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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 27 30
Rank change year-on-year +20 +3 -3
Contract jobs citing DevOps 309 99 106
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.67% 6.32% 6.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.96% 7.26% 7.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 65 84
10th Percentile £413 £350 £353
25th Percentile £473 £419 £405
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 £715
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 1,936 1,363 1,508
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.66% 86.98% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,222 846 1,002
10th Percentile £263 £224 £275
25th Percentile £403 £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 £725 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 46 62
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £14.97
25th Percentile £16.22 £16.38 £17.94
Median hourly rate £20.25 £21.59 £28.34
Median % change year-on-year -6.21% -23.80% +63.62%
75th Percentile £27.21 £33.70 £50.94
90th Percentile £35.60 £52.50 £68.63
England median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -26.03% -20.00% +21.43%

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 12 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 12 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 +15 104 £525 +7.69% 38
Shropshire +17 101 £513 +6.05% 14
Worcestershire +6 45 £625 +8.70% 6
Herefordshire -2 36 £650 +6.21% 1
Warwickshire +3 30 £463 -22.92% 4
Coventry -10 7 £400 -27.27% 5
Solihull +6 6 £588 +70.29%
Staffordshire +5 2 £463 +32.14% 4
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 3
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 (22.65%) SAS
2 35 (11.33%) Confluence
3 11 (3.56%) Apache
3 11 (3.56%) nginx
3 11 (3.56%) WebLogic
4 10 (3.24%) OpenStack
5 9 (2.91%) JBoss
6 8 (2.59%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (2.59%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.29%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.32%) CICS
9 1 (0.32%) CMS
9 1 (0.32%) IIS
9 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.91%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 8 (2.59%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.97%) 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 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.65%) ResourceLink
2 2 (0.65%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.32%) Maximo
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 135 (43.69%) Azure
2 109 (35.28%) AWS
3 52 (16.83%) GitHub
4 48 (15.53%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (15.21%) GCP
6 41 (13.27%) Serverless
7 28 (9.06%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (8.74%) OpenShift
9 23 (7.44%) Azure Data Factory
10 21 (6.80%) Amazon S3
11 20 (6.47%) Amazon EC2
11 20 (6.47%) Amazon ELB
11 20 (6.47%) AWS KMS
11 20 (6.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 19 (6.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 18 (5.83%) Microsoft 365
14 14 (4.53%) Azure Key Vault
15 13 (4.21%) Power Platform
16 12 (3.88%) Datadog
16 12 (3.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (8.41%) Firewall
2 19 (6.15%) DNS
3 15 (4.85%) FTP
3 15 (4.85%) HTTP
3 15 (4.85%) SMTP
3 15 (4.85%) SSH
4 9 (2.91%) IMAP
4 9 (2.91%) OpenLDAP
5 6 (1.94%) VPN
6 5 (1.62%) SSL
7 4 (1.29%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.97%) 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 (16.18%) PostgreSQL
2 36 (11.65%) Pentaho
3 27 (8.74%) Elasticsearch
4 22 (7.12%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 17 (5.50%) Oracle Database
6 16 (5.18%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (4.85%) NoSQL
8 12 (3.88%) Relational Database
8 12 (3.88%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 9 (2.91%) Amazon Aurora
9 9 (2.91%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (2.59%) MongoDB
10 8 (2.59%) Redis
11 7 (2.27%) Power BI
12 6 (1.94%) MySQL
13 5 (1.62%) Data Mining
14 4 (1.29%) SAS Data Integration Studio
15 3 (0.97%) Data Lake
16 2 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
17 1 (0.32%) Apache Hive
Development Applications
1 106 (34.30%) Jenkins
2 103 (33.33%) Git
3 84 (27.18%) JIRA
4 53 (17.15%) GitLab
5 31 (10.03%) Selenium
6 27 (8.74%) JUnit
7 19 (6.15%) SonarQube
8 15 (4.85%) Vagrant
9 10 (3.24%) Liquibase
10 9 (2.91%) CircleCI
11 8 (2.59%) Eclipse
11 8 (2.59%) IntelliJ
12 7 (2.27%) Bitbucket
12 7 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
13 6 (1.94%) Artifactory
13 6 (1.94%) Cypress.io
14 5 (1.62%) Gradle
14 5 (1.62%) Maven
14 5 (1.62%) Postman
14 5 (1.62%) webpack
General
1 120 (38.83%) Social Skills
2 56 (18.12%) Public Sector
3 42 (13.59%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (12.62%) Finance
5 14 (4.53%) Banking
5 14 (4.53%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (3.24%) Financial Institution
6 10 (3.24%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (1.29%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.65%) Marketing
9 2 (0.65%) Military
9 2 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.32%) Digital Healthcare
10 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 50 (16.18%) DevOps Engineer
2 43 (13.92%) Senior
3 41 (13.27%) Developer
4 32 (10.36%) Data Engineer
5 25 (8.09%) AWS Engineer
6 18 (5.83%) AWS DevOps
6 18 (5.83%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 16 (5.18%) Cloud Engineer
7 16 (5.18%) Platform Engineer
8 15 (4.85%) Analyst
8 15 (4.85%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 14 (4.53%) Test Specialist
10 13 (4.21%) Architect
10 13 (4.21%) Senior DevOps
10 13 (4.21%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 13 (4.21%) Site Engineer
10 13 (4.21%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 13 (4.21%) Software Engineer
10 13 (4.21%) Splunk Engineer
11 12 (3.88%) DevSecOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (18.77%) REST
2 37 (11.97%) Elastic Stack
3 20 (6.47%) YAML
4 18 (5.83%) RESTful
5 17 (5.50%) HTML
6 16 (5.18%) JSON
6 16 (5.18%) pytest
7 15 (4.85%) Kafka
8 13 (4.21%) Keycloak
8 13 (4.21%) Middleware
9 12 (3.88%) .NET
9 12 (3.88%) Flask
10 11 (3.56%) FastAPI
10 11 (3.56%) Play Framework
11 10 (3.24%) LDAP
11 10 (3.24%) Node.js
11 10 (3.24%) SOAP
11 10 (3.24%) XML
12 9 (2.91%) HTML5
13 8 (2.59%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 40 (12.94%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.18%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (4.85%) Management Information System
3 15 (4.85%) Replication
4 14 (4.53%) Public Cloud
5 12 (3.88%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (3.56%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.27%) Product Ownership
8 5 (1.62%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.62%) Private Cloud
9 3 (0.97%) Client/Server
9 3 (0.97%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.65%) CMDB
10 2 (0.65%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.65%) IoT
10 2 (0.65%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.65%) Security Posture
11 1 (0.32%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 63 (20.39%) Linux
2 30 (9.71%) Windows
3 24 (7.77%) Unix
4 15 (4.85%) Amazon Linux
4 15 (4.85%) VMS
5 9 (2.91%) Ubuntu
6 4 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.29%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.32%) Android
7 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (63.43%) CI/CD
2 145 (46.93%) Agile
3 108 (34.95%) Containerisation
4 104 (33.66%) Problem-Solving
5 88 (28.48%) Analytics
6 73 (23.62%) Test Automation
7 72 (23.30%) Data Pipeline
8 69 (22.33%) Scrum
9 62 (20.06%) Change Management
10 59 (19.09%) Data Modelling
10 59 (19.09%) Infrastructure as Code
11 57 (18.45%) Continuous Improvement
12 56 (18.12%) ETL
13 54 (17.48%) Stakeholder Management
14 51 (16.50%) Migration
15 48 (15.53%) Deployment Automation
16 45 (14.56%) Microservices
17 43 (13.92%) Data Integration
18 41 (13.27%) Business Intelligence
19 36 (11.65%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 126 (40.78%) Python
2 88 (28.48%) SQL
3 43 (13.92%) Go
4 35 (11.33%) PowerShell
5 31 (10.03%) Bash
6 18 (5.83%) Java
6 18 (5.83%) JavaScript
7 16 (5.18%) Groovy
8 12 (3.88%) C#
9 11 (3.56%) Scala
10 8 (2.59%) TypeScript
11 7 (2.27%) Perl
12 6 (1.94%) VBA
13 2 (0.65%) Bicep
13 2 (0.65%) 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
1 166 (53.72%) Security Cleared
2 142 (45.95%) SC Cleared
3 47 (15.21%) Degree
4 35 (11.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (9.71%) DV Cleared
6 29 (9.39%) Azure Certification
7 15 (4.85%) AWS Certification
8 14 (4.53%) Master's Degree
9 8 (2.59%) IIBA
10 6 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.97%) CISSP
13 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.65%) CISM
13 2 (0.65%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.65%) PMP
14 1 (0.32%) PRINCE2 Certification
14 1 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.36%) Data Quality
2 26 (8.41%) QA
3 12 (3.88%) NCSC
4 9 (2.91%) GDPR
4 9 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 4 (1.29%) NIST
7 2 (0.65%) 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
1 171 (55.34%) Docker
2 15 (4.85%) DFS Replication
3 9 (2.91%) Dovecot
3 9 (2.91%) Postfix
3 9 (2.91%) Squid
4 8 (2.59%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.32%) HDFS
5 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 146 (47.25%) Kubernetes
2 78 (25.24%) Terraform
3 55 (17.80%) Grafana
4 52 (16.83%) Prometheus
5 49 (15.86%) Ansible
6 26 (8.41%) Puppet
7 15 (4.85%) Kibana
8 9 (2.91%) Nessus
8 9 (2.91%) Proxmox
9 6 (1.94%) Argo
9 6 (1.94%) Progress Chef
10 5 (1.62%) Podman
11 3 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.65%) HP ALM
13 1 (0.32%) CA Endevor
13 1 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
13 1 (0.32%) logstash
13 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 59 (19.09%) Microsoft
2 51 (16.50%) Oracle
3 43 (13.92%) Splunk
4 36 (11.65%) Talend
5 35 (11.33%) Denodo
6 27 (8.74%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.53%) Google
8 10 (3.24%) AppDynamics
9 9 (2.91%) Dynatrace
9 9 (2.91%) Jaspersoft
9 9 (2.91%) SAP
10 8 (2.59%) CyberArk
10 8 (2.59%) webMethods
11 7 (2.27%) Red Hat
12 6 (1.94%) VMware
13 4 (1.29%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.29%) F5
13 4 (1.29%) Palo Alto
14 3 (0.97%) Adobe
14 3 (0.97%) IBM