Can the Devel page generation times be placed at the top of the page?
The devel_timer() function present in the devel.module file returns the page execution time for every page which is as below:

/**
 * Displays page execution time at the bottom of the page.
 */
function devel_timer() {
  $time = timer_read('page');
  return t_safe(' Page execution time was @time ms.', array('@time' =&gt; $time));
}


as the function is present in the module file(which is available on all pages) therefore you can call the function anywhere you want something like below:

$page_execution_time = devel_timer();
print $page_execution_time;




UPDATE: another way of doing it with the JS is to get the value of page execution time from the default wrapper and display it in the custom wrapper as below:

&lt;div id="page-execution-time-custom"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;script&gt;
(function ($) {
  // Jquery onload function.
  $(document).ready(function(){
    // Display the page execution time in the custom wrapper as below.
    var page_execution_time = $('.dev-query').text();
    $('#page-execution-time-custom').text(page_execution_time);
  });
})(jQuery); 
&lt;/script&gt;


I have tried it in the custom block(whose format was FULL HTML) that I placed in the header and it was giving the correct result (as the page execution displayed in block was same as displayed at the bottom of page), however it would be good to move the JS code to JS file (for testing I have tried this).