Lead DevOps Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Lead Development Operations
UK > UK excluding London

The median Lead Development Operations salary in the UK excluding London is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 18 September 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 555 510 570
Rank change year-on-year -45 +60 -50
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead DevOps 115 29 73
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.14% 0.084% 0.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.15% 0.094% 0.14%
Number of salaries quoted 101 22 53
10th Percentile £67,500 £56,150 -
25th Percentile £79,400 £77,500 £66,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +21.43% -17.65%
75th Percentile £100,000 £88,750 £87,500
90th Percentile - £99,625 £90,000
UK median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% -8.57%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 78,906 30,717 52,808
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.39% 89.30% 95.21%
Number of salaries quoted 54,746 17,484 30,834
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,620
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,589 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +6.53% - -8.33%

Lead DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Lead DevOps' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Lead DevOps job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Lead DevOps
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Lead DevOps job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Lead DevOps job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Lead DevOps
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead DevOps in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 18 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead DevOps in the UK excluding London

Lead DevOps
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead DevOps within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 18 September 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England -36 46 £90,000 +12.50% 30
South West -54 33 £100,000 +8.11% 6
North West +16 32 £90,000 +2.86% 22
Midlands -29 20 £87,500 -12.50% 6
East Midlands - 12 £84,000 - 2
Yorkshire -46 11 £90,000 +21.62% 6
South East -36 10 £80,000 -5.88% 11
West Midlands -41 8 £90,000 -10.00% 4
Scotland +7 5 £77,500 -3.13% 17
North East -68 3 £90,000 - 2
Wales - 1 £74,000 - 1
Lead DevOps
UK

Lead DevOps Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 18 September 2026, Lead DevOps job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Lead DevOps in the job title.

1 115 (100.00%) DevOps
2 47 (40.87%) CI/CD
3 46 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 35 (30.43%) Security Cleared
4 35 (30.43%) Terraform
5 29 (25.22%) Containerisation
6 27 (23.48%) Kubernetes
7 26 (22.61%) Python
8 24 (20.87%) Docker
9 23 (20.00%) Ansible
10 20 (17.39%) DV Cleared
11 18 (15.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 18 (15.65%) Stakeholder Management
12 17 (14.78%) Azure
12 17 (14.78%) Mentoring
13 15 (13.04%) AWS
13 15 (13.04%) Java
13 15 (13.04%) Spring
13 15 (13.04%) Spring Boot
14 14 (12.17%) Technical Leadership
15 13 (11.30%) Azure DevOps
15 13 (11.30%) GitLab
15 13 (11.30%) Test Automation
16 10 (8.70%) Bash
16 10 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
16 10 (8.70%) GitHub
17 9 (7.83%) Coaching
18 8 (6.96%) DevSecOps
18 8 (6.96%) Linux
18 8 (6.96%) PowerShell

Lead DevOps Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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:

Business Applications
1 7 (6.09%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 17 (14.78%) Azure
2 15 (13.04%) AWS
3 13 (11.30%) Azure DevOps
4 10 (8.70%) GitHub
5 7 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (4.35%) Azure AKS
7 3 (2.61%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (2.61%) GCP
7 3 (2.61%) IaaS
7 3 (2.61%) PaaS
8 2 (1.74%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (1.74%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (1.74%) Azure Sentinel
9 1 (0.87%) Amazon ECS
9 1 (0.87%) Datadog
9 1 (0.87%) Google Compute Engine
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (2.61%) Flink
Development Applications
1 13 (11.30%) GitLab
2 5 (4.35%) Git
2 5 (4.35%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.87%) JIRA
General
1 8 (6.96%) Public Sector
1 8 (6.96%) Social Skills
2 7 (6.09%) Retail
3 3 (2.61%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (1.74%) Banking
4 2 (1.74%) Finance
4 2 (1.74%) Games
4 2 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (0.87%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (30.43%) Terraform
2 15 (13.04%) Spring
2 15 (13.04%) Spring Boot
3 4 (3.48%) .NET
3 4 (3.48%) Node.js
4 3 (2.61%) Kafka
4 3 (2.61%) React
5 1 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.87%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 3 (2.61%) Cloud Native
1 3 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
2 1 (0.87%) Product Ownership
2 1 (0.87%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.96%) Linux
2 3 (2.61%) Unix
3 1 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.87%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (100.00%) DevOps
2 47 (40.87%) CI/CD
3 46 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 29 (25.22%) Containerisation
5 18 (15.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
5 18 (15.65%) Stakeholder Management
6 17 (14.78%) Mentoring
7 14 (12.17%) Technical Leadership
8 13 (11.30%) Test Automation
9 10 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
10 9 (7.83%) Coaching
11 8 (6.96%) DevSecOps
12 7 (6.09%) Agile
12 7 (6.09%) Contingency Planning
12 7 (6.09%) E-Commerce
12 7 (6.09%) GAP Analysis
12 7 (6.09%) Manual Testing
12 7 (6.09%) Observability
13 6 (5.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 6 (5.22%) PLM
Programming Languages
1 26 (22.61%) Python
2 15 (13.04%) Java
3 10 (8.70%) Bash
4 8 (6.96%) PowerShell
5 2 (1.74%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 35 (30.43%) Security Cleared
2 20 (17.39%) DV Cleared
3 6 (5.22%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.74%) QA
System Software
1 24 (20.87%) Docker
2 1 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (23.48%) Kubernetes
2 23 (20.00%) Ansible
3 1 (0.87%) Grafana
3 1 (0.87%) Packer
3 1 (0.87%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (4.35%) Microsoft
2 3 (2.61%) Atlassian
3 2 (1.74%) Google
3 2 (1.74%) Intel
4 1 (0.87%) Dynatrace
4 1 (0.87%) Pega
4 1 (0.87%) Red Hat