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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 20 14
Rank change year-on-year +5 -6 +2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 319 137 254
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.55% 6.93% 9.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.95% 7.67% 11.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 106 153
10th Percentile £400 £341 £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 £634 £664
90th Percentile £700 £698 £701
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 40
10th Percentile £60.20 £83.37 -
25th Percentile £66.13 £83.98 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £90.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.44% +28.57% -10.26%
75th Percentile £85.88 £95.00 £74.00
90th Percentile £90.60 - £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 2,912 1,787 2,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 78.03% 90.39% 83.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,639 1,032 1,343
10th Percentile £325 £220 £276
25th Percentile £428 £368 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £636
90th Percentile £725 £700 £701
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 464 232 220
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.86 £15.61
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.51 £47.56
Median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +146.52% -62.74% +3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £78.74 £70.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +0.58%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +9 116 £550 +8.91% 61
Somerset +13 68 £475 +5.56% 16
Wiltshire +14 52 £563 -5.26% 13
Gloucestershire +9 52 £575 -9.80% 63
Devon -11 17 £560 +7.69% 20
Dorset -17 3 £430 -7.03% 12
Cornwall - 1 £505 -
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 (8.15%) Confluence
2 15 (4.70%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.19%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.57%) IIS
6 3 (0.94%) Apache
7 1 (0.31%) JBoss
7 1 (0.31%) Mattermost
7 1 (0.31%) nginx
7 1 (0.31%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.19%) Spreadsheet
2 5 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.94%) Trello
4 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.31%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (1.25%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.63%) Oracle Payroll
3 1 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.31%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 151 (47.34%) Azure
2 100 (31.35%) AWS
3 80 (25.08%) Azure DevOps
4 56 (17.55%) GCP
5 23 (7.21%) GitHub
6 14 (4.39%) Azure AKS
6 14 (4.39%) dbt
6 14 (4.39%) Serverless
7 13 (4.08%) AWS CloudFormation
8 11 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.51%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 8 (2.51%) OpenShift
9 8 (2.51%) Power Platform
9 8 (2.51%) SaaS
10 7 (2.19%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (2.19%) Azure Data Factory
10 7 (2.19%) Azure Key Vault
10 7 (2.19%) Entra ID
10 7 (2.19%) OCI
11 6 (1.88%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (4.08%) DNS
2 11 (3.45%) Firewall
3 6 (1.88%) VPN
4 4 (1.25%) VSAN
5 2 (0.63%) CTI
6 1 (0.31%) AMQP
6 1 (0.31%) Network Security
6 1 (0.31%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.31%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.76%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.45%) Geospatial Data
3 8 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (2.51%) MongoDB
3 8 (2.51%) Power BI
4 7 (2.19%) SAP HANA
5 6 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (1.57%) Big Data
6 5 (1.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.25%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (1.25%) Hadoop
7 4 (1.25%) Metadata
7 4 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.94%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.94%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.94%) EDRMS
8 3 (0.94%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.94%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 51 (15.99%) Git
2 38 (11.91%) JIRA
3 36 (11.29%) GitLab
4 34 (10.66%) Jenkins
5 11 (3.45%) MSI
6 7 (2.19%) Cucumber
6 7 (2.19%) Gatling
6 7 (2.19%) LoadRunner
6 7 (2.19%) REST Assured
7 6 (1.88%) JMeter
7 6 (1.88%) Postman
8 3 (0.94%) Claude Code
8 3 (0.94%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.63%) AdminStudio
9 2 (0.63%) InstallShield
9 2 (0.63%) IntelliJ
9 2 (0.63%) JUnit
9 2 (0.63%) Selenium
9 2 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 67 (21.00%) Social Skills
2 37 (11.60%) Public Sector
3 21 (6.58%) Finance
4 16 (5.02%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (1.88%) Banking
5 6 (1.88%) Legal
5 6 (1.88%) Military
6 5 (1.57%) Aerospace
6 5 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (1.57%) Retail
7 4 (1.25%) Local Government
7 4 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.25%) Police
8 3 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.31%) Aviation
9 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 87 (27.27%) DevOps Engineer
2 47 (14.73%) Developer
3 29 (9.09%) Architect
4 28 (8.78%) Senior
5 25 (7.84%) Data Engineer
6 19 (5.96%) GCP Engineer
6 19 (5.96%) Lead
7 18 (5.64%) Azure Engineer
7 18 (5.64%) Software Developer
8 16 (5.02%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 16 (5.02%) Platform Engineer
8 16 (5.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 15 (4.70%) Analyst
9 15 (4.70%) Site Engineer
10 14 (4.39%) Senior DevOps
10 14 (4.39%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 12 (3.76%) GCP DevOps
11 12 (3.76%) GCP DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.13%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (36.36%) Terraform
2 34 (10.66%) .NET
3 26 (8.15%) REST
4 20 (6.27%) .NET Framework
5 19 (5.96%) RESTful
6 15 (4.70%) .NET Core
6 15 (4.70%) React
7 14 (4.39%) Kafka
7 14 (4.39%) Playwright
8 12 (3.76%) CSS
8 12 (3.76%) HTML
8 12 (3.76%) Spring Boot
9 11 (3.45%) ATL
9 11 (3.45%) COM
9 11 (3.45%) CSS3
9 11 (3.45%) GeoJSON
9 11 (3.45%) HTML5
9 11 (3.45%) MFC
9 11 (3.45%) WPF
10 10 (3.13%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 55 (17.24%) Cloud Native
2 22 (6.90%) Product Ownership
3 20 (6.27%) Enterprise Software
3 20 (6.27%) Legacy Systems
4 19 (5.96%) Onboarding
5 15 (4.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 14 (4.39%) Wiki
7 6 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.57%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (0.94%) Enterprise Cloud
9 3 (0.94%) EPoS
9 3 (0.94%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (0.94%) Legacy Code
9 3 (0.94%) Replication
10 2 (0.63%) Clustering
10 2 (0.63%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.63%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.63%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 49 (15.36%) Linux
2 35 (10.97%) Windows
3 16 (5.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.82%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.25%) CentOS
5 4 (1.25%) Unix
6 2 (0.63%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.31%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (52.35%) CI/CD
2 115 (36.05%) Infrastructure as Code
3 109 (34.17%) Agile
4 76 (23.82%) Containerisation
4 76 (23.82%) Continuous Improvement
5 47 (14.73%) Test Automation
6 46 (14.42%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 45 (14.11%) Platform Engineering
8 44 (13.79%) Stakeholder Management
9 41 (12.85%) Deployment Automation
10 40 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
11 39 (12.23%) DevSecOps
12 35 (10.97%) Observability
13 34 (10.66%) Microservices
14 33 (10.34%) Software Engineering
15 28 (8.78%) AI
16 27 (8.46%) Software Delivery
16 27 (8.46%) Technical Leadership
17 26 (8.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 25 (7.84%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 88 (27.59%) Python
2 48 (15.05%) Bash
3 42 (13.17%) SQL
4 37 (11.60%) Java
5 34 (10.66%) JavaScript
6 32 (10.03%) C#
7 25 (7.84%) Bicep
8 23 (7.21%) PowerShell
9 17 (5.33%) TypeScript
10 12 (3.76%) PL/SQL
11 8 (2.51%) Go
12 4 (1.25%) Apex Code
12 4 (1.25%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.94%) Groovy
13 3 (0.94%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 161 (50.47%) Security Cleared
2 113 (35.42%) SC Cleared
3 54 (16.93%) DV Cleared
4 11 (3.45%) Degree
5 7 (2.19%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 5 (1.57%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (0.94%) AWS Certified Developer
8 3 (0.94%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.94%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
8 3 (0.94%) VCAP
8 3 (0.94%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.31%) CISSP
10 1 (0.31%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.31%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.31%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 1 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (5.64%) QA
2 17 (5.33%) Accessibility
3 16 (5.02%) WCAG
4 15 (4.70%) NCSC
5 11 (3.45%) Data Quality
6 7 (2.19%) SLA
7 6 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.94%) GDPR
8 3 (0.94%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.63%) GRC
9 2 (0.63%) NIST
9 2 (0.63%) PMO
10 1 (0.31%) JSP 440
System Software
1 72 (22.57%) Docker
2 6 (1.88%) Corosync
2 6 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.57%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.57%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.25%) vSphere
5 2 (0.63%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.31%) zsh
Systems Management
1 116 (36.36%) Kubernetes
2 55 (17.24%) Ansible
3 15 (4.70%) Grafana
4 13 (4.08%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.13%) Argo
6 7 (2.19%) Failover Clustering
6 7 (2.19%) Pacemaker
7 4 (1.25%) PowerCLI
7 4 (1.25%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.94%) Istio
8 3 (0.94%) Puppet
9 2 (0.63%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.63%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.63%) SCCM
9 2 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.31%) CASB
10 1 (0.31%) Nagios
10 1 (0.31%) Nessus
10 1 (0.31%) VxRail
Vendors
1 56 (17.55%) Microsoft
2 29 (9.09%) Google
3 14 (4.39%) Red Hat
4 12 (3.76%) Oracle
4 12 (3.76%) VMware
5 11 (3.45%) Dynatrace
6 9 (2.82%) SAP
6 9 (2.82%) Splunk
7 8 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.88%) AppDynamics
8 6 (1.88%) Databricks
8 6 (1.88%) New Relic
9 5 (1.57%) InterSystems
10 4 (1.25%) Atlassian
10 4 (1.25%) Conga
10 4 (1.25%) GoCardless
10 4 (1.25%) MuleSoft
10 4 (1.25%) SaltStack
11 3 (0.94%) Dell
11 3 (0.94%) Informatica