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 29 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 22 14
Rank change year-on-year +7 -8 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 313 130 264
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.54% 6.70% 9.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.87% 7.45% 11.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 99 162
10th Percentile £400 £354 £451
25th Percentile £449 £447 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £699 £696 £699
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 40
10th Percentile £66.13 £83.37 -
25th Percentile £78.56 £83.98 -
Median hourly rate £92.50 £90.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.78% +28.57% -10.26%
75th Percentile £101.56 £95.00 £74.00
90th Percentile £102.88 - £85.00
England median hourly rate £67.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -4.29% +7.69%

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 2,880 1,744 2,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 78.56% 89.90% 83.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,634 1,011 1,421
10th Percentile £325 £217 £263
25th Percentile £425 £363 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £630
90th Percentile £725 £700 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 436 221 236
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.00 £14.13
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.51 £38.42
Median hourly rate £62.25 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +147.51% -62.74% +5.23%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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 +12 111 £543 +10.26% 64
Somerset +17 63 £475 -9.05% 10
Wiltshire +17 62 £563 -5.26% 15
Gloucestershire +10 49 £575 -8.00% 68
Devon -16 15 £560 +7.69% 12
Dorset -16 2 £665 +77.33% 9
Cornwall -5 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 26 (8.31%) Confluence
2 9 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.24%) IIS
4 5 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 4 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.64%) Apache
7 1 (0.32%) JBoss
7 1 (0.32%) Mattermost
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.32%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.24%) Spreadsheet
2 5 (1.60%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.96%) Trello
4 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (1.28%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.64%) Oracle Payroll
3 1 (0.32%) Maximo
3 1 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.32%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.32%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 139 (44.41%) Azure
2 101 (32.27%) AWS
3 72 (23.00%) Azure DevOps
4 51 (16.29%) GCP
5 25 (7.99%) GitHub
6 16 (5.11%) Serverless
7 14 (4.47%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (4.15%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (3.51%) dbt
10 10 (3.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 9 (2.88%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (2.56%) Azure AKS
12 8 (2.56%) Power Platform
12 8 (2.56%) SaaS
13 7 (2.24%) AWS Lambda
13 7 (2.24%) Entra ID
13 7 (2.24%) OCI
14 6 (1.92%) Amazon S3
14 6 (1.92%) OpenShift
14 6 (1.92%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.47%) DNS
2 12 (3.83%) Firewall
3 6 (1.92%) VPN
4 4 (1.28%) VSAN
5 3 (0.96%) 3GPP
5 3 (0.96%) TETRA
6 2 (0.64%) CTI
7 1 (0.32%) AMQP
7 1 (0.32%) Network Security
7 1 (0.32%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.32%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (4.47%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.51%) Geospatial Data
3 8 (2.56%) MongoDB
3 8 (2.56%) Power BI
4 7 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 7 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (2.24%) SAP HANA
5 5 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 4 (1.28%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.28%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.96%) Big Data
7 3 (0.96%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.96%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.96%) EDRMS
7 3 (0.96%) Metadata
7 3 (0.96%) SQLite
8 2 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.64%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 43 (13.74%) Git
2 37 (11.82%) JIRA
3 32 (10.22%) GitLab
4 30 (9.58%) Jenkins
5 12 (3.83%) Gatling
5 12 (3.83%) LoadRunner
6 11 (3.51%) JMeter
6 11 (3.51%) MSI
7 7 (2.24%) Cucumber
7 7 (2.24%) REST Assured
8 6 (1.92%) Postman
9 3 (0.96%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.64%) AdminStudio
10 2 (0.64%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.64%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.64%) IntelliJ
10 2 (0.64%) JUnit
10 2 (0.64%) Selenium
10 2 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 68 (21.73%) Social Skills
2 40 (12.78%) Public Sector
3 21 (6.71%) Finance
4 18 (5.75%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (2.24%) Banking
5 7 (2.24%) Legal
6 6 (1.92%) Military
7 5 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (1.60%) Retail
8 4 (1.28%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.28%) Local Government
8 4 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.28%) Police
9 3 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.32%) Aviation
10 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 78 (24.92%) DevOps Engineer
2 47 (15.02%) Developer
3 30 (9.58%) Architect
4 24 (7.67%) Senior
5 21 (6.71%) Data Engineer
6 19 (6.07%) Lead
7 18 (5.75%) GCP Engineer
7 18 (5.75%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 17 (5.43%) Site Engineer
9 16 (5.11%) Software Developer
10 15 (4.79%) Analyst
11 14 (4.47%) Platform Engineer
12 12 (3.83%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.83%) GCP DevOps
12 12 (3.83%) GCP DevOps Engineer
13 11 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 11 (3.51%) Performance Engineer
14 10 (3.19%) Senior DevOps
14 10 (3.19%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 9 (2.88%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (33.55%) Terraform
2 36 (11.50%) .NET
3 28 (8.95%) REST
4 22 (7.03%) .NET Framework
5 18 (5.75%) RESTful
6 15 (4.79%) .NET Core
6 15 (4.79%) React
7 14 (4.47%) Playwright
8 12 (3.83%) CSS
8 12 (3.83%) HTML
8 12 (3.83%) Kafka
8 12 (3.83%) Spring Boot
9 11 (3.51%) ATL
9 11 (3.51%) COM
9 11 (3.51%) CSS3
9 11 (3.51%) GeoJSON
9 11 (3.51%) HTML5
9 11 (3.51%) MFC
9 11 (3.51%) WPF
10 10 (3.19%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 56 (17.89%) Cloud Native
2 22 (7.03%) Legacy Systems
3 20 (6.39%) Enterprise Software
4 19 (6.07%) Onboarding
5 14 (4.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (4.47%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.56%) Wiki
7 6 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.60%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.96%) EPoS
10 3 (0.96%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (0.96%) Replication
11 2 (0.64%) Clustering
11 2 (0.64%) IVR
11 2 (0.64%) Management Information System
11 2 (0.64%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.64%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 46 (14.70%) Linux
2 38 (12.14%) Windows
3 16 (5.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (3.83%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.28%) CentOS
5 4 (1.28%) Unix
6 2 (0.64%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.32%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (50.80%) CI/CD
2 107 (34.19%) Agile
3 102 (32.59%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (22.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 68 (21.73%) Containerisation
6 46 (14.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
6 46 (14.70%) Test Automation
7 43 (13.74%) Stakeholder Management
8 41 (13.10%) Platform Engineering
9 38 (12.14%) Problem-Solving
10 36 (11.50%) Microservices
11 34 (10.86%) DevSecOps
12 33 (10.54%) Deployment Automation
13 31 (9.90%) Software Engineering
14 27 (8.63%) Observability
14 27 (8.63%) Technical Leadership
15 25 (7.99%) AI
15 25 (7.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 25 (7.99%) Migration
15 25 (7.99%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 86 (27.48%) Python
2 44 (14.06%) SQL
3 42 (13.42%) Bash
4 35 (11.18%) Java
5 34 (10.86%) JavaScript
6 30 (9.58%) C#
7 20 (6.39%) PowerShell
8 18 (5.75%) Bicep
9 17 (5.43%) TypeScript
10 12 (3.83%) PL/SQL
11 9 (2.88%) Go
12 4 (1.28%) Apex Code
12 4 (1.28%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.96%) Groovy
13 3 (0.96%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 159 (50.80%) Security Cleared
2 119 (38.02%) SC Cleared
3 46 (14.70%) DV Cleared
4 11 (3.51%) Degree
5 10 (3.19%) AWS Certification
6 8 (2.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 6 (1.92%) ISTQB
7 6 (1.92%) TOGAF Certification
8 5 (1.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.96%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.96%) VCAP
9 3 (0.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.64%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.32%) BPSS Clearance
11 1 (0.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.43%) Accessibility
1 17 (5.43%) QA
2 16 (5.11%) WCAG
3 15 (4.79%) NCSC
4 10 (3.19%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.24%) SLA
6 6 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.96%) GDPR
7 3 (0.96%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.64%) GRC
8 2 (0.64%) NIST
8 2 (0.64%) PMO
9 1 (0.32%) JSP 440
System Software
1 69 (22.04%) Docker
2 6 (1.92%) Corosync
2 6 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.60%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.60%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.28%) vSphere
5 2 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.32%) zsh
Systems Management
1 113 (36.10%) Kubernetes
2 53 (16.93%) Ansible
3 15 (4.79%) Grafana
4 13 (4.15%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.19%) Argo
6 7 (2.24%) Failover Clustering
6 7 (2.24%) Pacemaker
7 4 (1.28%) PowerCLI
7 4 (1.28%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.96%) Istio
8 3 (0.96%) Puppet
9 2 (0.64%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.64%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.64%) SCCM
9 2 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.32%) CASB
10 1 (0.32%) Nagios
10 1 (0.32%) OPNET
10 1 (0.32%) VxRail
Vendors
1 51 (16.29%) Microsoft
2 26 (8.31%) Google
3 16 (5.11%) Dynatrace
4 14 (4.47%) Red Hat
4 14 (4.47%) Splunk
5 12 (3.83%) VMware
6 11 (3.51%) AppDynamics
6 11 (3.51%) New Relic
6 11 (3.51%) Oracle
7 9 (2.88%) SAP
8 7 (2.24%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.92%) Databricks
10 5 (1.60%) InterSystems
11 4 (1.28%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.28%) Conga
11 4 (1.28%) GoCardless
11 4 (1.28%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.28%) SaltStack
12 3 (0.96%) Dell
12 3 (0.96%) Informatica