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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 35 27
Rank change year-on-year +26 -8 -5
Contract jobs citing DevOps 318 83 107
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.93% 5.35% 5.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.19% 6.06% 6.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 49 82
10th Percentile £423 £363 £350
25th Percentile £483 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £465
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% +10.17% -19.35%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £700 £614 £686
England median daily rate £525 £575 £569
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.05% -5.17%
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 2,094 1,370 1,578
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.16% 88.27% 84.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,359 845 1,033
10th Percentile £290 £213 £263
25th Percentile £405 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £488
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +6.67% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 51 101
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.10 £16.51 £17.25
Median hourly rate £20.00 £21.59 £24.60
Median % change year-on-year -7.36% -12.24% +38.83%
75th Percentile £25.15 £33.65 £48.75
90th Percentile £35.24 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £36.00
% change year-on-year -27.63% -3.47% +2.86%

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 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 1 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 +24 107 £525 +10.53% 38
Shropshire +11 101 £513 +4.64% 5
Worcestershire +6 44 £650 +13.04% 3
Warwickshire +6 38 £475 -20.83% 11
Herefordshire 0 37 £650 +13.04%
Coventry -7 8 £460 +41.54% 7
Solihull +1 6 £588 -
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 2
Staffordshire - 1 £463 - 7
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 (23.27%) SAS
2 29 (9.12%) Confluence
3 15 (4.72%) OpenStack
4 9 (2.83%) Apache
4 9 (2.83%) nginx
4 9 (2.83%) WebLogic
5 8 (2.52%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (2.52%) JBoss
6 5 (1.57%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.31%) CICS
9 1 (0.31%) CMS
9 1 (0.31%) IIS
9 1 (0.31%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 9 (2.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.52%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (2.20%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 4 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.31%) Revit
Business Applications
1 4 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.63%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.31%) Maximo
3 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.31%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 139 (43.71%) Azure
2 102 (32.08%) AWS
3 55 (17.30%) GitHub
4 54 (16.98%) Azure DevOps
5 51 (16.04%) GCP
6 41 (12.89%) Serverless
7 30 (9.43%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (8.49%) Azure Data Factory
9 26 (8.18%) OpenShift
10 16 (5.03%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (4.72%) Amazon EC2
11 15 (4.72%) Amazon ELB
11 15 (4.72%) Amazon S3
11 15 (4.72%) AWS KMS
11 15 (4.72%) Azure Key Vault
11 15 (4.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 14 (4.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (4.09%) Power Platform
14 12 (3.77%) Azure AKS
14 12 (3.77%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 20 (6.29%) Firewall
2 14 (4.40%) DNS
3 10 (3.14%) FTP
3 10 (3.14%) HTTP
3 10 (3.14%) SMTP
3 10 (3.14%) SSH
4 7 (2.20%) IMAP
4 7 (2.20%) OpenLDAP
5 6 (1.89%) VPN
6 5 (1.57%) SSL
7 4 (1.26%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.94%) Network Security
9 1 (0.31%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.31%) LAN
9 1 (0.31%) SD-WAN
9 1 (0.31%) SMS
9 1 (0.31%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (15.72%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (12.26%) Pentaho
3 32 (10.06%) Elasticsearch
4 22 (6.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 17 (5.35%) Oracle Database
6 16 (5.03%) NoSQL
7 15 (4.72%) Relational Database
8 12 (3.77%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 11 (3.46%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
10 9 (2.83%) MongoDB
10 9 (2.83%) Redis
11 7 (2.20%) Amazon Aurora
12 6 (1.89%) MySQL
12 6 (1.89%) Power BI
13 4 (1.26%) Data Mining
13 4 (1.26%) Metadata
13 4 (1.26%) SAS Data Integration Studio
14 3 (0.94%) Data Lake
15 2 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 107 (33.65%) Jenkins
2 101 (31.76%) Git
3 77 (24.21%) JIRA
4 54 (16.98%) GitLab
5 32 (10.06%) Selenium
6 27 (8.49%) JUnit
7 19 (5.97%) SonarQube
8 10 (3.14%) Liquibase
8 10 (3.14%) Vagrant
9 9 (2.83%) CircleCI
10 8 (2.52%) Eclipse
10 8 (2.52%) IntelliJ
11 7 (2.20%) Maven
12 6 (1.89%) Artifactory
12 6 (1.89%) Bitbucket
12 6 (1.89%) Cypress.io
13 5 (1.57%) Gradle
13 5 (1.57%) Snyk
13 5 (1.57%) Sonatype Nexus
13 5 (1.57%) webpack
General
1 118 (37.11%) Social Skills
2 50 (15.72%) Public Sector
3 45 (14.15%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (11.95%) Finance
5 16 (5.03%) Banking
6 12 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (3.14%) Financial Institution
8 9 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (1.26%) 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 (0.31%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.31%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 45 (14.15%) Developer
1 45 (14.15%) Senior
2 44 (13.84%) DevOps Engineer
3 35 (11.01%) Data Engineer
4 18 (5.66%) Architect
4 18 (5.66%) AWS Engineer
5 17 (5.35%) Cloud Engineer
6 15 (4.72%) Software Engineer
6 15 (4.72%) Test Specialist
7 14 (4.40%) GCP Engineer
7 14 (4.40%) Site Engineer
7 14 (4.40%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 14 (4.40%) Splunk Engineer
8 13 (4.09%) Analyst
8 13 (4.09%) Senior DevOps
8 13 (4.09%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 12 (3.77%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 12 (3.77%) Project Manager
9 12 (3.77%) Senior Data Engineer
10 11 (3.46%) AWS DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (19.18%) REST
2 42 (13.21%) Elastic Stack
3 21 (6.60%) YAML
4 20 (6.29%) RESTful
5 18 (5.66%) JSON
6 17 (5.35%) HTML
7 16 (5.03%) Kafka
7 16 (5.03%) pytest
8 15 (4.72%) .NET
9 13 (4.09%) Flask
9 13 (4.09%) Keycloak
9 13 (4.09%) Middleware
10 12 (3.77%) FastAPI
10 12 (3.77%) Node.js
10 12 (3.77%) React
11 11 (3.46%) Play Framework
12 10 (3.14%) SOAP
12 10 (3.14%) XML
13 9 (2.83%) LDAP
13 9 (2.83%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 41 (12.89%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.03%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (5.03%) Management Information System
3 14 (4.40%) Public Cloud
4 13 (4.09%) Product Ownership
5 12 (3.77%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.46%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (3.46%) Onboarding
7 10 (3.14%) Replication
8 5 (1.57%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.57%) Private Cloud
9 3 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.94%) Security Posture
10 2 (0.63%) CMDB
10 2 (0.63%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.63%) IoT
10 2 (0.63%) Legacy Applications
11 1 (0.31%) Freedom of Information
11 1 (0.31%) PDA
Operating Systems
1 53 (16.67%) Linux
2 23 (7.23%) Unix
3 20 (6.29%) Windows
4 10 (3.14%) Amazon Linux
4 10 (3.14%) VMS
5 7 (2.20%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.63%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.31%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (65.72%) CI/CD
2 147 (46.23%) Agile
3 115 (36.16%) Containerisation
4 106 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
5 91 (28.62%) Analytics
6 80 (25.16%) Test Automation
7 76 (23.90%) Data Pipeline
8 70 (22.01%) Scrum
9 67 (21.07%) Infrastructure as Code
10 63 (19.81%) Data Modelling
11 59 (18.55%) ETL
12 57 (17.92%) Change Management
13 55 (17.30%) Continuous Improvement
14 54 (16.98%) Migration
15 52 (16.35%) Microservices
16 51 (16.04%) Stakeholder Management
17 50 (15.72%) Data Integration
17 50 (15.72%) Deployment Automation
18 41 (12.89%) Business Intelligence
19 39 (12.26%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 124 (38.99%) Python
2 96 (30.19%) SQL
3 44 (13.84%) Go
4 31 (9.75%) Bash
5 26 (8.18%) PowerShell
6 19 (5.97%) Java
6 19 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 15 (4.72%) C#
8 13 (4.09%) Groovy
9 11 (3.46%) Scala
10 8 (2.52%) TypeScript
11 6 (1.89%) VBA
12 5 (1.57%) Bicep
13 3 (0.94%) Perl
14 2 (0.63%) VB
15 1 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.31%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.31%) Ruby
15 1 (0.31%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.31%) VB6
Qualifications
1 164 (51.57%) Security Cleared
2 140 (44.03%) SC Cleared
3 49 (15.41%) Degree
4 38 (11.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 29 (9.12%) Azure Certification
5 29 (9.12%) DV Cleared
6 16 (5.03%) Master's Degree
7 13 (4.09%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.83%) IIBA
9 7 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.94%) CISSP
12 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.63%) CISM
12 2 (0.63%) ISTQB
12 2 (0.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.63%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (11.32%) Data Quality
2 28 (8.81%) QA
3 13 (4.09%) NCSC
4 10 (3.14%) GDPR
4 10 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.57%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.57%) NIST
6 3 (0.94%) SLA
7 1 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.31%) ISO 19650
7 1 (0.31%) PMO
System Software
1 175 (55.03%) Docker
2 10 (3.14%) DFS Replication
3 7 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 7 (2.20%) Dovecot
3 7 (2.20%) Postfix
3 7 (2.20%) Squid
4 1 (0.31%) HDFS
4 1 (0.31%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 158 (49.69%) Kubernetes
2 86 (27.04%) Terraform
3 55 (17.30%) Grafana
4 54 (16.98%) Ansible
5 53 (16.67%) Prometheus
6 27 (8.49%) Puppet
7 19 (5.97%) Kibana
8 7 (2.20%) Nessus
8 7 (2.20%) Proxmox
9 6 (1.89%) Argo
10 5 (1.57%) logstash
10 5 (1.57%) Podman
10 5 (1.57%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.94%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.31%) CA Endevor
12 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
12 1 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 60 (18.87%) Microsoft
2 50 (15.72%) Oracle
3 43 (13.52%) Splunk
4 39 (12.26%) Talend
5 38 (11.95%) Denodo
6 21 (6.60%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.40%) Google
8 10 (3.14%) SAP
9 9 (2.83%) CyberArk
10 8 (2.52%) webMethods
11 7 (2.20%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.20%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.20%) Jaspersoft
12 5 (1.57%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.26%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.26%) F5
13 4 (1.26%) Palo Alto
13 4 (1.26%) VMware
14 3 (0.94%) HP
14 3 (0.94%) IBM