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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 27 31
Rank change year-on-year +20 +4 -3
Contract jobs citing DevOps 312 102 106
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.63% 6.44% 6.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.88% 7.41% 7.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 67 83
10th Percentile £413 £350 £361
25th Percentile £468 £414 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £612 £575
90th Percentile £700 £725 £718
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
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 £47.50 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -29.63% +3.85% -0.84%

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 1,965 1,376 1,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.85% 86.87% 85.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,246 853 992
10th Percentile £263 £225 £275
25th Percentile £402 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £612 £600
90th Percentile £675 £723 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.43% -2.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 47 60
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.26 £16.51 £17.74
Median hourly rate £20.25 £21.59 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year -6.21% -23.58% +63.13%
75th Percentile £27.21 £34.38 £52.19
90th Percentile £35.64 £52.50 £68.88
England median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -26.03% -23.60% +27.14%

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 9 January 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 9 January 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 +15 107 £519 +6.41% 38
Shropshire +16 101 £513 +6.05% 23
Worcestershire +5 45 £625 +8.70% 12
Herefordshire -2 36 £650 +6.21% 1
Warwickshire +3 30 £463 -22.92% 4
Coventry -12 7 £400 -13.51% 7
Solihull +6 6 £588 +70.29%
Staffordshire +4 2 £463 +32.14% 13
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 9
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 70 (22.44%) SAS
2 36 (11.54%) Confluence
3 12 (3.85%) nginx
4 11 (3.53%) Apache
4 11 (3.53%) WebLogic
5 10 (3.21%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (3.21%) OpenStack
6 9 (2.88%) JBoss
7 8 (2.56%) SharePoint
8 4 (1.28%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.64%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.64%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.32%) CICS
10 1 (0.32%) CMS
10 1 (0.32%) IIS
10 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (3.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 8 (2.56%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.32%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.32%) Moqups
5 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Revit
Business Applications
1 4 (1.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.64%) ResourceLink
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 (43.59%) Azure
2 111 (35.58%) AWS
3 55 (17.63%) GitHub
4 49 (15.71%) GCP
5 48 (15.38%) Azure DevOps
6 41 (13.14%) Serverless
7 30 (9.62%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (8.65%) OpenShift
9 25 (8.01%) Amazon S3
10 23 (7.37%) Azure Data Factory
11 21 (6.73%) Amazon EC2
11 21 (6.73%) Amazon ELB
11 21 (6.73%) AWS KMS
11 21 (6.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 20 (6.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 19 (6.09%) Microsoft 365
14 14 (4.49%) Azure Key Vault
15 13 (4.17%) Power Platform
16 12 (3.85%) Amazon ECS
16 12 (3.85%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (8.65%) Firewall
2 21 (6.73%) DNS
3 18 (5.77%) SSH
4 16 (5.13%) FTP
4 16 (5.13%) HTTP
4 16 (5.13%) SMTP
5 10 (3.21%) IMAP
5 10 (3.21%) OpenLDAP
6 6 (1.92%) SSL
6 6 (1.92%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.92%) VPN
7 3 (0.96%) Network Security
8 1 (0.32%) Kerberos
8 1 (0.32%) LAN
8 1 (0.32%) SD-WAN
8 1 (0.32%) SMS
8 1 (0.32%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (17.31%) PostgreSQL
2 36 (11.54%) Pentaho
3 26 (8.33%) Elasticsearch
4 22 (7.05%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 18 (5.77%) Amazon RDS
6 17 (5.45%) NoSQL
6 17 (5.45%) Oracle Database
7 12 (3.85%) Relational Database
7 12 (3.85%) SAS Visual Analytics
8 10 (3.21%) Amazon Aurora
9 9 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (2.56%) MongoDB
10 8 (2.56%) Redis
11 7 (2.24%) Power BI
12 6 (1.92%) MySQL
13 5 (1.60%) Data Mining
14 4 (1.28%) SAS Data Integration Studio
15 3 (0.96%) Big Data
15 3 (0.96%) Data Lake
15 3 (0.96%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 109 (34.94%) Jenkins
2 105 (33.65%) Git
3 85 (27.24%) JIRA
4 54 (17.31%) GitLab
5 31 (9.94%) Selenium
6 27 (8.65%) JUnit
7 21 (6.73%) SonarQube
8 16 (5.13%) Vagrant
9 10 (3.21%) Liquibase
10 9 (2.88%) CircleCI
10 9 (2.88%) Sonatype Nexus
11 8 (2.56%) Eclipse
11 8 (2.56%) IntelliJ
12 7 (2.24%) Bitbucket
13 6 (1.92%) Artifactory
13 6 (1.92%) Cypress.io
14 5 (1.60%) Gradle
14 5 (1.60%) Maven
14 5 (1.60%) Postman
14 5 (1.60%) webpack
General
1 121 (38.78%) Social Skills
2 57 (18.27%) Public Sector
3 41 (13.14%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (12.82%) Finance
5 14 (4.49%) Banking
5 14 (4.49%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (3.53%) Presentation Skills
7 10 (3.21%) Financial Institution
8 8 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.28%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.64%) Marketing
10 2 (0.64%) Military
10 2 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.32%) Digital Healthcare
11 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 51 (16.35%) DevOps Engineer
2 43 (13.78%) Senior
3 41 (13.14%) Developer
4 34 (10.90%) Data Engineer
5 27 (8.65%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (6.09%) AWS DevOps
6 19 (6.09%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 17 (5.45%) Platform Engineer
8 16 (5.13%) Cloud Engineer
8 16 (5.13%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 15 (4.81%) Analyst
10 14 (4.49%) Test Specialist
11 13 (4.17%) Architect
11 13 (4.17%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (4.17%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.17%) Software Engineer
12 12 (3.85%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 12 (3.85%) GCP Engineer
12 12 (3.85%) Senior Data Engineer
12 12 (3.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (18.59%) REST
2 38 (12.18%) Elastic Stack
3 20 (6.41%) YAML
4 18 (5.77%) RESTful
5 17 (5.45%) HTML
6 16 (5.13%) JSON
6 16 (5.13%) pytest
7 15 (4.81%) Kafka
8 14 (4.49%) Flask
9 13 (4.17%) Keycloak
9 13 (4.17%) Middleware
10 12 (3.85%) .NET
11 11 (3.53%) FastAPI
11 11 (3.53%) LDAP
11 11 (3.53%) Play Framework
12 10 (3.21%) Node.js
12 10 (3.21%) SOAP
12 10 (3.21%) XML
13 9 (2.88%) HTML5
14 8 (2.56%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 40 (12.82%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.13%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (5.13%) Replication
3 14 (4.49%) Management Information System
3 14 (4.49%) Public Cloud
4 12 (3.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (3.53%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (3.53%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.24%) Product Ownership
7 5 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (1.60%) Private Cloud
8 4 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (0.96%) Client/Server
9 3 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.64%) CMDB
10 2 (0.64%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.64%) IoT
10 2 (0.64%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.64%) Security Posture
11 1 (0.32%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 65 (20.83%) Linux
2 31 (9.94%) Windows
3 23 (7.37%) Unix
4 16 (5.13%) Amazon Linux
4 16 (5.13%) VMS
5 10 (3.21%) Ubuntu
6 4 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.28%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.32%) Android
7 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (63.78%) CI/CD
2 145 (46.47%) Agile
3 110 (35.26%) Containerisation
4 106 (33.97%) Problem-Solving
5 88 (28.21%) Analytics
6 73 (23.40%) Data Pipeline
6 73 (23.40%) Test Automation
7 69 (22.12%) Scrum
8 62 (19.87%) Change Management
9 60 (19.23%) Infrastructure as Code
10 58 (18.59%) Data Modelling
10 58 (18.59%) ETL
11 57 (18.27%) Continuous Improvement
12 54 (17.31%) Stakeholder Management
13 51 (16.35%) Migration
14 48 (15.38%) Deployment Automation
15 45 (14.42%) Microservices
16 43 (13.78%) Data Integration
17 41 (13.14%) Business Intelligence
18 36 (11.54%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 128 (41.03%) Python
2 91 (29.17%) SQL
3 43 (13.78%) Go
4 36 (11.54%) PowerShell
5 32 (10.26%) Bash
6 19 (6.09%) Groovy
7 18 (5.77%) Java
7 18 (5.77%) JavaScript
8 12 (3.85%) C#
9 11 (3.53%) Scala
10 8 (2.56%) TypeScript
11 7 (2.24%) Perl
12 6 (1.92%) VBA
13 2 (0.64%) Bicep
13 2 (0.64%) VBScript
14 1 (0.32%) Korn
14 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.32%) Ruby
14 1 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 167 (53.53%) Security Cleared
2 143 (45.83%) SC Cleared
3 48 (15.38%) Degree
4 35 (11.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (9.62%) Azure Certification
5 30 (9.62%) DV Cleared
6 17 (5.45%) AWS Certification
7 14 (4.49%) Master's Degree
8 8 (2.56%) IIBA
9 6 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.96%) CISSP
12 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.64%) CISM
12 2 (0.64%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.64%) PMP
13 1 (0.32%) CEH
13 1 (0.32%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.26%) Data Quality
2 26 (8.33%) QA
3 12 (3.85%) NCSC
4 9 (2.88%) GDPR
4 9 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.60%) Accessibility
6 4 (1.28%) NIST
7 2 (0.64%) SLA
8 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.32%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.32%) PMO
System Software
1 173 (55.45%) Docker
2 16 (5.13%) DFS Replication
3 10 (3.21%) Dovecot
3 10 (3.21%) Postfix
3 10 (3.21%) Squid
4 8 (2.56%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.32%) HDFS
5 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 147 (47.12%) Kubernetes
2 80 (25.64%) Terraform
3 56 (17.95%) Grafana
4 53 (16.99%) Prometheus
5 48 (15.38%) Ansible
6 25 (8.01%) Puppet
7 14 (4.49%) Kibana
8 10 (3.21%) Nessus
8 10 (3.21%) Proxmox
9 8 (2.56%) Argo
10 6 (1.92%) Progress Chef
11 5 (1.60%) Podman
12 3 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
13 2 (0.64%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.64%) Istio
14 1 (0.32%) CA Endevor
14 1 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
14 1 (0.32%) logstash
14 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 60 (19.23%) Microsoft
2 51 (16.35%) Oracle
3 42 (13.46%) Splunk
4 36 (11.54%) Talend
5 35 (11.22%) Denodo
6 28 (8.97%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.49%) Google
8 10 (3.21%) AppDynamics
8 10 (3.21%) Jaspersoft
9 9 (2.88%) Dynatrace
9 9 (2.88%) SAP
10 8 (2.56%) CyberArk
10 8 (2.56%) Red Hat
10 8 (2.56%) webMethods
11 6 (1.92%) VMware
12 4 (1.28%) CheckPoint
12 4 (1.28%) F5
12 4 (1.28%) IBM
12 4 (1.28%) Palo Alto
13 3 (0.96%) Cloudera