DevOps Automation Engineer Contract Job Trends

DevOps Automation Engineer
UK

The median DevOps Automation Engineer daily rate in the UK is £588, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 June 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 621 511 560
Rank change year-on-year -110 +49 +104
Contract jobs requiring a DevOps Automation Engineer 12 10 19
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.025% 0.035% 0.044%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.027% 0.038% 0.047%
Number of daily rates quoted 8 6 10
10th Percentile £299 £391 £508
25th Percentile £470 £435 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £588 £482 £599
Median % change year-on-year +22.01% -19.55% -0.25%
75th Percentile £675 £528 £624
90th Percentile £683 £569 £639
UK excluding London median daily rate £650 £463 £622
% change year-on-year +40.39% -25.56% +24.28%

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 45,089 26,570 40,007
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.35% 92.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,438 17,201 25,885
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,017 1,072 2,851
10th Percentile £15.05 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.85 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.39% -36.94% -5.88%

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 3 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps Automation Engineer in the UK

DevOps Automation Engineer
Top 8 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 3 June 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 -118 10 £625 +29.80% 7
UK excluding London -99 6 £650 +40.39% 2
Work from Home -42 4 £428 - 1
London -82 4 £588 +11.90% 5
Yorkshire -59 3 - -
North of England -77 3 - -
East of England - 2 £650 -
Scotland - 1 £306 -

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

For the 6 months to 3 June 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 12 (100.00%) DevOps
2 7 (58.33%) CI/CD
2 7 (58.33%) Python
3 6 (50.00%) AWS
4 5 (41.67%) Ansible
4 5 (41.67%) Jenkins
4 5 (41.67%) Terraform
5 4 (33.33%) Agile
5 4 (33.33%) Deployment Automation
5 4 (33.33%) GitLab
5 4 (33.33%) Security Cleared
5 4 (33.33%) Test Automation
6 3 (25.00%) AI
6 3 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (25.00%) Bash
6 3 (25.00%) Docker
6 3 (25.00%) DV Cleared
6 3 (25.00%) GitHub
6 3 (25.00%) Infrastructure Automation
6 3 (25.00%) Kubernetes
6 3 (25.00%) Observability
6 3 (25.00%) Serverless
7 2 (16.67%) Amazon EventBridge
7 2 (16.67%) Amazon SQS
7 2 (16.67%) Aruba
7 2 (16.67%) Azure
7 2 (16.67%) BDD
7 2 (16.67%) Cisco
7 2 (16.67%) Collaborative Engineering
7 2 (16.67%) Continuous Delivery

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 6 (50.00%) AWS
2 3 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
2 3 (25.00%) GitHub
2 3 (25.00%) Serverless
3 2 (16.67%) Amazon EventBridge
3 2 (16.67%) Amazon SQS
3 2 (16.67%) Azure
3 2 (16.67%) GCP
3 2 (16.67%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (8.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (8.33%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (8.33%) Amazon ECS
4 1 (8.33%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (8.33%) AWS CodeBuild
4 1 (8.33%) AWS CodeDeploy
4 1 (8.33%) AWS CodePipeline
4 1 (8.33%) AWS KMS
4 1 (8.33%) AWS Step Functions
4 1 (8.33%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (8.33%) OpenShift
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (8.33%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (8.33%) DynamoDB
1 1 (8.33%) Oracle Database
1 1 (8.33%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (41.67%) Jenkins
2 4 (33.33%) GitLab
3 2 (16.67%) Cypress.io
3 2 (16.67%) Selenium
General
1 2 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 1 (8.33%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (16.67%) pytest
2 1 (8.33%) JWT
2 1 (8.33%) OAuth
2 1 (8.33%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 3 (25.00%) Cloud Native
2 2 (16.67%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (8.33%) AI Agents
3 1 (8.33%) CMDB
3 1 (8.33%) Enterprise Cloud
3 1 (8.33%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (8.33%) Linux
1 1 (8.33%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (100.00%) DevOps
2 7 (58.33%) CI/CD
3 4 (33.33%) Agile
3 4 (33.33%) Deployment Automation
3 4 (33.33%) Test Automation
4 3 (25.00%) AI
4 3 (25.00%) Infrastructure Automation
4 3 (25.00%) Observability
5 2 (16.67%) BDD
5 2 (16.67%) Collaborative Engineering
5 2 (16.67%) Continuous Delivery
5 2 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
5 2 (16.67%) Event-Driven
5 2 (16.67%) Event-Driven Architecture
5 2 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
5 2 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 2 (16.67%) Platform Engineering
5 2 (16.67%) Release Automation
5 2 (16.67%) Software Engineering
5 2 (16.67%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 7 (58.33%) Python
2 3 (25.00%) Bash
3 2 (16.67%) Go
4 1 (8.33%) Groovy
4 1 (8.33%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 4 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 3 (25.00%) DV Cleared
3 2 (16.67%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (16.67%) QA
System Software
1 3 (25.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (41.67%) Ansible
1 5 (41.67%) Terraform
2 3 (25.00%) Kubernetes
3 1 (8.33%) Grafana
3 1 (8.33%) Progress Chef
3 1 (8.33%) Prometheus
3 1 (8.33%) Puppet
Vendors
1 2 (16.67%) Aruba
1 2 (16.67%) Cisco
2 1 (8.33%) Oracle
2 1 (8.33%) ServiceNow