DevOps Contract Job Trends in the South West

DevOps
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring DevOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 29 17
Rank change year-on-year +16 -12 -7
Contract jobs citing DevOps 285 108 274
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.00% 6.14% 8.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.04% 6.75% 10.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 181 85 170
10th Percentile £375 £363 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £502
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £630
90th Percentile £650 £673 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 39
10th Percentile £64.15 - -
25th Percentile £76.00 - -
Median hourly rate £92.50 £82.96 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.50% +18.51% +6.70%
75th Percentile £102.50 - £74.44
90th Percentile £102.95 - £85.00
England median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - +3.70% +2.89%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South West

DevOps falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,840 1,599 2,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 79.73% 90.85% 82.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,528 972 1,697
10th Percentile £325 £213 £258
25th Percentile £413 £363 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 480 175 378
10th Percentile £16.62 £17.50 £13.86
25th Percentile £32.19 £18.51 £29.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £27.64 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.03% -49.75% -4.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.50 £70.25
90th Percentile £72.54 £70.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% +8.48%

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DevOps relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

DevOps job vacancy trend in the South West

DevOps
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DevOps.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DevOps

DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps in the South West over the 6 months to 26 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps in the South West

DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DevOps.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DevOps

DevOps
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps in the South West over the 6 months to 26 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in the South West

DevOps
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DevOps within the South West region over the 6 months to 26 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
Bristol +7 97 £525 -4.55% 35
Wiltshire +22 64 £500 -6.98% 9
Gloucestershire +13 50 £575 -6.50% 55
Somerset +16 46 £475 -24.00% 18
Devon -16 13 £560 +7.69% 6
Dorset -9 7 £350 -36.36% 3
Cornwall -4 1 £505 -12.17%
DevOps
England

DevOps
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 18 (6.32%) Confluence
2 10 (3.51%) Apache Spark
3 8 (2.81%) IIS
3 8 (2.81%) SharePoint
4 6 (2.11%) Mattermost
5 4 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (1.05%) Apache
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.35%) InDesign
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.35%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.35%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (2.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (1.40%) Maximo
2 4 (1.40%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.35%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 118 (41.40%) Azure
2 94 (32.98%) AWS
3 65 (22.81%) Azure DevOps
4 44 (15.44%) GCP
5 30 (10.53%) GitHub
6 19 (6.67%) Serverless
7 18 (6.32%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
8 12 (4.21%) SaaS
9 11 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
9 11 (3.86%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 10 (3.51%) Amazon S3
10 10 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (3.51%) Azure Key Vault
10 10 (3.51%) Power Platform
11 9 (3.16%) Datadog
12 8 (2.81%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (2.81%) Entra ID
12 8 (2.81%) OpenShift
13 7 (2.46%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.86%) DNS
2 9 (3.16%) Firewall
3 7 (2.46%) VPN
4 3 (1.05%) 3GPP
4 3 (1.05%) TETRA
5 2 (0.70%) DHCP
6 1 (0.35%) AMQP
6 1 (0.35%) HTTP
6 1 (0.35%) LAN
6 1 (0.35%) NAS
6 1 (0.35%) Network Security
6 1 (0.35%) SAN
6 1 (0.35%) SMTP
6 1 (0.35%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.86%) SQL Server
2 10 (3.51%) NoSQL
2 10 (3.51%) Relational Database
3 9 (3.16%) Power BI
4 8 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.46%) MongoDB
5 7 (2.46%) SAP HANA
6 6 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (2.11%) Flink
7 5 (1.75%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (1.40%) Redis
9 3 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (1.05%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.05%) Power Query
10 2 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.70%) Big Data
10 2 (0.70%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.35%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 34 (11.93%) JIRA
2 33 (11.58%) Git
3 24 (8.42%) GitLab
4 23 (8.07%) Jenkins
5 12 (4.21%) Gatling
5 12 (4.21%) LoadRunner
6 11 (3.86%) JMeter
7 7 (2.46%) Cucumber
7 7 (2.46%) REST Assured
8 6 (2.11%) MSI
8 6 (2.11%) Postman
9 4 (1.40%) IntelliJ
10 3 (1.05%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.70%) AdminStudio
11 2 (0.70%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.70%) InstallShield
11 2 (0.70%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.35%) JUnit
12 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 62 (21.75%) Social Skills
2 26 (9.12%) Public Sector
3 18 (6.32%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.21%) Finance
5 10 (3.51%) Legal
6 7 (2.46%) Military
7 5 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.40%) Banking
8 4 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (1.05%) Aerospace
9 3 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.05%) Local Government
9 3 (1.05%) Police
10 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.35%) Marketing
10 1 (0.35%) Publishing
10 1 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 88 (30.88%) DevOps Engineer
2 33 (11.58%) Developer
3 25 (8.77%) Senior
4 19 (6.67%) Architect
4 19 (6.67%) GCP Engineer
5 18 (6.32%) Analyst
6 16 (5.61%) Data Engineer
6 16 (5.61%) Site Engineer
6 16 (5.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 15 (5.26%) Lead
8 14 (4.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 13 (4.56%) Azure Engineer
9 13 (4.56%) GCP DevOps
9 13 (4.56%) GCP DevOps Engineer
10 12 (4.21%) Performance Engineer
11 11 (3.86%) Backend Developer
12 10 (3.51%) Java Developer
12 10 (3.51%) Platform Engineer
13 9 (3.16%) Technical Architect
13 9 (3.16%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (9.47%) .NET
2 19 (6.67%) REST
2 19 (6.67%) Spring Boot
3 17 (5.96%) RESTful
4 16 (5.61%) .NET Framework
4 16 (5.61%) Kafka
4 16 (5.61%) React
4 16 (5.61%) Spring
5 14 (4.91%) Playwright
6 8 (2.81%) .NET Core
7 7 (2.46%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (2.11%) ATL
8 6 (2.11%) COM
8 6 (2.11%) CSS
8 6 (2.11%) FastAPI
8 6 (2.11%) Flask
8 6 (2.11%) GeoJSON
8 6 (2.11%) HTML
8 6 (2.11%) MFC
8 6 (2.11%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 45 (15.79%) Cloud Native
2 18 (6.32%) Enterprise Software
3 16 (5.61%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (3.51%) Onboarding
5 9 (3.16%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.81%) Hybrid Cloud
7 7 (2.46%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.75%) Legacy Code
9 5 (1.75%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.40%) Wiki
11 3 (1.05%) EPoS
11 3 (1.05%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (1.05%) Mobile App
11 3 (1.05%) Private Cloud
11 3 (1.05%) Replication
12 2 (0.70%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.70%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 46 (16.14%) Linux
2 36 (12.63%) Windows
3 12 (4.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 12 (4.21%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.05%) Unix
5 2 (0.70%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.35%) CentOS
6 1 (0.35%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (46.67%) CI/CD
2 96 (33.68%) Agile
3 68 (23.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (21.05%) Containerisation
5 55 (19.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 38 (13.33%) Microservices
7 36 (12.63%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 34 (11.93%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (11.93%) Test Automation
9 27 (9.47%) Stakeholder Management
10 26 (9.12%) ITIL
11 25 (8.77%) Analytics
11 25 (8.77%) Observability
12 24 (8.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 23 (8.07%) Data Modelling
13 23 (8.07%) Platform Engineering
13 23 (8.07%) Root Cause Analysis
14 22 (7.72%) High Availability
15 21 (7.37%) Migration
16 20 (7.02%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 69 (24.21%) Python
2 48 (16.84%) SQL
3 36 (12.63%) Java
4 26 (9.12%) Bash
5 24 (8.42%) JavaScript
6 16 (5.61%) C#
6 16 (5.61%) PowerShell
7 13 (4.56%) Go
8 11 (3.86%) Bicep
8 11 (3.86%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.75%) T-SQL
10 4 (1.40%) Apex Code
10 4 (1.40%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.70%) Groovy
13 1 (0.35%) C++
13 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.35%) PHP
13 1 (0.35%) Scala
13 1 (0.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 131 (45.96%) Security Cleared
2 99 (34.74%) SC Cleared
3 40 (14.04%) DV Cleared
4 13 (4.56%) Degree
5 8 (2.81%) AWS Certification
6 7 (2.46%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.11%) ISTQB
7 6 (2.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (2.11%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (1.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 4 (1.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.05%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 3 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.05%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (0.70%) CISM
10 2 (0.70%) CISSP
10 2 (0.70%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (6.67%) QA
2 10 (3.51%) Accessibility
2 10 (3.51%) Data Quality
3 9 (3.16%) NCSC
3 9 (3.16%) WCAG
4 8 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (2.46%) SLA
6 6 (2.11%) GDPR
7 3 (1.05%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.05%) PMO
8 2 (0.70%) NIST
8 2 (0.70%) NIST 800
System Software
1 63 (22.11%) Docker
2 13 (4.56%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.11%) Corosync
4 3 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 106 (37.19%) Kubernetes
2 78 (27.37%) Terraform
3 34 (11.93%) Ansible
4 21 (7.37%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.96%) Grafana
6 12 (4.21%) Argo
7 7 (2.46%) Failover Clustering
7 7 (2.46%) Pacemaker
8 5 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (1.05%) Istio
9 3 (1.05%) Nagios
10 2 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.70%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.70%) SCCM
10 2 (0.70%) VxRail
11 1 (0.35%) CASB
11 1 (0.35%) Kibana
11 1 (0.35%) logstash
Vendors
1 45 (15.79%) Microsoft
2 23 (8.07%) Google
3 16 (5.61%) Red Hat
4 14 (4.91%) Databricks
4 14 (4.91%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.56%) Splunk
6 11 (3.86%) AppDynamics
6 11 (3.86%) New Relic
7 9 (3.16%) SAP
8 8 (2.81%) Salesforce
9 7 (2.46%) VMware
10 6 (2.11%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.11%) Remedy
11 5 (1.75%) IBM
11 5 (1.75%) InterSystems
12 4 (1.40%) Conga
12 4 (1.40%) Dell
12 4 (1.40%) GoCardless
12 4 (1.40%) Oracle
13 2 (0.70%) BiZZdesign