Lead Development Operations
UK

The median Lead Development Operations salary in the UK is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 31 August 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 624 637 681
Rank change year-on-year +13 +44 -69
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead DevOps 169 51 125
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.10% 0.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.16% 0.11% 0.16%
Number of salaries quoted 146 33 94
10th Percentile £67,500 £73,500 £66,500
25th Percentile £78,913 £77,500 £66,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £82,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +3.03% -5.71%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £91,250
90th Percentile - £100,000 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £73,250
% change year-on-year +5.88% +16.04% -13.82%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 103,220 45,012 77,418
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.88% 89.83% 95.16%
Number of salaries quoted 70,861 26,764 49,481
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £74,521 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%

Lead DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Lead DevOps job vacancy trend in the UK

Lead DevOps
Salary Trend

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

Salary distribution trend for Lead DevOps job vacancies in the UK

Lead DevOps
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead DevOps over the 6 months to 31 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead DevOps in the UK

Lead DevOps
Top 16 Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 31 August 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
England +3 144 £92,500 +8.82% 46
UK excluding London -29 115 £90,000 +5.88% 25
Work from Home -9 48 £90,000 +9.09% 24
North of England -45 39 £90,000 +12.50% 10
South West -38 33 £100,000 +8.11% 3
London -35 32 £100,000 +8.11% 29
North West +16 27 £90,000 +2.86% 6
Midlands -13 26 £92,500 -7.50% 1
East Midlands - 16 £92,500 -
West Midlands -22 10 £92,500 -7.50% 1
South East -25 10 £80,000 -5.88%
Yorkshire -39 9 £90,000 +12.50% 4
Scotland 0 3 £55,000 -31.25% 6
North East -60 3 £90,000 -
East of England - 3 £70,000 - 4
Wales - 1 £74,000 - 1

Lead DevOps Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 31 August 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 featuring Lead DevOps in the job title.

1 169 (100.00%) DevOps
2 66 (39.05%) CI/CD
3 56 (33.14%) Infrastructure as Code
3 56 (33.14%) Terraform
4 42 (24.85%) Security Cleared
5 41 (24.26%) Azure
6 36 (21.30%) Containerisation
7 35 (20.71%) Kubernetes
8 30 (17.75%) Python
9 29 (17.16%) Docker
10 26 (15.38%) AWS
11 24 (14.20%) Technical Leadership
12 23 (13.61%) Ansible
13 21 (12.43%) Azure DevOps
14 20 (11.83%) Mentoring
14 20 (11.83%) Stakeholder Management
15 19 (11.24%) DV Cleared
16 18 (10.65%) GitHub
16 18 (10.65%) Java
16 18 (10.65%) SaaS
16 18 (10.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 16 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
17 16 (9.47%) Test Automation
18 15 (8.88%) Spring
18 15 (8.88%) Spring Boot
19 14 (8.28%) Observability
19 14 (8.28%) Platform Engineering
19 14 (8.28%) SC Cleared
20 12 (7.10%) GitHub Actions
20 12 (7.10%) GitLab

Lead DevOps Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 1 (0.59%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 7 (4.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 41 (24.26%) Azure
2 26 (15.38%) AWS
3 21 (12.43%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (10.65%) GitHub
4 18 (10.65%) SaaS
5 12 (7.10%) GitHub Actions
6 7 (4.14%) PaaS
7 6 (3.55%) Azure AKS
7 6 (3.55%) IaaS
8 5 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (2.96%) GCP
9 3 (1.78%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon ELB
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon S3
10 2 (1.18%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (1.18%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (1.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 1 (0.59%) Google Compute Engine
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.59%) DMARC
1 1 (0.59%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.78%) Flink
1 3 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.59%) MariaDB
2 1 (0.59%) Metadata
2 1 (0.59%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 12 (7.10%) GitLab
2 9 (5.33%) Git
3 8 (4.73%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.18%) JIRA
5 1 (0.59%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.59%) Selenium
General
1 12 (7.10%) Retail
2 11 (6.51%) Public Sector
2 11 (6.51%) Social Skills
3 3 (1.78%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (1.78%) Finance
3 3 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 2 (1.18%) Banking
4 2 (1.18%) Games
5 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (0.59%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (33.14%) Terraform
2 15 (8.88%) Spring
2 15 (8.88%) Spring Boot
3 7 (4.14%) .NET
4 6 (3.55%) Node.js
5 4 (2.37%) React
6 3 (1.78%) Kafka
7 2 (1.18%) RESTful
7 2 (1.18%) Web Services
8 1 (0.59%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.59%) CSS
8 1 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.59%) HTML
8 1 (0.59%) OAuth
8 1 (0.59%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.59%) Playwright
8 1 (0.59%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.33%) Cloud Native
2 3 (1.78%) Blog
2 3 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
2 3 (1.78%) Low-Code
2 3 (1.78%) Product Ownership
3 2 (1.18%) Web Conferencing
4 1 (0.59%) CMDB
4 1 (0.59%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 9 (5.33%) Linux
2 4 (2.37%) Unix
3 1 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.59%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (100.00%) DevOps
2 66 (39.05%) CI/CD
3 56 (33.14%) Infrastructure as Code
4 36 (21.30%) Containerisation
5 24 (14.20%) Technical Leadership
6 20 (11.83%) Mentoring
6 20 (11.83%) Stakeholder Management
7 18 (10.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 16 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
8 16 (9.47%) Test Automation
9 14 (8.28%) Observability
9 14 (8.28%) Platform Engineering
10 11 (6.51%) Agile
11 10 (5.92%) Coaching
11 10 (5.92%) DevSecOps
12 9 (5.33%) Incident Response
13 8 (4.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 7 (4.14%) AI
14 7 (4.14%) Contingency Planning
14 7 (4.14%) Manual Testing
Programming Languages
1 30 (17.75%) Python
2 18 (10.65%) Java
3 9 (5.33%) Bash
4 7 (4.14%) PowerShell
5 3 (1.78%) Bicep
5 3 (1.78%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.18%) Go
6 2 (1.18%) Ruby
7 1 (0.59%) C#
7 1 (0.59%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 42 (24.85%) Security Cleared
2 19 (11.24%) DV Cleared
3 14 (8.28%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.96%) QA
System Software
1 29 (17.16%) Docker
2 1 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 35 (20.71%) Kubernetes
2 23 (13.61%) Ansible
3 2 (1.18%) Packer
4 1 (0.59%) Grafana
4 1 (0.59%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (2.96%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.78%) Atlassian
2 3 (1.78%) Google
3 2 (1.18%) Pega
4 1 (0.59%) Dynatrace
4 1 (0.59%) Red Hat
4 1 (0.59%) Salesforce
4 1 (0.59%) SAP
4 1 (0.59%) SendGrid
4 1 (0.59%) ServiceNow