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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 29 34
Rank change year-on-year +18 +5 -9
Contract jobs citing DevOps 306 87 100
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.94% 6.00% 5.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.02% 6.75% 6.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 54 76
10th Percentile £423 £363 £334
25th Percentile £475 £414 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £461
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +8.40% -19.78%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £558
90th Percentile £690 £664 £644
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 £70.97 £65.00
% change year-on-year -29.55% +9.18% -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 2,182 1,288 1,597
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.17% 88.77% 84.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,408 806 1,041
10th Percentile £291 £210 £275
25th Percentile £402 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
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 80 48 111
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.64 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.21 £15.22 £16.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £20.12 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.66% -12.52% +29.94%
75th Percentile £26.98 £30.95 £48.75
90th Percentile £33.20 £45.13 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -26.37% - -

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 16 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 16 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 +15 111 £525 +10.53% 47
Shropshire +12 85 £500 +2.04% 16
Warwickshire +8 42 £510 -15.00% 7
Worcestershire +6 40 £650 +8.33% 4
Herefordshire +1 35 £650 -7.14%
Coventry -9 9 £430 - 7
Solihull 0 7 £575 - 5
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 53 (17.32%) SAS
2 30 (9.80%) Confluence
3 13 (4.25%) OpenStack
4 9 (2.94%) Apache
4 9 (2.94%) WebLogic
5 8 (2.61%) JBoss
6 6 (1.96%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.31%) nginx
8 2 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.33%) IIS
9 1 (0.33%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.33%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.59%) Microsoft Project
2 10 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (1.31%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 3 (0.98%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.33%) Revit
Business Applications
1 4 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.65%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.33%) Maximo
3 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 135 (44.12%) Azure
2 95 (31.05%) AWS
3 59 (19.28%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (17.97%) GCP
5 53 (17.32%) GitHub
6 39 (12.75%) Serverless
7 30 (9.80%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (9.15%) Azure Data Factory
9 27 (8.82%) OpenShift
10 16 (5.23%) Azure Key Vault
11 15 (4.90%) Amazon EC2
11 15 (4.90%) Amazon S3
11 15 (4.90%) AWS KMS
12 14 (4.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (4.25%) Power Platform
14 12 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 11 (3.59%) Azure AKS
15 11 (3.59%) Datadog
15 11 (3.59%) Dynamics 365
15 11 (3.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.56%) Firewall
2 12 (3.92%) DNS
3 7 (2.29%) VPN
4 6 (1.96%) FTP
4 6 (1.96%) HTTP
4 6 (1.96%) SMTP
4 6 (1.96%) SSH
5 5 (1.63%) SSL
6 4 (1.31%) IMAP
6 4 (1.31%) Network Security
6 4 (1.31%) OpenLDAP
6 4 (1.31%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.33%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.33%) LAN
7 1 (0.33%) SD-WAN
7 1 (0.33%) SMS
7 1 (0.33%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (10.46%) Elasticsearch
3 26 (8.50%) Pentaho
4 16 (5.23%) NoSQL
5 15 (4.90%) Relational Database
6 14 (4.58%) Oracle Database
6 14 (4.58%) SAS Enterprise Guide
7 11 (3.59%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (2.94%) MongoDB
8 9 (2.94%) Redis
9 8 (2.61%) Amazon Aurora
10 7 (2.29%) MySQL
10 7 (2.29%) Power BI
11 4 (1.31%) Data Mining
11 4 (1.31%) DynamoDB
11 4 (1.31%) Metadata
12 3 (0.98%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.98%) SAS Visual Analytics
13 2 (0.65%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 97 (31.70%) Jenkins
2 89 (29.08%) Git
3 63 (20.59%) JIRA
4 50 (16.34%) GitLab
5 33 (10.78%) Selenium
6 32 (10.46%) JUnit
7 20 (6.54%) SonarQube
8 11 (3.59%) Liquibase
9 10 (3.27%) Maven
10 8 (2.61%) CircleCI
10 8 (2.61%) Eclipse
10 8 (2.61%) IntelliJ
11 6 (1.96%) Artifactory
11 6 (1.96%) Vagrant
12 5 (1.63%) Bitbucket
12 5 (1.63%) Cypress.io
12 5 (1.63%) Postman
13 4 (1.31%) Mockito
13 4 (1.31%) Snyk
13 4 (1.31%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 116 (37.91%) Social Skills
2 47 (15.36%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (14.05%) Finance
3 43 (14.05%) Public Sector
4 17 (5.56%) Banking
5 10 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
5 10 (3.27%) Financial Institution
6 9 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
8 4 (1.31%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.65%) Military
9 2 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.33%) Marketing
10 1 (0.33%) Publishing
10 1 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 47 (15.36%) Senior
2 46 (15.03%) Developer
3 39 (12.75%) DevOps Engineer
4 33 (10.78%) Data Engineer
5 20 (6.54%) Architect
6 18 (5.88%) Cloud Engineer
7 16 (5.23%) Software Engineer
7 16 (5.23%) Test Specialist
8 15 (4.90%) Analyst
8 15 (4.90%) GCP Engineer
9 14 (4.58%) AWS Engineer
9 14 (4.58%) Senior DevOps
9 14 (4.58%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 14 (4.58%) Site Engineer
9 14 (4.58%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 14 (4.58%) Splunk Engineer
10 13 (4.25%) Engagement Manager
11 12 (3.92%) Business Analyst
11 12 (3.92%) Project Manager
11 12 (3.92%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (21.24%) REST
2 42 (13.73%) Elastic Stack
3 20 (6.54%) RESTful
3 20 (6.54%) YAML
4 18 (5.88%) Node.js
5 17 (5.56%) pytest
6 16 (5.23%) JSON
6 16 (5.23%) Kafka
7 15 (4.90%) .NET
8 14 (4.58%) Flask
8 14 (4.58%) HTML
8 14 (4.58%) Spring
9 13 (4.25%) Keycloak
9 13 (4.25%) Middleware
9 13 (4.25%) React
10 12 (3.92%) FastAPI
10 12 (3.92%) Hibernate
10 12 (3.92%) SOAP
11 11 (3.59%) Play Framework
12 9 (2.94%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 39 (12.75%) Cloud Native
2 19 (6.21%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (5.23%) Management Information System
4 15 (4.90%) Public Cloud
5 14 (4.58%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (4.58%) Onboarding
5 14 (4.58%) Product Ownership
6 11 (3.59%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.96%) Replication
8 5 (1.63%) Cyber Threat
9 4 (1.31%) Private Cloud
10 3 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.65%) CMDB
11 2 (0.65%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (0.65%) Legacy Applications
11 2 (0.65%) Security Posture
12 1 (0.33%) Data Protection Act
12 1 (0.33%) Freedom of Information
12 1 (0.33%) PDA
Operating Systems
1 54 (17.65%) Linux
2 24 (7.84%) Unix
3 17 (5.56%) Windows
4 6 (1.96%) Amazon Linux
4 6 (1.96%) VMS
5 4 (1.31%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.98%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (63.40%) CI/CD
2 149 (48.69%) Agile
3 114 (37.25%) Containerisation
4 97 (31.70%) Problem-Solving
5 70 (22.88%) Analytics
6 63 (20.59%) Test Automation
7 62 (20.26%) Infrastructure as Code
8 61 (19.93%) Data Pipeline
8 61 (19.93%) Scrum
9 57 (18.63%) Change Management
9 57 (18.63%) Stakeholder Management
10 54 (17.65%) Microservices
11 51 (16.67%) Migration
12 50 (16.34%) Data Modelling
13 49 (16.01%) Continuous Improvement
14 47 (15.36%) ETL
15 36 (11.76%) Computer Science
15 36 (11.76%) Software Engineering
16 35 (11.44%) Mentoring
17 33 (10.78%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 123 (40.20%) Python
2 87 (28.43%) SQL
3 44 (14.38%) Go
4 31 (10.13%) Bash
5 24 (7.84%) Java
6 23 (7.52%) PowerShell
7 19 (6.21%) JavaScript
8 14 (4.58%) C#
9 12 (3.92%) Scala
10 9 (2.94%) Groovy
10 9 (2.94%) TypeScript
11 7 (2.29%) Bicep
12 6 (1.96%) VBA
13 3 (0.98%) VB
14 2 (0.65%) Perl
14 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.65%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.33%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.33%) Ruby
15 1 (0.33%) VB6
Qualifications
1 143 (46.73%) Security Cleared
2 121 (39.54%) SC Cleared
3 44 (14.38%) Degree
4 36 (11.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (9.15%) Azure Certification
6 25 (8.17%) DV Cleared
7 16 (5.23%) Master's Degree
8 12 (3.92%) AWS Certification
9 9 (2.94%) IIBA
10 8 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.98%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
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%) CISSP
13 2 (0.65%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.65%) PMP
13 2 (0.65%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (10.78%) QA
2 26 (8.50%) Data Quality
3 11 (3.59%) GDPR
3 11 (3.59%) NCSC
4 9 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.63%) Accessibility
6 4 (1.31%) NIST
6 4 (1.31%) SLA
7 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.33%) FATCA
7 1 (0.33%) ISO 19650
7 1 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 153 (50.00%) Docker
2 7 (2.29%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.29%) Postfix
3 6 (1.96%) DFS Replication
4 4 (1.31%) Dovecot
4 4 (1.31%) Squid
5 3 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.65%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.65%) vSphere
7 1 (0.33%) HDFS
7 1 (0.33%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 140 (45.75%) Kubernetes
2 82 (26.80%) Terraform
3 57 (18.63%) Grafana
4 56 (18.30%) Ansible
5 48 (15.69%) Prometheus
6 26 (8.50%) Puppet
7 19 (6.21%) Kibana
8 7 (2.29%) Argo
9 5 (1.63%) logstash
10 4 (1.31%) HP ALM
10 4 (1.31%) Nessus
10 4 (1.31%) Podman
10 4 (1.31%) Progress Chef
10 4 (1.31%) Proxmox
11 3 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.65%) HP Quality Center
12 2 (0.65%) vCenter Server
13 1 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
13 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
13 1 (0.33%) Packer
Vendors
1 56 (18.30%) Microsoft
2 45 (14.71%) Splunk
3 31 (10.13%) Oracle
4 26 (8.50%) Talend
5 25 (8.17%) Denodo
6 21 (6.86%) ServiceNow
7 17 (5.56%) Google
8 14 (4.58%) SAP
9 9 (2.94%) CyberArk
10 8 (2.61%) Jaspersoft
10 8 (2.61%) webMethods
11 7 (2.29%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.29%) Dynatrace
12 6 (1.96%) Atlassian
12 6 (1.96%) Red Hat
13 5 (1.63%) VMware
14 4 (1.31%) CheckPoint
14 4 (1.31%) F5
14 4 (1.31%) HP
14 4 (1.31%) Palo Alto