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 8 September 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 625 608 659
Rank change year-on-year -17 +51 -63
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead DevOps 171 51 128
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.10% 0.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.16% 0.12% 0.17%
Number of salaries quoted 148 34 90
10th Percentile £67,500 £68,300 -
25th Percentile £79,238 £77,500 £66,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% -8.57%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £90,938
90th Percentile - £100,000 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +5.88% +21.43% -17.65%

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 104,829 44,090 74,355
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.80% 89.66% 95.23%
Number of salaries quoted 72,155 25,926 46,385
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 £77,424 £75,000 £73,250
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £92,500
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 8 September 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 8 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
England -13 144 £90,000 +5.88% 69
UK excluding London -10 117 £90,000 +5.88% 34
Work from Home +2 52 £90,000 +9.09% 30
North of England -33 43 £90,000 +12.50% 9
South West -49 33 £100,000 +8.11% 5
North West +9 31 £90,000 +2.86% 3
London -45 31 £100,000 +8.11% 48
Midlands -19 22 £90,000 -10.00% 4
East Midlands - 13 £85,000 -
South East -35 10 £80,000 -5.88% 1
West Midlands -29 9 £90,000 -10.00% 4
Yorkshire -41 9 £90,000 +21.62% 6
Scotland +3 5 £55,000 -31.25% 11
North East -62 3 £90,000 -
East of England - 3 £70,000 - 4
Wales - 1 £74,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 8 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 featuring Lead DevOps in the job title.

1 171 (100.00%) DevOps
2 68 (39.77%) CI/CD
3 58 (33.92%) Terraform
4 57 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (24.56%) Azure
5 42 (24.56%) Security Cleared
6 38 (22.22%) Containerisation
7 37 (21.64%) Kubernetes
8 32 (18.71%) Python
9 31 (18.13%) Docker
10 28 (16.37%) AWS
11 25 (14.62%) Technical Leadership
12 23 (13.45%) Ansible
13 22 (12.87%) Azure DevOps
13 22 (12.87%) Mentoring
14 20 (11.70%) GitHub
14 20 (11.70%) Stakeholder Management
15 19 (11.11%) DV Cleared
15 19 (11.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 18 (10.53%) Java
16 18 (10.53%) SaaS
16 18 (10.53%) Test Automation
17 16 (9.36%) Continuous Improvement
17 16 (9.36%) Observability
18 15 (8.77%) Spring
18 15 (8.77%) Spring Boot
19 14 (8.19%) GitHub Actions
19 14 (8.19%) GitLab
19 14 (8.19%) SC Cleared
20 13 (7.60%) Platform Engineering

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 (0.58%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 7 (4.09%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 42 (24.56%) Azure
2 28 (16.37%) AWS
3 22 (12.87%) Azure DevOps
4 20 (11.70%) GitHub
5 18 (10.53%) SaaS
6 14 (8.19%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (4.68%) Azure AKS
8 7 (4.09%) PaaS
9 6 (3.51%) IaaS
10 5 (2.92%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.92%) GCP
11 4 (2.34%) Azure Key Vault
11 4 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
12 3 (1.75%) Amazon ECS
12 3 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.75%) Azure Sentinel
13 2 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
13 2 (1.17%) Amazon ELB
13 2 (1.17%) Amazon S3
13 2 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.58%) DMARC
1 1 (0.58%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.75%) Flink
1 3 (1.75%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.58%) MariaDB
2 1 (0.58%) Metadata
2 1 (0.58%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 14 (8.19%) GitLab
2 9 (5.26%) Git
3 8 (4.68%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.58%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.58%) JIRA
4 1 (0.58%) Selenium
General
1 13 (7.60%) Public Sector
2 12 (7.02%) Retail
3 11 (6.43%) Social Skills
4 3 (1.75%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (1.17%) Banking
5 2 (1.17%) Finance
5 2 (1.17%) Games
6 1 (0.58%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.58%) Law
6 1 (0.58%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (33.92%) Terraform
2 15 (8.77%) Spring
2 15 (8.77%) Spring Boot
3 7 (4.09%) .NET
4 6 (3.51%) Node.js
5 4 (2.34%) React
6 3 (1.75%) Kafka
7 2 (1.17%) RESTful
7 2 (1.17%) Web Services
8 1 (0.58%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.58%) CSS
8 1 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.58%) HTML
8 1 (0.58%) OAuth
8 1 (0.58%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.58%) Playwright
8 1 (0.58%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.26%) Cloud Native
2 3 (1.75%) Blog
2 3 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
2 3 (1.75%) Low-Code
3 2 (1.17%) Product Ownership
3 2 (1.17%) Web Conferencing
4 1 (0.58%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 9 (5.26%) Linux
2 4 (2.34%) Unix
3 1 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.58%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (100.00%) DevOps
2 68 (39.77%) CI/CD
3 57 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 38 (22.22%) Containerisation
5 25 (14.62%) Technical Leadership
6 22 (12.87%) Mentoring
7 20 (11.70%) Stakeholder Management
8 19 (11.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 18 (10.53%) Test Automation
10 16 (9.36%) Continuous Improvement
10 16 (9.36%) Observability
11 13 (7.60%) Platform Engineering
12 12 (7.02%) Coaching
12 12 (7.02%) DevSecOps
13 10 (5.85%) Agile
14 9 (5.26%) Incident Response
14 9 (5.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 7 (4.09%) Disaster Recovery
15 7 (4.09%) E-Commerce
15 7 (4.09%) GAP Analysis
Programming Languages
1 32 (18.71%) Python
2 18 (10.53%) Java
3 11 (6.43%) Bash
4 9 (5.26%) PowerShell
5 5 (2.92%) Bicep
6 3 (1.75%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.17%) Go
7 2 (1.17%) Ruby
8 1 (0.58%) C#
8 1 (0.58%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 42 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 19 (11.11%) DV Cleared
3 14 (8.19%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.92%) QA
System Software
1 31 (18.13%) Docker
2 1 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 37 (21.64%) Kubernetes
2 23 (13.45%) Ansible
3 2 (1.17%) Packer
4 1 (0.58%) Grafana
4 1 (0.58%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (4.09%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.75%) Atlassian
2 3 (1.75%) Google
3 2 (1.17%) Pega
4 1 (0.58%) Dynatrace
4 1 (0.58%) Intel
4 1 (0.58%) Red Hat
4 1 (0.58%) Salesforce
4 1 (0.58%) SAP
4 1 (0.58%) SendGrid