DevOps Automation Engineer Contract Job Trends

DevOps Automation Engineer
UK

The median DevOps Automation Engineer daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 April 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 603 519 583
Rank change year-on-year -84 +64 +113
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Automation Engineer 17 10 11
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.036% 0.034% 0.025%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.039% 0.037% 0.027%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 6 5
10th Percentile £306 £391 £533
25th Percentile £431 £444 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £513 £622
Median % change year-on-year +21.95% -17.60% -4.31%
75th Percentile £675 £584 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £640
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £433 £624
% change year-on-year +10.64% -30.63% +24.58%

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 43,468 27,008 40,187
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.57% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,813 17,658 26,169
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £491
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.27% -1.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,818 1,032 2,646
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.43 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.69 £29.15 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +49.88% -18.93% -20.10%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.23 £28.75 £37.75
% change year-on-year +57.32% -23.84% -11.18%

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 29 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps Automation Engineer in the UK

DevOps Automation Engineer
Top 9 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 29 April 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 -80 16 £625 +21.95%
UK excluding London -84 9 £479 +10.64%
London -70 7 £663 +17.78%
North of England -71 5 £441 +1.97%
Work from Home -36 4 £306 -59.20%
Yorkshire -58 4 £482 +11.45%
East of England - 3 £650 -
North East - 1 £400 -
Scotland - 1 £306 -

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

For the 6 months to 29 April 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 17 (100.00%) DevOps
2 7 (41.18%) Ansible
2 7 (41.18%) AWS
2 7 (41.18%) Azure
2 7 (41.18%) CI/CD
2 7 (41.18%) Python
3 6 (35.29%) Oracle
3 6 (35.29%) Terraform
4 4 (23.53%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (23.53%) Bash
4 4 (23.53%) Containerisation
4 4 (23.53%) Docker
4 4 (23.53%) GCP
4 4 (23.53%) GitLab
4 4 (23.53%) Infrastructure as Code
4 4 (23.53%) Jenkins
4 4 (23.53%) Security Cleared
5 3 (17.65%) DV Cleared
5 3 (17.65%) GitHub
5 3 (17.65%) Groovy
5 3 (17.65%) Infrastructure Automation
5 3 (17.65%) Kubernetes
5 3 (17.65%) OpenShift
5 3 (17.65%) Oracle Database
5 3 (17.65%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (17.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
5 3 (17.65%) SQL Server
5 3 (17.65%) Task Automation
6 2 (11.76%) Aruba

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:

Cloud Services
1 7 (41.18%) AWS
1 7 (41.18%) Azure
2 4 (23.53%) Azure DevOps
2 4 (23.53%) GCP
3 3 (17.65%) GitHub
3 3 (17.65%) OpenShift
4 1 (5.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (5.88%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (5.88%) Amazon ECS
4 1 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (5.88%) AWS CodeBuild
4 1 (5.88%) AWS CodeDeploy
4 1 (5.88%) AWS CodePipeline
4 1 (5.88%) AWS KMS
4 1 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (5.88%) AWS Step Functions
4 1 (5.88%) Serverless
4 1 (5.88%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (17.65%) Oracle Database
1 3 (17.65%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (17.65%) SQL Server
2 1 (5.88%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (5.88%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 4 (23.53%) GitLab
1 4 (23.53%) Jenkins
2 1 (5.88%) Cucumber
2 1 (5.88%) REST Assured
General
1 4 (23.53%) Social Skills
2 2 (11.76%) Public Sector
3 1 (5.88%) Finance
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (5.88%) JWT
1 1 (5.88%) OAuth
1 1 (5.88%) OAuth2
1 1 (5.88%) REST
1 1 (5.88%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 1 (5.88%) AI Agents
1 1 (5.88%) Cloud Native
1 1 (5.88%) CMDB
1 1 (5.88%) Data Protection Act
1 1 (5.88%) Enterprise Cloud
1 1 (5.88%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (5.88%) Linux
1 1 (5.88%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (100.00%) DevOps
2 7 (41.18%) CI/CD
3 4 (23.53%) Containerisation
3 4 (23.53%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (17.65%) Infrastructure Automation
4 3 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
4 3 (17.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
4 3 (17.65%) Task Automation
5 2 (11.76%) Data Protection
5 2 (11.76%) Deployment Automation
5 2 (11.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 2 (11.76%) Test Automation
6 1 (5.88%) BDD
6 1 (5.88%) Functional Testing
6 1 (5.88%) Identity Management
6 1 (5.88%) ITIL
6 1 (5.88%) ITSM
6 1 (5.88%) Non-Functional Testing
6 1 (5.88%) Process Improvement
6 1 (5.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 7 (41.18%) Python
2 4 (23.53%) Bash
3 3 (17.65%) Groovy
4 1 (5.88%) Go
4 1 (5.88%) Java
4 1 (5.88%) JavaScript
4 1 (5.88%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 4 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 3 (17.65%) DV Cleared
3 1 (5.88%) CCIE
3 1 (5.88%) Cisco Certification
System Software
1 4 (23.53%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (41.18%) Ansible
2 6 (35.29%) Terraform
3 3 (17.65%) Kubernetes
4 1 (5.88%) Grafana
4 1 (5.88%) Progress Chef
4 1 (5.88%) Prometheus
4 1 (5.88%) Puppet
Vendors
1 6 (35.29%) Oracle
2 2 (11.76%) Aruba
2 2 (11.76%) Cisco
3 1 (5.88%) ServiceNow