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 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 632 611 636
Rank change year-on-year -21 +25 -60
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead DevOps 173 49 130
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.100% 0.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.16% 0.11% 0.18%
Number of salaries quoted 141 33 82
10th Percentile £68,750 £67,700 -
25th Percentile £79,400 £77,500 £66,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% -5.88%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £90,000
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 109,377 44,042 71,502
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.96% 89.72% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,715 25,470 41,572
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,750
25th Percentile £41,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
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 29 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead DevOps in the UK

Lead DevOps
Top 15 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 29 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 -47 140 £90,000 +5.88% 104
UK excluding London -43 116 £90,000 +5.88% 61
Work from Home -6 50 £90,000 +10.77% 33
North of England -38 49 £90,000 +12.50% 23
North West +8 34 £90,000 +2.86% 16
South West -48 34 £100,000 +8.11% 7
London -53 29 £100,000 +11.11% 57
Midlands -43 15 £85,000 -15.00% 7
Yorkshire -32 12 £86,887 +17.41% 5
South East -43 11 £80,000 -5.88% 7
East Midlands - 9 £83,000 - 5
Scotland +16 6 £100,000 +25.00% 10
West Midlands -44 6 £90,000 -10.00% 2
North East -68 3 £90,000 - 2
Wales - 1 £74,000 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 173 (100.00%) DevOps
2 71 (41.04%) CI/CD
3 59 (34.10%) Terraform
4 57 (32.95%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (27.17%) Security Cleared
6 44 (25.43%) Containerisation
7 40 (23.12%) Kubernetes
8 37 (21.39%) Python
9 34 (19.65%) Azure
10 31 (17.92%) AWS
10 31 (17.92%) Docker
11 29 (16.76%) Ansible
12 28 (16.18%) Technical Leadership
13 25 (14.45%) Mentoring
14 24 (13.87%) DV Cleared
15 21 (12.14%) Stakeholder Management
16 20 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
16 20 (11.56%) GitHub
16 20 (11.56%) Java
16 20 (11.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 18 (10.40%) SaaS
18 17 (9.83%) Spring
18 17 (9.83%) Spring Boot
18 17 (9.83%) Test Automation
19 16 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
20 15 (8.67%) GitLab
21 14 (8.09%) Coaching
21 14 (8.09%) GitHub Actions
22 13 (7.51%) Linux
22 13 (7.51%) SC Cleared

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:

Business Applications
1 7 (4.05%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 34 (19.65%) Azure
2 31 (17.92%) AWS
3 20 (11.56%) GitHub
4 18 (10.40%) SaaS
5 16 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
6 14 (8.09%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (3.47%) Azure AKS
7 6 (3.47%) IaaS
7 6 (3.47%) PaaS
8 5 (2.89%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (2.31%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (2.31%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.73%) Amazon ECS
10 3 (1.73%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (1.73%) Azure Sentinel
10 3 (1.73%) GCP
11 2 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (1.16%) Amazon ELB
11 2 (1.16%) Amazon S3
11 2 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.58%) DMARC
1 1 (0.58%) DSL
1 1 (0.58%) Network Security
1 1 (0.58%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.73%) Flink
2 2 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.58%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 15 (8.67%) GitLab
2 8 (4.62%) Git
3 7 (4.05%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.58%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.58%) JIRA
4 1 (0.58%) Selenium
General
1 15 (8.67%) Public Sector
2 14 (8.09%) Social Skills
3 10 (5.78%) Retail
4 5 (2.89%) Finance
4 5 (2.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (2.31%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.73%) Analytical Skills
7 2 (1.16%) Banking
8 1 (0.58%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.58%) Games
8 1 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.58%) Law
8 1 (0.58%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (34.10%) Terraform
2 17 (9.83%) Spring
2 17 (9.83%) Spring Boot
3 5 (2.89%) .NET
3 5 (2.89%) Node.js
4 3 (1.73%) Kafka
5 2 (1.16%) React
5 2 (1.16%) RESTful
5 2 (1.16%) Web Services
6 1 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.58%) OAuth
6 1 (0.58%) OAuth2
6 1 (0.58%) Playwright
6 1 (0.58%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (5.78%) Cloud Native
2 3 (1.73%) Blog
2 3 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
2 3 (1.73%) Low-Code
3 2 (1.16%) Hedge funds
3 2 (1.16%) Product Ownership
3 2 (1.16%) Web Conferencing
4 1 (0.58%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (7.51%) Linux
2 7 (4.05%) Unix
3 1 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.58%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (100.00%) DevOps
2 71 (41.04%) CI/CD
3 57 (32.95%) Infrastructure as Code
4 44 (25.43%) Containerisation
5 28 (16.18%) Technical Leadership
6 25 (14.45%) Mentoring
7 21 (12.14%) Stakeholder Management
8 20 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 20 (11.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 17 (9.83%) Test Automation
10 14 (8.09%) Coaching
11 12 (6.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 12 (6.94%) Platform Engineering
12 10 (5.78%) DevSecOps
12 10 (5.78%) Technical Architecture
13 9 (5.20%) Agile
13 9 (5.20%) Observability
13 9 (5.20%) Zero Trust
14 8 (4.62%) Microservices
14 8 (4.62%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 37 (21.39%) Python
2 20 (11.56%) Java
3 12 (6.94%) Bash
4 10 (5.78%) PowerShell
5 4 (2.31%) Bicep
6 2 (1.16%) Go
6 2 (1.16%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.16%) Ruby
7 1 (0.58%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 47 (27.17%) Security Cleared
2 24 (13.87%) DV Cleared
3 13 (7.51%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.89%) QA
2 3 (1.73%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.73%) GDPR
2 3 (1.73%) SOC 2
System Software
1 31 (17.92%) Docker
2 1 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 40 (23.12%) Kubernetes
2 29 (16.76%) Ansible
3 3 (1.73%) Grafana
4 2 (1.16%) Packer
5 1 (0.58%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (4.05%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.31%) Intel
3 3 (1.73%) Atlassian
4 2 (1.16%) Google
5 1 (0.58%) Dynatrace
5 1 (0.58%) Red Hat
5 1 (0.58%) Salesforce
5 1 (0.58%) SAP
5 1 (0.58%) SendGrid