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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 26 29
Rank change year-on-year +19 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 316 107 108
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.62% 6.48% 6.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.76% 7.51% 7.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 70 84
10th Percentile £413 £350 £361
25th Percentile £468 £419 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £546 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.77% +9.12% -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 £50.00 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -25.93% +3.85% -0.92%

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 2,005 1,425 1,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 86.42% 86.31% 84.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,265 888 1,022
10th Percentile £263 £221 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% +3.90% -
75th Percentile £584 £612 £600
90th Percentile £675 £713 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 47 52
10th Percentile £13.51 £14.70 £14.57
25th Percentile £16.13 £16.51 £17.67
Median hourly rate £18.87 £21.59 £24.80
Median % change year-on-year -12.60% -12.94% +46.44%
75th Percentile £27.21 £34.38 £58.13
90th Percentile £35.76 £52.50 £68.63
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +26.76%

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 1 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 1 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 +17 109 £513 +5.13% 47
Shropshire +14 100 £513 +6.10% 9
Worcestershire +6 45 £625 +8.70% 6
Herefordshire -2 36 £650 +6.21% 1
Warwickshire +4 32 £463 -22.92% 10
Coventry -12 8 £440 -4.86% 6
Solihull +6 6 £588 +70.29% 1
Staffordshire +3 2 £463 +32.14% 7
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 5
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 (22.15%) SAS
2 36 (11.39%) Confluence
3 12 (3.80%) nginx
4 11 (3.48%) Apache
4 11 (3.48%) WebLogic
5 10 (3.16%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (3.16%) OpenStack
6 9 (2.85%) JBoss
7 8 (2.53%) SharePoint
8 4 (1.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.63%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.63%) CMS
10 1 (0.32%) CICS
10 1 (0.32%) IIS
10 1 (0.32%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (3.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 9 (2.85%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.95%) 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
5 1 (0.32%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.63%) ResourceLink
2 2 (0.63%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.32%) Maximo
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 137 (43.35%) Azure
2 114 (36.08%) AWS
3 58 (18.35%) GitHub
4 49 (15.51%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (15.51%) GCP
5 41 (12.97%) Serverless
6 31 (9.81%) GitHub Actions
7 27 (8.54%) OpenShift
8 26 (8.23%) Amazon S3
9 23 (7.28%) Azure Data Factory
10 22 (6.96%) Amazon EC2
10 22 (6.96%) Amazon ELB
10 22 (6.96%) AWS KMS
10 22 (6.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 21 (6.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 19 (6.01%) Microsoft 365
13 14 (4.43%) Azure Key Vault
14 13 (4.11%) Power Platform
15 12 (3.80%) Amazon ECS
15 12 (3.80%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (8.86%) Firewall
2 22 (6.96%) DNS
3 19 (6.01%) SSH
4 17 (5.38%) FTP
4 17 (5.38%) HTTP
4 17 (5.38%) SMTP
5 10 (3.16%) IMAP
5 10 (3.16%) OpenLDAP
6 6 (1.90%) SSL
6 6 (1.90%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.90%) VPN
7 3 (0.95%) 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 (17.09%) PostgreSQL
2 36 (11.39%) Pentaho
3 26 (8.23%) Elasticsearch
4 22 (6.96%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 19 (6.01%) Amazon RDS
6 17 (5.38%) NoSQL
6 17 (5.38%) Oracle Database
7 12 (3.80%) Relational Database
7 12 (3.80%) SAS Visual Analytics
8 10 (3.16%) Amazon Aurora
9 9 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (2.53%) MongoDB
10 8 (2.53%) Redis
11 7 (2.22%) Power BI
12 6 (1.90%) MySQL
13 5 (1.58%) Data Mining
14 4 (1.27%) SAS Data Integration Studio
15 3 (0.95%) Big Data
15 3 (0.95%) Data Lake
15 3 (0.95%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 110 (34.81%) Jenkins
2 108 (34.18%) Git
3 86 (27.22%) JIRA
4 54 (17.09%) GitLab
5 31 (9.81%) Selenium
6 27 (8.54%) JUnit
7 21 (6.65%) SonarQube
8 17 (5.38%) Vagrant
9 10 (3.16%) Liquibase
10 9 (2.85%) CircleCI
10 9 (2.85%) Sonatype Nexus
11 8 (2.53%) Eclipse
11 8 (2.53%) IntelliJ
12 7 (2.22%) Bitbucket
13 6 (1.90%) Artifactory
13 6 (1.90%) Cypress.io
14 5 (1.58%) Gradle
14 5 (1.58%) Maven
14 5 (1.58%) Snyk
14 5 (1.58%) webpack
General
1 120 (37.97%) Social Skills
2 57 (18.04%) Public Sector
3 41 (12.97%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (12.34%) Finance
5 14 (4.43%) Banking
5 14 (4.43%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (3.48%) Presentation Skills
7 10 (3.16%) Financial Institution
8 8 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 3 (0.95%) Marketing
11 2 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.63%) Military
12 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.32%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 56 (17.72%) DevOps Engineer
2 43 (13.61%) Senior
3 41 (12.97%) Developer
4 34 (10.76%) Data Engineer
5 30 (9.49%) AWS Engineer
6 22 (6.96%) AWS DevOps
6 22 (6.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 20 (6.33%) Platform Engineer
8 19 (6.01%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 16 (5.06%) Cloud Engineer
10 15 (4.75%) Analyst
11 14 (4.43%) Test Specialist
12 13 (4.11%) Senior DevOps
12 13 (4.11%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 13 (4.11%) Software Engineer
13 12 (3.80%) DevSecOps Engineer
13 12 (3.80%) GCP Engineer
13 12 (3.80%) Senior Data Engineer
13 12 (3.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 12 (3.80%) Splunk Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (18.35%) REST
2 38 (12.03%) Elastic Stack
3 23 (7.28%) YAML
4 18 (5.70%) RESTful
5 17 (5.38%) HTML
6 16 (5.06%) JSON
6 16 (5.06%) pytest
7 15 (4.75%) Kafka
8 14 (4.43%) Flask
9 13 (4.11%) .NET
9 13 (4.11%) Keycloak
10 12 (3.80%) Middleware
11 11 (3.48%) FastAPI
11 11 (3.48%) LDAP
11 11 (3.48%) Play Framework
12 10 (3.16%) Node.js
12 10 (3.16%) SOAP
12 10 (3.16%) XML
13 9 (2.85%) HTML5
14 8 (2.53%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 40 (12.66%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.38%) Replication
3 16 (5.06%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (4.43%) Management Information System
4 14 (4.43%) Public Cloud
5 12 (3.80%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.48%) Onboarding
7 10 (3.16%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.22%) Product Ownership
9 5 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.58%) Private Cloud
10 4 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.95%) Client/Server
11 3 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (0.63%) CMDB
12 2 (0.63%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.63%) IoT
12 2 (0.63%) Legacy Applications
12 2 (0.63%) Security Posture
13 1 (0.32%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 65 (20.57%) Linux
2 31 (9.81%) Windows
3 23 (7.28%) Unix
4 17 (5.38%) Amazon Linux
4 17 (5.38%) VMS
5 10 (3.16%) Ubuntu
6 4 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.27%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.32%) Android
7 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (63.29%) CI/CD
2 147 (46.52%) Agile
3 110 (34.81%) Containerisation
4 109 (34.49%) Problem-Solving
5 88 (27.85%) Analytics
6 73 (23.10%) Data Pipeline
6 73 (23.10%) Test Automation
7 69 (21.84%) Scrum
8 62 (19.62%) Change Management
8 62 (19.62%) Infrastructure as Code
9 58 (18.35%) Data Modelling
9 58 (18.35%) ETL
10 57 (18.04%) Continuous Improvement
11 53 (16.77%) Stakeholder Management
12 51 (16.14%) Migration
13 50 (15.82%) Deployment Automation
14 46 (14.56%) Microservices
15 43 (13.61%) Data Integration
16 41 (12.97%) Business Intelligence
17 36 (11.39%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 128 (40.51%) Python
2 91 (28.80%) SQL
3 43 (13.61%) Go
4 36 (11.39%) PowerShell
5 32 (10.13%) Bash
6 20 (6.33%) Groovy
7 19 (6.01%) Java
8 18 (5.70%) JavaScript
9 12 (3.80%) C#
10 11 (3.48%) Scala
11 8 (2.53%) Perl
11 8 (2.53%) TypeScript
12 6 (1.90%) VBA
13 2 (0.63%) Bicep
13 2 (0.63%) 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 (52.53%) Security Cleared
2 142 (44.94%) SC Cleared
3 49 (15.51%) Degree
4 35 (11.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (9.49%) Azure Certification
5 30 (9.49%) DV Cleared
6 17 (5.38%) AWS Certification
7 14 (4.43%) Master's Degree
8 8 (2.53%) IIBA
9 5 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.95%) CISSP
11 3 (0.95%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.95%) PMP
12 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.63%) CISM
13 1 (0.32%) CEH
13 1 (0.32%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.13%) Data Quality
2 27 (8.54%) QA
3 12 (3.80%) NCSC
4 9 (2.85%) GDPR
5 8 (2.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.95%) NIST
8 2 (0.63%) SLA
9 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.32%) ISO 19650
9 1 (0.32%) PMO
System Software
1 175 (55.38%) Docker
2 17 (5.38%) DFS Replication
3 10 (3.16%) Dovecot
3 10 (3.16%) Postfix
3 10 (3.16%) Squid
4 9 (2.85%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.32%) HDFS
5 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 148 (46.84%) Kubernetes
2 83 (26.27%) Terraform
3 57 (18.04%) Grafana
4 54 (17.09%) Prometheus
5 48 (15.19%) Ansible
6 25 (7.91%) Puppet
7 14 (4.43%) Kibana
8 10 (3.16%) Nessus
8 10 (3.16%) Proxmox
9 8 (2.53%) Argo
10 6 (1.90%) Progress Chef
11 5 (1.58%) Podman
12 3 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
13 2 (0.63%) HP ALM
13 2 (0.63%) 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 (18.99%) Microsoft
2 51 (16.14%) Oracle
3 42 (13.29%) Splunk
4 36 (11.39%) Talend
5 35 (11.08%) Denodo
6 29 (9.18%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.43%) Google
8 10 (3.16%) AppDynamics
8 10 (3.16%) Jaspersoft
9 9 (2.85%) Dynatrace
9 9 (2.85%) SAP
10 8 (2.53%) Red Hat
10 8 (2.53%) webMethods
11 7 (2.22%) CyberArk
12 6 (1.90%) VMware
13 4 (1.27%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.27%) F5
13 4 (1.27%) IBM
13 4 (1.27%) Palo Alto
14 3 (0.95%) Cloudera