91%) GitLab
1 36 (17.91%) Jenkins
2 26 (12.94%) Git
3 5 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
4 4 (1.99%) Bitbucket
4 4 (1.99%) Maven
4 4 (1.99%) SonarQube
5 3 (1.49%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (1.00%) Snyk
7 1 (0.50%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.50%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.50%) JIRA
General
1 28 (13.93%) Social Skills
2 26 (12.94%) Public Sector
3 20 (9.95%) Finance
4 14 (6.97%) Banking
5 9 (4.48%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (4.48%) Military
6 7 (3.48%) Retail
7 3 (1.49%) Front Office
8 2 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.00%) Law
9 1 (0.50%) Back Office
9 1 (0.50%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (63.68%) Terraform
2 11 (5.47%) REST
3 10 (4.98%) Kafka
4 9 (4.48%) AWS CDK
5 8 (3.98%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (3.98%) YAML
6 7 (3.48%) Keycloak
7 6 (2.99%) ARM Templates
7 6 (2.99%) React
8 5 (2.49%) Django
8 5 (2.49%) OAuth
9 4 (1.99%) Celery
9 4 (1.99%) JWT
9 4 (1.99%) Vue
10 3 (1.49%) .NET
10 3 (1.49%) FastAPI
10 3 (1.49%) FIX Protocol
10 3 (1.49%) Flask
10 3 (1.49%) Pulumi
11 2 (1.00%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 42 (20.90%) Cloud Native
2 9 (4.48%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (4.48%) Onboarding
3 7 (3.48%) Greenfield Project
4 5 (2.49%) Data Centre
4 5 (2.49%) Hybrid Cloud
4 5 (2.49%) Private Cloud
4 5 (2.49%) Public Cloud
5 4 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (1.99%) PKI
5 4 (1.99%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.49%) Distributed Architecture
6 3 (1.49%) Replication
7 2 (1.00%) Derivative
7 2 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.50%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.50%) Equities
8 1 (0.50%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.50%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 42 (20.90%) Linux
2 9 (4.48%) Windows
3 8 (3.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 8 (3.98%) Unix
4 4 (1.99%) Ubuntu
5 2 (1.00%) CentOS
6 1 (0.50%) VMS
6 1 (0.50%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (100.00%) DevOps
2 125 (62.19%) CI/CD
3 103 (51.24%) Infrastructure as Code
4 50 (24.88%) Containerisation
4 50 (24.88%) Platform Engineering
5 41 (20.40%) Observability
6 39 (19.40%) Agile
7 32 (15.92%) AI
8 31 (15.42%) Continuous Improvement
9 29 (14.43%) Software Engineering
10 26 (12.94%) Deployment Automation
11 24 (11.94%) Migration
12 21 (10.45%) Infrastructure Automation
12 21 (10.45%) Roadmaps
13 20 (9.95%) Software Delivery
14 19 (9.45%) Cloud Security
14 19 (9.45%) Secrets Management
15 17 (8.46%) Problem-Solving
16 16 (7.96%) Technical Leadership
17 15 (7.46%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 78 (38.81%) Python
2 36 (17.91%) Bash
3 22 (10.95%) PowerShell
4 15 (7.46%) TypeScript
5 11 (5.47%) Bicep
6 7 (3.48%) C#
6 7 (3.48%) Groovy
6 7 (3.48%) SQL
7 6 (2.99%) Java
8 5 (2.49%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.49%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.00%) Go
10 1 (0.50%) COBOL
10 1 (0.50%) JCL
10 1 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 69 (34.33%) Security Cleared
2 63 (31.34%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 10 (4.98%) Azure Certification
5 8 (3.98%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.99%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.99%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 4 (1.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.00%) Degree
9 1 (0.50%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.97%) QA
2 6 (2.99%) Accessibility
2 6 (2.99%) WCAG
3 5 (2.49%) GDPR
4 2 (1.00%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.50%) NCSC
System Software
1 58 (28.86%) Docker
2 2 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 92 (45.77%) Kubernetes
2 32 (15.92%) Ansible
3 20 (9.95%) Grafana
3 20 (9.95%) Prometheus
4 8 (3.98%) Argo
5 7 (3.48%) Packer
6 6 (2.99%) Istio
7 4 (1.99%) Karpenter
7 4 (1.99%) Kustomize
8 3 (1.49%) Kibana
8 3 (1.49%) Puppet
9 2 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 2 (1.00%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.50%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.50%) Consul
10 1 (0.50%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.50%) linkerd
10 1 (0.50%) Rancher
10 1 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 18 (8.96%) Microsoft
2 12 (5.97%) Splunk
3 8 (3.98%) Google
3 8 (3.98%) Oracle
4 5 (2.49%) Red Hat
5 4 (1.99%) Databricks
6 2 (1.00%) Bloomberg
6 2 (1.00%) Dynatrace
6 2 (1.00%) NYFIX
6 2 (1.00%) Refinitiv
6 2 (1.00%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.50%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.50%) Apple
7 1 (0.50%) Checkmarx
7 1 (0.50%) Cisco
7 1 (0.50%) ESET
7 1 (0.50%) Informatica
7 1 (0.50%) Okta
7 1 (0.50%) Tenable
7 1 (0.50%) VMware