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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 24 31
Rank change year-on-year +11 +7 -10
Contract jobs citing DevOps 323 87 106
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.37% 6.60% 5.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.46% 7.35% 6.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 63 81
10th Percentile £404 £363 £306
25th Percentile £451 £413 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £463
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% +5.95% -19.57%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £588
90th Percentile £644 £618 £688
England median daily rate £525 £550 £556
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.08% -7.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 3
10th Percentile £63.90 - £55.25
25th Percentile £67.13 £56.25 £55.63
Median hourly rate £75.00 £57.50 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +30.43% +2.22% -
75th Percentile £79.75 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £81.10 - -
England median hourly rate £66.25 £72.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.62% +11.54% -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 2,399 1,183 1,648
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.44% 89.69% 84.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,598 785 1,094
10th Percentile £305 £200 £275
25th Percentile £402 £390 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £600
90th Percentile £672 £689 £700
England median daily rate £503 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 53 119
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.32 £11.11
25th Percentile £16.10 £14.70 £14.50
Median hourly rate £22.50 £18.13 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.10% -21.17% +29.80%
75th Percentile £28.75 £24.18 £40.25
90th Percentile £59.50 £34.75 £58.75
England median hourly rate £31.00 £33.11 £32.50
% change year-on-year -6.37% +1.88% -11.33%

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 18 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 18 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in the West Midlands

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 18 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 +5 109 £492 -0.10% 15
Birmingham +9 100 £525 +10.53% 46
Warwickshire +8 41 £510 +2.00% 6
Worcestershire +11 35 £638 +6.25% 1
Herefordshire +4 27 £650 -7.14%
Coventry - 20 £407 - 6
Solihull -3 11 £481 - 3
Staffordshire -3 1 £463 -11.90% 11
Wolverhampton - 1 - -
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 72 (22.29%) SAS
2 38 (11.76%) Confluence
3 11 (3.41%) OpenStack
4 5 (1.55%) Apache
4 5 (1.55%) WebLogic
5 4 (1.24%) JBoss
6 3 (0.93%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.31%) IIS
7 1 (0.31%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.31%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 8 (2.48%) Microsoft Project
2 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.24%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.62%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.31%) Maximo
3 1 (0.31%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 133 (41.18%) Azure
2 83 (25.70%) AWS
3 69 (21.36%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (17.03%) GitHub
5 40 (12.38%) GCP
6 38 (11.76%) Serverless
7 33 (10.22%) GitHub Actions
8 32 (9.91%) Azure Data Factory
9 28 (8.67%) OpenShift
10 16 (4.95%) Amazon S3
10 16 (4.95%) Power Platform
11 15 (4.64%) Azure Key Vault
12 14 (4.33%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (4.33%) AWS KMS
13 13 (4.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (4.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 11 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (3.41%) Entra ID
15 10 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
16 9 (2.79%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.72%) Firewall
2 5 (1.55%) VPN
3 4 (1.24%) DNS
3 4 (1.24%) Network Security
4 2 (0.62%) LAN
4 2 (0.62%) SD-WAN
4 2 (0.62%) SSL
4 2 (0.62%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.62%) WAN
5 1 (0.31%) 5G
5 1 (0.31%) BGP
5 1 (0.31%) DHCP
5 1 (0.31%) Internet
5 1 (0.31%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.31%) MPLS
5 1 (0.31%) OSPF
5 1 (0.31%) SMS
5 1 (0.31%) VLAN
5 1 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (15.79%) PostgreSQL
2 35 (10.84%) Pentaho
3 29 (8.98%) Elasticsearch
4 17 (5.26%) NoSQL
5 16 (4.95%) Oracle Database
6 13 (4.02%) SAS Enterprise Guide
7 11 (3.41%) Relational Database
8 10 (3.10%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (3.10%) Power BI
9 9 (2.79%) DynamoDB
10 8 (2.48%) Amazon Aurora
10 8 (2.48%) Redis
11 7 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
12 6 (1.86%) MySQL
13 5 (1.55%) MongoDB
13 5 (1.55%) SAS Visual Analytics
14 4 (1.24%) Apache Hive
14 4 (1.24%) Azure SQL Database
14 4 (1.24%) Hadoop
14 4 (1.24%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 105 (32.51%) Jenkins
2 87 (26.93%) Git
3 74 (22.91%) JIRA
4 52 (16.10%) GitLab
5 34 (10.53%) JUnit
6 33 (10.22%) Selenium
7 16 (4.95%) SonarQube
8 13 (4.02%) Bitbucket
9 12 (3.72%) Maven
10 8 (2.48%) Mockito
11 7 (2.17%) Liquibase
12 6 (1.86%) CircleCI
12 6 (1.86%) DbUnit
12 6 (1.86%) jMock
13 5 (1.55%) Cypress.io
13 5 (1.55%) Postman
14 4 (1.24%) Artifactory
14 4 (1.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 4 (1.24%) Eclipse
14 4 (1.24%) IntelliJ
General
1 109 (33.75%) Social Skills
2 48 (14.86%) Public Sector
3 46 (14.24%) Analytical Skills
4 44 (13.62%) Finance
5 15 (4.64%) Banking
6 10 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.48%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.55%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.24%) Retail
10 2 (0.62%) Advertising
10 2 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.62%) Military
10 2 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.31%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 52 (16.10%) Data Engineer
2 46 (14.24%) Developer
3 38 (11.76%) Senior
4 26 (8.05%) Architect
5 25 (7.74%) DevOps Engineer
6 20 (6.19%) Test Specialist
7 17 (5.26%) Full-Stack Developer
8 16 (4.95%) Analyst
8 16 (4.95%) Cloud Engineer
9 14 (4.33%) GCP Engineer
9 14 (4.33%) Project Manager
10 13 (4.02%) Business Analyst
10 13 (4.02%) Lead
10 13 (4.02%) Senior Data Engineer
10 13 (4.02%) Software Engineer
11 12 (3.72%) Engagement Manager
12 11 (3.41%) Site Engineer
12 11 (3.41%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 11 (3.41%) Splunk Engineer
12 11 (3.41%) Test Automation Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (19.50%) REST
2 33 (10.22%) Elastic Stack
3 28 (8.67%) Node.js
4 23 (7.12%) Flask
4 23 (7.12%) YAML
5 20 (6.19%) Kafka
5 20 (6.19%) pytest
6 17 (5.26%) RESTful
7 15 (4.64%) .NET
8 14 (4.33%) Spring
9 13 (4.02%) Middleware
9 13 (4.02%) React
9 13 (4.02%) SOAP
10 12 (3.72%) AngularJS
10 12 (3.72%) Django
10 12 (3.72%) Hibernate
10 12 (3.72%) Keycloak
11 11 (3.41%) FastAPI
11 11 (3.41%) JSON
12 10 (3.10%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 33 (10.22%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.19%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (6.19%) Product Ownership
3 13 (4.02%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (3.72%) Management Information System
5 11 (3.41%) Public Cloud
6 10 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (2.79%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.55%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (0.93%) IoT
9 3 (0.93%) SCADA
9 3 (0.93%) Security Posture
10 2 (0.62%) CMDB
10 2 (0.62%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.62%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.62%) Educational Technology
10 2 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (0.62%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.62%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 40 (12.38%) Linux
2 20 (6.19%) Unix
3 12 (3.72%) Windows
4 3 (0.93%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (63.78%) CI/CD
2 174 (53.87%) Agile
3 110 (34.06%) Containerisation
4 89 (27.55%) Analytics
5 88 (27.24%) Problem-Solving
6 86 (26.63%) Scrum
7 79 (24.46%) Test Automation
8 72 (22.29%) Data Pipeline
9 69 (21.36%) Stakeholder Management
10 63 (19.50%) Data Modelling
10 63 (19.50%) ETL
11 57 (17.65%) Continuous Improvement
12 56 (17.34%) Infrastructure as Code
13 54 (16.72%) Data Integration
14 50 (15.48%) Microservices
15 49 (15.17%) Migration
16 48 (14.86%) Change Management
17 43 (13.31%) Business Intelligence
18 37 (11.46%) Data Virtualisation
19 36 (11.15%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 106 (32.82%) SQL
2 104 (32.20%) Python
3 37 (11.46%) Go
4 26 (8.05%) Java
4 26 (8.05%) JavaScript
5 24 (7.43%) Bash
6 17 (5.26%) PowerShell
7 13 (4.02%) C#
8 10 (3.10%) Bicep
9 8 (2.48%) Scala
10 7 (2.17%) TypeScript
11 5 (1.55%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.93%) Groovy
12 3 (0.93%) HiveQL
12 3 (0.93%) VB
13 2 (0.62%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.62%) VBA
14 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.31%) Ruby
14 1 (0.31%) VB6
Qualifications
1 155 (47.99%) Security Cleared
2 133 (41.18%) SC Cleared
3 36 (11.15%) Degree
4 28 (8.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (7.43%) Azure Certification
6 17 (5.26%) DV Cleared
7 14 (4.33%) Master's Degree
8 9 (2.79%) IIBA
9 8 (2.48%) AWS Certification
10 7 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (1.55%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (1.24%) SAFe Agilist
13 3 (0.93%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 3 (0.93%) CISSP
13 3 (0.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 2 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (0.62%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.62%) PMP
14 2 (0.62%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (11.76%) Data Quality
2 31 (9.60%) QA
3 12 (3.72%) GDPR
4 11 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.86%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.86%) NCSC
6 5 (1.55%) NIST
7 4 (1.24%) SLA
8 1 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.31%) FATCA
8 1 (0.31%) PMO
System Software
1 142 (43.96%) Docker
2 6 (1.86%) Postfix
3 5 (1.55%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.24%) HDFS
4 4 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.62%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.62%) vSphere
6 1 (0.31%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.31%) KVM
6 1 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 140 (43.34%) Kubernetes
2 72 (22.29%) Terraform
3 49 (15.17%) Grafana
4 48 (14.86%) Ansible
5 34 (10.53%) Prometheus
6 17 (5.26%) Puppet
7 16 (4.95%) Kibana
8 6 (1.86%) Argo
9 5 (1.55%) logstash
10 4 (1.24%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.62%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.62%) Podman
11 2 (0.62%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.62%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.31%) Packer
12 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 51 (15.79%) Microsoft
2 39 (12.07%) Oracle
3 36 (11.15%) Splunk
4 35 (10.84%) Talend
5 34 (10.53%) Denodo
6 18 (5.57%) Atlassian
7 12 (3.72%) SAP
8 11 (3.41%) Google
9 10 (3.10%) ServiceNow
10 9 (2.79%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.48%) Jaspersoft
12 7 (2.17%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.17%) Databricks
12 7 (2.17%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.86%) Informatica
13 6 (1.86%) Red Hat
14 5 (1.55%) HP
14 5 (1.55%) VMware
15 4 (1.24%) webMethods
16 3 (0.93%) NEC