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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 26 27
Rank change year-on-year +14 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 331 89 104
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.07% 6.57% 5.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.20% 7.30% 6.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 250 60 78
10th Percentile £413 £363 £315
25th Percentile £463 £417 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £465
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% +7.58% -19.17%
75th Percentile £575 £553 £569
90th Percentile £658 £621 £641
England median daily rate £525 £570 £568
% change year-on-year -7.89% +0.44% -5.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 3
10th Percentile £73.45 - £55.25
25th Percentile £74.88 £56.25 £55.63
Median hourly rate £78.50 £57.50 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +36.52% +2.22% -
75th Percentile £80.88 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £81.55 - -
England median hourly rate £62.00 £74.72 £65.00
% change year-on-year -17.02% +14.95% -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 2,331 1,219 1,616
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.98% 89.96% 84.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,540 791 1,069
10th Percentile £300 £209 £275
25th Percentile £402 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.37% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £580 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 52 113
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.62 £12.20
25th Percentile £16.10 £14.70 £16.54
Median hourly rate £21.52 £18.63 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.54% -19.02% +29.80%
75th Percentile £27.21 £29.25 £43.75
90th Percentile £47.50 £35.00 £58.75
England median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £34.00
% change year-on-year -17.14% +2.94% -5.56%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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
Shropshire +7 111 £492 -0.05% 24
Birmingham +13 107 £525 +10.53% 39
Worcestershire +8 40 £644 +7.29% 4
Warwickshire +9 38 £523 +4.50% 9
Herefordshire +4 32 £650 -7.14%
Coventry - 15 £407 - 9
Solihull -3 9 £569 - 4
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 2
Staffordshire -3 1 £463 -11.90% 11
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 76 (22.96%) SAS
2 31 (9.37%) Confluence
3 12 (3.63%) OpenStack
4 9 (2.72%) Apache
4 9 (2.72%) WebLogic
5 8 (2.42%) JBoss
6 6 (1.81%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.30%) IIS
8 1 (0.30%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.30%) nginx
8 1 (0.30%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.32%) Microsoft Project
2 7 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.91%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.30%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 4 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.60%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.30%) Maximo
3 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 134 (40.48%) Azure
2 95 (28.70%) AWS
3 63 (19.03%) Azure DevOps
4 51 (15.41%) GCP
5 50 (15.11%) GitHub
6 36 (10.88%) Serverless
7 30 (9.06%) Azure Data Factory
7 30 (9.06%) OpenShift
8 27 (8.16%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (5.14%) Power Platform
10 16 (4.83%) Amazon S3
10 16 (4.83%) AWS KMS
10 16 (4.83%) Azure Key Vault
11 15 (4.53%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (4.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 12 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 11 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
15 10 (3.02%) Azure AKS
15 10 (3.02%) Azure Logic Apps
15 10 (3.02%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 13 (3.93%) Firewall
2 8 (2.42%) DNS
3 7 (2.11%) VPN
4 5 (1.51%) Network Security
4 5 (1.51%) SSL
5 4 (1.21%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.60%) FTP
6 2 (0.60%) HTTP
6 2 (0.60%) SMTP
6 2 (0.60%) SSH
7 1 (0.30%) IMAP
7 1 (0.30%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.30%) LAN
7 1 (0.30%) OpenLDAP
7 1 (0.30%) SD-WAN
7 1 (0.30%) SMS
7 1 (0.30%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (16.31%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (11.78%) Pentaho
3 31 (9.37%) Elasticsearch
4 16 (4.83%) Oracle Database
4 16 (4.83%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 15 (4.53%) NoSQL
6 13 (3.93%) Relational Database
7 11 (3.32%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (3.02%) Power BI
9 9 (2.72%) Amazon Aurora
9 9 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
9 9 (2.72%) MongoDB
9 9 (2.72%) Redis
10 8 (2.42%) DynamoDB
10 8 (2.42%) MySQL
11 5 (1.51%) SAS Visual Analytics
12 4 (1.21%) Apache Hive
12 4 (1.21%) Hadoop
12 4 (1.21%) Impala
12 4 (1.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 115 (34.74%) Jenkins
2 102 (30.82%) Git
3 69 (20.85%) JIRA
4 55 (16.62%) GitLab
5 39 (11.78%) JUnit
6 36 (10.88%) Selenium
7 19 (5.74%) SonarQube
8 13 (3.93%) Maven
9 11 (3.32%) Bitbucket
10 10 (3.02%) Liquibase
11 8 (2.42%) Eclipse
11 8 (2.42%) IntelliJ
11 8 (2.42%) Mockito
12 7 (2.11%) CircleCI
13 6 (1.81%) DbUnit
13 6 (1.81%) jMock
14 5 (1.51%) Artifactory
15 4 (1.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 4 (1.21%) Bitbucket Server
15 4 (1.21%) Cypress.io
General
1 112 (33.84%) Social Skills
2 48 (14.50%) Public Sector
3 46 (13.90%) Analytical Skills
4 44 (13.29%) Finance
5 17 (5.14%) Banking
6 10 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (3.02%) Financial Institution
7 9 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 3 (0.91%) Retail
11 2 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.60%) Military
11 2 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.30%) Advertising
12 1 (0.30%) Marketing
12 1 (0.30%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 51 (15.41%) Data Engineer
2 49 (14.80%) Developer
3 47 (14.20%) Senior
4 35 (10.57%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (7.25%) Architect
6 20 (6.04%) Test Specialist
7 18 (5.44%) Cloud Engineer
8 17 (5.14%) Software Engineer
9 15 (4.53%) GCP Engineer
10 14 (4.23%) Analyst
11 13 (3.93%) Engagement Manager
11 13 (3.93%) Senior Data Engineer
11 13 (3.93%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (3.93%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 13 (3.93%) Site Engineer
11 13 (3.93%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 13 (3.93%) Splunk Engineer
12 12 (3.63%) Full-Stack Developer
12 12 (3.63%) Project Manager
13 11 (3.32%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (20.54%) REST
2 39 (11.78%) Elastic Stack
3 25 (7.55%) Node.js
4 22 (6.65%) YAML
5 20 (6.04%) Flask
5 20 (6.04%) pytest
6 19 (5.74%) RESTful
7 18 (5.44%) Spring
8 16 (4.83%) Hibernate
8 16 (4.83%) Kafka
8 16 (4.83%) SOAP
9 15 (4.53%) JSON
10 14 (4.23%) .NET
10 14 (4.23%) HTML
11 13 (3.93%) React
12 12 (3.63%) AngularJS
12 12 (3.63%) FastAPI
12 12 (3.63%) Keycloak
12 12 (3.63%) Middleware
13 11 (3.32%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 36 (10.88%) Cloud Native
2 22 (6.65%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (4.23%) Management Information System
3 14 (4.23%) Product Ownership
3 14 (4.23%) Public Cloud
4 13 (3.93%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (3.93%) Onboarding
5 10 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.51%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.91%) Private Cloud
7 3 (0.91%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.60%) CMDB
8 2 (0.60%) Data Centre
8 2 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (0.60%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.60%) Replication
9 1 (0.30%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.30%) Freedom of Information
9 1 (0.30%) PDA
9 1 (0.30%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 47 (14.20%) Linux
2 26 (7.85%) Unix
3 13 (3.93%) Windows
4 3 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.60%) Amazon Linux
5 2 (0.60%) VMS
6 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.30%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (66.47%) CI/CD
2 172 (51.96%) Agile
3 112 (33.84%) Containerisation
4 102 (30.82%) Problem-Solving
5 91 (27.49%) Analytics
6 86 (25.98%) Scrum
7 78 (23.56%) Data Pipeline
7 78 (23.56%) Test Automation
8 66 (19.94%) Data Modelling
8 66 (19.94%) Stakeholder Management
9 65 (19.64%) ETL
10 61 (18.43%) Continuous Improvement
11 59 (17.82%) Change Management
12 58 (17.52%) Infrastructure as Code
13 57 (17.22%) Migration
14 56 (16.92%) Microservices
15 52 (15.71%) Data Integration
16 47 (14.20%) Business Intelligence
17 44 (13.29%) Deployment Automation
18 41 (12.39%) Data Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 115 (34.74%) Python
2 109 (32.93%) SQL
3 41 (12.39%) Go
4 30 (9.06%) Java
5 29 (8.76%) Bash
6 23 (6.95%) JavaScript
7 19 (5.74%) PowerShell
8 13 (3.93%) C#
9 12 (3.63%) Scala
10 7 (2.11%) Bicep
10 7 (2.11%) TypeScript
11 5 (1.51%) Groovy
11 5 (1.51%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.21%) VBA
13 3 (0.91%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.91%) VB
14 2 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.30%) Perl
15 1 (0.30%) Ruby
15 1 (0.30%) VB6
Qualifications
1 164 (49.55%) Security Cleared
2 141 (42.60%) SC Cleared
3 41 (12.39%) Degree
4 34 (10.27%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (7.85%) Azure Certification
6 22 (6.65%) DV Cleared
7 16 (4.83%) Master's Degree
8 10 (3.02%) AWS Certification
9 9 (2.72%) IIBA
10 8 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.81%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.91%) CISSP
12 3 (0.91%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 2 (0.60%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.60%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.60%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.60%) PMP
13 2 (0.60%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (11.78%) Data Quality
2 32 (9.67%) QA
3 10 (3.02%) GDPR
4 8 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.42%) NCSC
5 5 (1.51%) Accessibility
6 4 (1.21%) NIST
6 4 (1.21%) SLA
7 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.30%) FATCA
7 1 (0.30%) PMO
System Software
1 158 (47.73%) Docker
2 7 (2.11%) Postfix
3 6 (1.81%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.21%) HDFS
5 3 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.60%) DFS Replication
6 2 (0.60%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.60%) vSphere
7 1 (0.30%) Dovecot
7 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.30%) Squid
7 1 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 152 (45.92%) Kubernetes
2 74 (22.36%) Terraform
3 56 (16.92%) Ansible
3 56 (16.92%) Grafana
4 41 (12.39%) Prometheus
5 24 (7.25%) Puppet
6 18 (5.44%) Kibana
7 7 (2.11%) Argo
8 5 (1.51%) logstash
9 4 (1.21%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.91%) Podman
10 3 (0.91%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.60%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.60%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
12 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.30%) Nessus
12 1 (0.30%) Packer
12 1 (0.30%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 56 (16.92%) Microsoft
2 42 (12.69%) Splunk
3 41 (12.39%) Oracle
4 39 (11.78%) Talend
5 38 (11.48%) Denodo
6 17 (5.14%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.23%) Google
7 14 (4.23%) SAP
8 13 (3.93%) Atlassian
9 9 (2.72%) CyberArk
9 9 (2.72%) Jaspersoft
10 8 (2.42%) webMethods
11 7 (2.11%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.11%) Dynatrace
12 6 (1.81%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.21%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.21%) F5
13 4 (1.21%) HP
13 4 (1.21%) Palo Alto
13 4 (1.21%) VMware