DevOps Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

DevOps
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring DevOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 35 31
Rank change year-on-year +25 -4 -9
Contract jobs citing DevOps 311 83 105
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.39% 5.48% 5.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.56% 6.19% 6.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 50 80
10th Percentile £425 £363 £347
25th Percentile £479 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £463
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% +9.41% -19.57%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £700 £614 £676
England median daily rate £525 £575 £570
% change year-on-year -8.70% +0.88% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 1
10th Percentile £73.45 - -
25th Percentile £74.88 £56.25 -
Median hourly rate £78.50 £57.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.52% +4.55% -
75th Percentile £80.88 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £81.55 - -
England median hourly rate £48.75 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -27.78% +3.85% -0.76%

All Process & Methodology Skills
West Midlands

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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,136 1,340 1,596
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.10% 88.45% 84.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,387 835 1,047
10th Percentile £289 £210 £263
25th Percentile £403 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £490
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +4.59% -2.00%
75th Percentile £582 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 51 106
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.51 £17.25
Median hourly rate £21.46 £21.59 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% -6.13% +29.94%
75th Percentile £26.91 £33.65 £48.75
90th Percentile £35.00 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -1.41% +2.66%

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DevOps relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

DevOps job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

DevOps
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing DevOps.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing DevOps

DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 6 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps in the West Midlands

DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing DevOps.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing DevOps

DevOps
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DevOps within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 6 February 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
Birmingham +21 110 £525 +7.69% 38
Shropshire +12 91 £500 +2.04% 4
Worcestershire +6 43 £650 +13.04% 3
Warwickshire +10 40 £500 -16.67% 12
Herefordshire +1 37 £650 +15.56%
Coventry -8 8 £460 +41.54% 4
Solihull 0 5 £575 -
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 2
Staffordshire - 1 £463 - 8
DevOps
England

DevOps
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 60 (19.29%) SAS
2 29 (9.32%) Confluence
3 14 (4.50%) OpenStack
4 9 (2.89%) Apache
4 9 (2.89%) WebLogic
5 8 (2.57%) JBoss
6 7 (2.25%) nginx
7 5 (1.61%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.64%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.32%) CICS
10 1 (0.32%) CMS
10 1 (0.32%) IIS
10 1 (0.32%) LiveCycle
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 10 (3.22%) Microsoft Excel
1 10 (3.22%) Microsoft Project
2 7 (2.25%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 5 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.32%) Revit
Business Applications
1 3 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.64%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.32%) Maximo
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 136 (43.73%) Azure
2 97 (31.19%) AWS
3 55 (17.68%) Azure DevOps
3 55 (17.68%) GitHub
4 52 (16.72%) GCP
5 39 (12.54%) Serverless
6 30 (9.65%) GitHub Actions
7 28 (9.00%) OpenShift
8 27 (8.68%) Azure Data Factory
9 15 (4.82%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (4.82%) Amazon ELB
9 15 (4.82%) Amazon S3
9 15 (4.82%) AWS KMS
9 15 (4.82%) Azure Key Vault
9 15 (4.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 14 (4.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 13 (4.18%) Microsoft 365
12 12 (3.86%) Power Platform
13 11 (3.54%) Azure AKS
13 11 (3.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 20 (6.43%) Firewall
2 16 (5.14%) DNS
3 10 (3.22%) FTP
3 10 (3.22%) HTTP
3 10 (3.22%) SMTP
3 10 (3.22%) SSH
4 7 (2.25%) IMAP
4 7 (2.25%) OpenLDAP
5 6 (1.93%) VPN
6 5 (1.61%) SSL
7 4 (1.29%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.96%) Network Security
9 1 (0.32%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.32%) LAN
9 1 (0.32%) SD-WAN
9 1 (0.32%) SMS
9 1 (0.32%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (16.08%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (10.29%) Elasticsearch
3 29 (9.32%) Pentaho
4 18 (5.79%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 17 (5.47%) Oracle Database
6 16 (5.14%) NoSQL
7 15 (4.82%) Relational Database
8 11 (3.54%) Amazon RDS
9 9 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
9 9 (2.89%) MongoDB
9 9 (2.89%) Redis
10 7 (2.25%) Amazon Aurora
10 7 (2.25%) MySQL
10 7 (2.25%) SAS Visual Analytics
11 6 (1.93%) Power BI
12 4 (1.29%) Data Mining
12 4 (1.29%) Metadata
13 3 (0.96%) Data Lake
14 2 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
14 2 (0.64%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 99 (31.83%) Jenkins
2 91 (29.26%) Git
3 65 (20.90%) JIRA
4 51 (16.40%) GitLab
5 32 (10.29%) Selenium
6 27 (8.68%) JUnit
7 18 (5.79%) SonarQube
8 10 (3.22%) Liquibase
8 10 (3.22%) Vagrant
9 8 (2.57%) CircleCI
9 8 (2.57%) Eclipse
9 8 (2.57%) IntelliJ
10 6 (1.93%) Maven
11 5 (1.61%) Artifactory
11 5 (1.61%) Bitbucket
11 5 (1.61%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.29%) Gradle
12 4 (1.29%) Snyk
12 4 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (1.29%) webpack
General
1 118 (37.94%) Social Skills
2 46 (14.79%) Analytical Skills
3 45 (14.47%) Public Sector
4 42 (13.50%) Finance
5 16 (5.14%) Banking
6 10 (3.22%) Financial Institution
7 9 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.64%) Military
10 2 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Marketing
11 1 (0.32%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 46 (14.79%) Senior
2 43 (13.83%) Developer
2 43 (13.83%) DevOps Engineer
3 33 (10.61%) Data Engineer
4 20 (6.43%) Architect
5 18 (5.79%) AWS Engineer
6 17 (5.47%) Cloud Engineer
7 16 (5.14%) Test Specialist
8 15 (4.82%) Software Engineer
9 14 (4.50%) GCP Engineer
9 14 (4.50%) Site Engineer
9 14 (4.50%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 14 (4.50%) Splunk Engineer
10 13 (4.18%) Analyst
10 13 (4.18%) Senior DevOps
10 13 (4.18%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 12 (3.86%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 12 (3.86%) Engagement Manager
11 12 (3.86%) Project Manager
11 12 (3.86%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (18.97%) REST
2 41 (13.18%) Elastic Stack
3 20 (6.43%) YAML
4 19 (6.11%) RESTful
5 17 (5.47%) pytest
6 16 (5.14%) JSON
6 16 (5.14%) Kafka
7 14 (4.50%) .NET
7 14 (4.50%) HTML
8 13 (4.18%) Flask
8 13 (4.18%) Keycloak
8 13 (4.18%) Middleware
8 13 (4.18%) Node.js
9 12 (3.86%) FastAPI
9 12 (3.86%) React
10 11 (3.54%) Play Framework
11 9 (2.89%) HTML5
11 9 (2.89%) LDAP
11 9 (2.89%) WebSockets
11 9 (2.89%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.22%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.14%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (5.14%) Management Information System
3 15 (4.82%) Product Ownership
4 14 (4.50%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.50%) Public Cloud
5 13 (4.18%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.54%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (3.22%) Replication
8 5 (1.61%) Cyber Threat
9 4 (1.29%) Private Cloud
10 3 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.96%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.64%) CMDB
11 2 (0.64%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.64%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (0.64%) Legacy Applications
12 1 (0.32%) PDA
12 1 (0.32%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 53 (17.04%) Linux
2 24 (7.72%) Unix
3 20 (6.43%) Windows
4 10 (3.22%) Amazon Linux
4 10 (3.22%) VMS
5 7 (2.25%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.64%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 197 (63.34%) CI/CD
2 144 (46.30%) Agile
3 112 (36.01%) Containerisation
4 100 (32.15%) Problem-Solving
5 77 (24.76%) Analytics
6 68 (21.86%) Test Automation
7 64 (20.58%) Data Pipeline
8 63 (20.26%) Infrastructure as Code
9 60 (19.29%) Scrum
10 59 (18.97%) Change Management
11 54 (17.36%) Migration
11 54 (17.36%) Stakeholder Management
12 53 (17.04%) Data Modelling
13 50 (16.08%) ETL
13 50 (16.08%) Microservices
14 47 (15.11%) Continuous Improvement
15 36 (11.58%) Computer Science
15 36 (11.58%) Data Integration
16 35 (11.25%) Deployment Automation
17 34 (10.93%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 125 (40.19%) Python
2 88 (28.30%) SQL
3 43 (13.83%) Go
4 32 (10.29%) Bash
5 26 (8.36%) PowerShell
6 19 (6.11%) Java
7 18 (5.79%) JavaScript
8 14 (4.50%) C#
9 13 (4.18%) Groovy
10 12 (3.86%) Scala
11 9 (2.89%) TypeScript
12 6 (1.93%) VBA
13 5 (1.61%) Bicep
14 3 (0.96%) Perl
14 3 (0.96%) VB
15 2 (0.64%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.64%) Shell Script
16 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
16 1 (0.32%) Ruby
16 1 (0.32%) VB6
Qualifications
1 153 (49.20%) Security Cleared
2 131 (42.12%) SC Cleared
3 47 (15.11%) Degree
4 36 (11.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 29 (9.32%) Azure Certification
6 28 (9.00%) DV Cleared
7 16 (5.14%) Master's Degree
8 13 (4.18%) AWS Certification
9 9 (2.89%) IIBA
10 8 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.96%) CISSP
12 3 (0.96%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.96%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.64%) CISM
13 2 (0.64%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.64%) PMP
13 2 (0.64%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.29%) QA
2 27 (8.68%) Data Quality
3 13 (4.18%) NCSC
4 10 (3.22%) GDPR
4 10 (3.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.61%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.61%) NIST
5 5 (1.61%) SLA
6 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.32%) FATCA
6 1 (0.32%) ISO 19650
6 1 (0.32%) PMO
System Software
1 161 (51.77%) Docker
2 10 (3.22%) DFS Replication
3 7 (2.25%) Active Directory
3 7 (2.25%) Dovecot
3 7 (2.25%) Postfix
3 7 (2.25%) Squid
4 3 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.64%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.64%) vSphere
6 1 (0.32%) HDFS
6 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 147 (47.27%) Kubernetes
2 88 (28.30%) Terraform
3 56 (18.01%) Grafana
4 55 (17.68%) Ansible
5 52 (16.72%) Prometheus
6 26 (8.36%) Puppet
7 19 (6.11%) Kibana
8 8 (2.57%) Argo
9 7 (2.25%) Nessus
9 7 (2.25%) Proxmox
10 5 (1.61%) logstash
11 4 (1.29%) HP ALM
11 4 (1.29%) Podman
11 4 (1.29%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
13 2 (0.64%) HP Quality Center
13 2 (0.64%) vCenter Server
14 1 (0.32%) CA Endevor
14 1 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
14 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 56 (18.01%) Microsoft
2 44 (14.15%) Splunk
3 38 (12.22%) Oracle
4 29 (9.32%) Talend
5 28 (9.00%) Denodo
6 23 (7.40%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.50%) Google
8 13 (4.18%) SAP
9 9 (2.89%) CyberArk
10 8 (2.57%) webMethods
11 7 (2.25%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.25%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.25%) Jaspersoft
11 7 (2.25%) Red Hat
12 6 (1.93%) VMware
13 4 (1.29%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.29%) F5
13 4 (1.29%) HP
13 4 (1.29%) Palo Alto
14 3 (0.96%) Adobe