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 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 34 28
Rank change year-on-year +24 -6 -8
Contract jobs citing DevOps 316 83 107
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.87% 5.41% 5.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.15% 6.13% 6.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 49 82
10th Percentile £425 £363 £350
25th Percentile £484 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £465
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% +10.17% -19.17%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £700 £614 £686
England median daily rate £525 £575 £568
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.32% -5.42%
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% -0.76%

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 2,086 1,355 1,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.97% 88.27% 83.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,352 833 1,046
10th Percentile £288 £213 £263
25th Percentile £404 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £489
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +5.37% -2.25%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 51 107
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £12.60
25th Percentile £16.10 £16.51 £17.25
Median hourly rate £20.00 £21.59 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.36% -6.13% +29.87%
75th Percentile £25.15 £33.65 £48.75
90th Percentile £35.24 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -1.41% +1.43%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 +19 106 £528 +11.05% 39
Shropshire +11 101 £513 +4.64% 4
Worcestershire +6 43 £650 +13.04% 2
Warwickshire +7 38 £475 -20.83% 11
Herefordshire 0 37 £650 +13.04%
Coventry -10 8 £460 +41.54% 6
Solihull +1 6 £588 -
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 2
Staffordshire - 1 £463 - 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 74 (23.42%) SAS
2 29 (9.18%) Confluence
3 14 (4.43%) OpenStack
4 9 (2.85%) Apache
4 9 (2.85%) WebLogic
5 8 (2.53%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (2.53%) JBoss
5 8 (2.53%) nginx
6 5 (1.58%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.27%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.63%) 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 9 (2.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.53%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (2.22%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 4 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Revit
Business Applications
1 4 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
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
1 138 (43.67%) Azure
2 100 (31.65%) AWS
3 53 (16.77%) Azure DevOps
3 53 (16.77%) GitHub
4 50 (15.82%) GCP
5 40 (12.66%) Serverless
6 29 (9.18%) GitHub Actions
7 27 (8.54%) Azure Data Factory
8 25 (7.91%) OpenShift
9 16 (5.06%) Microsoft 365
10 15 (4.75%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (4.75%) Amazon ELB
10 15 (4.75%) Amazon S3
10 15 (4.75%) AWS KMS
10 15 (4.75%) Azure Key Vault
10 15 (4.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (4.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 13 (4.11%) Power Platform
13 11 (3.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 11 (3.48%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 20 (6.33%) Firewall
2 14 (4.43%) DNS
3 10 (3.16%) FTP
3 10 (3.16%) HTTP
3 10 (3.16%) SMTP
3 10 (3.16%) SSH
4 7 (2.22%) IMAP
4 7 (2.22%) OpenLDAP
5 6 (1.90%) VPN
6 5 (1.58%) SSL
7 4 (1.27%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.95%) 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 (15.82%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (12.34%) Pentaho
3 32 (10.13%) Elasticsearch
4 22 (6.96%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 17 (5.38%) Oracle Database
6 16 (5.06%) NoSQL
7 14 (4.43%) Relational Database
8 12 (3.80%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 11 (3.48%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
10 9 (2.85%) MongoDB
10 9 (2.85%) Redis
11 7 (2.22%) Amazon Aurora
12 6 (1.90%) MySQL
12 6 (1.90%) Power BI
13 4 (1.27%) Data Mining
13 4 (1.27%) Metadata
13 4 (1.27%) SAS Data Integration Studio
14 3 (0.95%) Data Lake
15 2 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 106 (33.54%) Jenkins
2 100 (31.65%) Git
3 76 (24.05%) JIRA
4 53 (16.77%) GitLab
5 31 (9.81%) Selenium
6 26 (8.23%) JUnit
7 18 (5.70%) SonarQube
8 10 (3.16%) Liquibase
8 10 (3.16%) Vagrant
9 8 (2.53%) CircleCI
9 8 (2.53%) Eclipse
9 8 (2.53%) IntelliJ
10 6 (1.90%) Maven
11 5 (1.58%) Artifactory
11 5 (1.58%) Bitbucket
11 5 (1.58%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.27%) Gradle
12 4 (1.27%) Postman
12 4 (1.27%) Snyk
12 4 (1.27%) webpack
General
1 118 (37.34%) Social Skills
2 49 (15.51%) Public Sector
3 45 (14.24%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (12.03%) Finance
5 16 (5.06%) Banking
6 12 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (3.16%) Financial Institution
8 9 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (2.53%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (1.27%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.63%) Marketing
11 2 (0.63%) Military
11 2 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.32%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 45 (14.24%) Senior
2 44 (13.92%) Developer
3 43 (13.61%) DevOps Engineer
4 35 (11.08%) Data Engineer
5 18 (5.70%) Architect
5 18 (5.70%) AWS Engineer
6 17 (5.38%) Cloud Engineer
7 15 (4.75%) Software Engineer
7 15 (4.75%) Test Specialist
8 14 (4.43%) GCP Engineer
8 14 (4.43%) Site Engineer
8 14 (4.43%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 14 (4.43%) Splunk Engineer
9 13 (4.11%) Analyst
9 13 (4.11%) Senior DevOps
9 13 (4.11%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 12 (3.80%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 12 (3.80%) Project Manager
10 12 (3.80%) Senior Data Engineer
11 11 (3.48%) AWS DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (18.67%) REST
2 41 (12.97%) Elastic Stack
3 20 (6.33%) YAML
4 19 (6.01%) RESTful
5 16 (5.06%) HTML
5 16 (5.06%) JSON
5 16 (5.06%) Kafka
5 16 (5.06%) pytest
6 15 (4.75%) .NET
7 13 (4.11%) Flask
7 13 (4.11%) Keycloak
7 13 (4.11%) Middleware
8 12 (3.80%) FastAPI
8 12 (3.80%) Node.js
8 12 (3.80%) React
9 11 (3.48%) Play Framework
10 9 (2.85%) GraphQL
10 9 (2.85%) HTML5
10 9 (2.85%) Spring
10 9 (2.85%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 40 (12.66%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.06%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (5.06%) Management Information System
3 14 (4.43%) Public Cloud
4 13 (4.11%) Product Ownership
5 12 (3.80%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.48%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (3.48%) Onboarding
7 10 (3.16%) Replication
8 5 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
9 4 (1.27%) Private Cloud
10 3 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.95%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.63%) CMDB
11 2 (0.63%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.63%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.63%) IoT
11 2 (0.63%) Legacy Applications
12 1 (0.32%) Client/Server
12 1 (0.32%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 52 (16.46%) Linux
2 23 (7.28%) Unix
3 20 (6.33%) Windows
4 10 (3.16%) Amazon Linux
4 10 (3.16%) VMS
5 7 (2.22%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.63%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (65.51%) CI/CD
2 145 (45.89%) Agile
3 113 (35.76%) Containerisation
4 106 (33.54%) Problem-Solving
5 91 (28.80%) Analytics
6 79 (25.00%) Test Automation
7 76 (24.05%) Data Pipeline
8 69 (21.84%) Scrum
9 66 (20.89%) Infrastructure as Code
10 63 (19.94%) Data Modelling
11 59 (18.67%) ETL
12 57 (18.04%) Change Management
13 54 (17.09%) Continuous Improvement
13 54 (17.09%) Migration
14 51 (16.14%) Microservices
14 51 (16.14%) Stakeholder Management
15 50 (15.82%) Data Integration
16 49 (15.51%) Deployment Automation
17 41 (12.97%) Business Intelligence
18 37 (11.71%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 122 (38.61%) Python
2 96 (30.38%) SQL
3 43 (13.61%) Go
4 30 (9.49%) Bash
5 26 (8.23%) PowerShell
6 19 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 18 (5.70%) Java
8 15 (4.75%) C#
9 13 (4.11%) Groovy
10 11 (3.48%) Scala
11 8 (2.53%) TypeScript
12 6 (1.90%) VBA
13 5 (1.58%) Bicep
14 3 (0.95%) Perl
15 2 (0.63%) VB
16 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
16 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.32%) Ruby
16 1 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 1 (0.32%) VB6
Qualifications
1 163 (51.58%) Security Cleared
2 140 (44.30%) SC Cleared
3 47 (14.87%) Degree
4 37 (11.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 29 (9.18%) Azure Certification
6 28 (8.86%) DV Cleared
7 16 (5.06%) Master's Degree
8 13 (4.11%) AWS Certification
9 9 (2.85%) IIBA
10 7 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.95%) CISSP
13 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.63%) CISM
13 2 (0.63%) ISTQB
13 2 (0.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.63%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (11.39%) Data Quality
2 28 (8.86%) QA
3 13 (4.11%) NCSC
4 10 (3.16%) GDPR
4 10 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.58%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.58%) NIST
6 3 (0.95%) SLA
7 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 19650
7 1 (0.32%) PMO
System Software
1 173 (54.75%) Docker
2 10 (3.16%) DFS Replication
3 7 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 7 (2.22%) Dovecot
3 7 (2.22%) Postfix
3 7 (2.22%) Squid
4 1 (0.32%) HDFS
4 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 157 (49.68%) Kubernetes
2 85 (26.90%) Terraform
3 54 (17.09%) Grafana
4 53 (16.77%) Ansible
5 52 (16.46%) Prometheus
6 26 (8.23%) Puppet
7 19 (6.01%) Kibana
8 7 (2.22%) Nessus
8 7 (2.22%) Proxmox
9 6 (1.90%) Argo
10 5 (1.58%) logstash
11 4 (1.27%) Podman
11 4 (1.27%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.95%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.32%) CA Endevor
13 1 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
13 1 (0.32%) HP Quality Center
13 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 60 (18.99%) Microsoft
2 50 (15.82%) Oracle
3 42 (13.29%) Splunk
4 39 (12.34%) Talend
5 38 (12.03%) Denodo
6 21 (6.65%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.43%) Google
8 10 (3.16%) SAP
9 9 (2.85%) CyberArk
10 8 (2.53%) webMethods
11 7 (2.22%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.22%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.22%) Jaspersoft
12 5 (1.58%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.27%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.27%) F5
13 4 (1.27%) Palo Alto
13 4 (1.27%) VMware
14 3 (0.95%) Atlassian
14 3 (0.95%) HP