DevOps Automation Engineer Contract Job Trends

DevOps Automation Engineer
UK

The median DevOps Automation Engineer daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 7 January 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

 6 months to
7 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 558 521 559
Rank change year-on-year -37 +38 +190
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Automation Engineer 24 8 29
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.065% 0.025% 0.068%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.071% 0.027% 0.073%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 4 17
10th Percentile £404 - £520
25th Percentile £493 £563 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £663 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.43% +15.22% -13.21%
75th Percentile £672 £775 £650
90th Percentile £700 - £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £575 £650
% change year-on-year -6.61% -11.54% +26.83%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 33,792 29,885 39,768
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.29% 92.67% 93.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,415 18,301 26,575
10th Percentile £300 £293 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,959 924 1,607
10th Percentile £14.32 £15.56 £14.18
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £26.78 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.60% -26.97% +36.75%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -20.16% -31.34% +69.89%

DevOps Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

DevOps Automation Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

DevOps Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DevOps Automation Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DevOps Automation Engineer job vacancies in the UK

DevOps Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps Automation Engineer over the 6 months to 7 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps Automation Engineer in the UK

DevOps Automation Engineer
Top 10 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DevOps Automation Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 7 January 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
England -33 21 £588 -11.32%
UK excluding London -48 13 £537 -6.61%
Work from Home +5 11 £556 -25.87%
London -15 9 £625 -16.67%
North of England - 7 £504 -
Yorkshire - 4 £525 -
North East - 3 £413 -
East of England - 3 £650 -
Wales - 2 £638 -
South West - 1 - -

DevOps Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 7 January 2026, DevOps Automation Engineer contract 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 contract job ads featuring DevOps Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 24 (100.00%) DevOps
2 11 (45.83%) Ansible
3 10 (41.67%) Azure
3 10 (41.67%) CI/CD
3 10 (41.67%) Terraform
4 9 (37.50%) Python
4 9 (37.50%) Security Cleared
5 8 (33.33%) Azure DevOps
5 8 (33.33%) GitLab
5 8 (33.33%) Jenkins
5 8 (33.33%) Test Automation
6 7 (29.17%) GitHub
6 7 (29.17%) Infrastructure as Code
6 7 (29.17%) Infrastructure Automation
6 7 (29.17%) Oracle
7 6 (25.00%) Bash
7 6 (25.00%) Containerisation
7 6 (25.00%) Docker
8 5 (20.83%) AWS
8 5 (20.83%) DV Cleared
8 5 (20.83%) SC Cleared
9 4 (16.67%) GCP
9 4 (16.67%) Groovy
9 4 (16.67%) JIRA
9 4 (16.67%) OpenShift
9 4 (16.67%) Oracle Database
9 4 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (16.67%) PowerShell
9 4 (16.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 4 (16.67%) Task Automation

DevOps Automation Engineer 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 3 (12.50%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 10 (41.67%) Azure
2 8 (33.33%) Azure DevOps
3 7 (29.17%) GitHub
4 5 (20.83%) AWS
5 4 (16.67%) GCP
5 4 (16.67%) OpenShift
6 2 (8.33%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (4.17%) CloudBees
7 1 (4.17%) Cohesity
7 1 (4.17%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (8.33%) Firewall
1 2 (8.33%) SD-WAN
1 2 (8.33%) VPN
1 2 (8.33%) WAN
2 1 (4.17%) DNS
2 1 (4.17%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (16.67%) Oracle Database
1 4 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (12.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (33.33%) GitLab
1 8 (33.33%) Jenkins
2 4 (16.67%) JIRA
3 2 (8.33%) Cucumber
3 2 (8.33%) REST Assured
4 1 (4.17%) Bitbucket
4 1 (4.17%) Git
4 1 (4.17%) JMeter
4 1 (4.17%) MSTest
4 1 (4.17%) Selenium
4 1 (4.17%) SpecFlow
4 1 (4.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 5 (20.83%) Social Skills
2 4 (16.67%) Public Sector
3 1 (4.17%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (4.17%) Finance
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (8.33%) REST
1 2 (8.33%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 2 (8.33%) Product Ownership
2 1 (4.17%) CMDB
2 1 (4.17%) Public Cloud
2 1 (4.17%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 2 (8.33%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (100.00%) DevOps
2 10 (41.67%) CI/CD
3 8 (33.33%) Test Automation
4 7 (29.17%) Infrastructure as Code
4 7 (29.17%) Infrastructure Automation
5 6 (25.00%) Containerisation
6 4 (16.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
6 4 (16.67%) Task Automation
7 3 (12.50%) BDD
7 3 (12.50%) Data Protection
7 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 3 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
8 2 (8.33%) Configuration Management
8 2 (8.33%) Deployment Automation
8 2 (8.33%) Functional Testing
8 2 (8.33%) Non-Functional Testing
8 2 (8.33%) Scrum
8 2 (8.33%) Sprint Retrospective
8 2 (8.33%) TDD
8 2 (8.33%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 9 (37.50%) Python
2 6 (25.00%) Bash
3 4 (16.67%) Groovy
3 4 (16.67%) PowerShell
4 3 (12.50%) JavaScript
5 2 (8.33%) Java
6 1 (4.17%) C#
Qualifications
1 9 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 5 (20.83%) DV Cleared
2 5 (20.83%) SC Cleared
3 1 (4.17%) CCIE
3 1 (4.17%) Cisco Certification
3 1 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (4.17%) Degree
3 1 (4.17%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 1 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 6 (25.00%) Docker
2 1 (4.17%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 11 (45.83%) Ansible
2 10 (41.67%) Terraform
3 3 (12.50%) Grafana
3 3 (12.50%) Prometheus
4 2 (8.33%) Argo
4 2 (8.33%) Kubernetes
4 2 (8.33%) NetBackup
4 2 (8.33%) Podman
4 2 (8.33%) Progress Chef
4 2 (8.33%) Puppet
5 1 (4.17%) Packer
5 1 (4.17%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 7 (29.17%) Oracle
2 3 (12.50%) Aruba
2 3 (12.50%) Cisco
3 2 (8.33%) Commvault
3 2 (8.33%) Red Hat
3 2 (8.33%) Splunk
4 1 (4.17%) Atlassian
4 1 (4.17%) ServiceNow
4 1 (4.17%) Veritas