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 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 26 21
Rank change year-on-year +14 -5 -11
Contract jobs citing DevOps 287 107 243
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.46% 6.35% 7.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.71% 6.99% 9.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 80 163
10th Percentile £372 £362 £400
25th Percentile £413 £447 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -9.28%
75th Percentile £597 £627 £638
90th Percentile £646 £685 £688
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 28
10th Percentile £66.13 - -
25th Percentile £77.75 £66.25 -
Median hourly rate £87.75 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -3.57% +6.78%
75th Percentile £101.56 £75.86 £85.00
90th Percentile £102.88 £80.12 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £65.25
% change year-on-year - +3.45% -0.38%

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 2,680 1,531 2,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 79.01% 90.86% 82.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,450 943 1,706
10th Percentile £325 £220 £236
25th Percentile £413 £388 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 469 153 352
10th Percentile £16.01 £18.13 £13.86
25th Percentile £25.15 £18.51 £29.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £36.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.72% -34.55% -6.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.14 £70.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £46.43 £28.18 £36.50
% change year-on-year +64.76% -22.79% -2.46%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 +10 94 £531 +0.71% 41
Wiltshire +22 68 £500 -13.04% 4
Gloucestershire +12 55 £575 -6.31% 38
Somerset +13 38 £475 -24.00% 9
Devon -11 14 £560 +9.27% 7
Dorset -2 10 £369 -20.27% 4
Cornwall -6 1 £505 -12.17% 1
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 13 (4.53%) Confluence
2 10 (3.48%) Apache Spark
3 8 (2.79%) IIS
3 8 (2.79%) SharePoint
4 6 (2.09%) Mattermost
5 5 (1.74%) Apache
6 4 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
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 7 (2.44%) Maximo
2 6 (2.09%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (1.39%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.70%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.35%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 121 (42.16%) Azure
2 86 (29.97%) AWS
3 64 (22.30%) Azure DevOps
4 42 (14.63%) GCP
5 31 (10.80%) GitHub
6 18 (6.27%) Serverless
7 17 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (4.53%) AWS CloudFormation
9 12 (4.18%) SaaS
10 11 (3.83%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
10 11 (3.83%) Entra ID
11 10 (3.48%) Azure AKS
11 10 (3.48%) Azure Key Vault
12 9 (3.14%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.14%) OpenShift
13 8 (2.79%) Amazon S3
13 8 (2.79%) Azure Data Factory
13 8 (2.79%) Datadog
13 8 (2.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.83%) DNS
1 11 (3.83%) VPN
2 10 (3.48%) Firewall
3 3 (1.05%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.05%) HTTP
3 3 (1.05%) TETRA
4 2 (0.70%) DHCP
4 2 (0.70%) LAN
4 2 (0.70%) Network Security
4 2 (0.70%) WAN
5 1 (0.35%) AMQP
5 1 (0.35%) NAS
5 1 (0.35%) SAN
5 1 (0.35%) SMTP
5 1 (0.35%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (3.48%) NoSQL
1 10 (3.48%) Relational Database
1 10 (3.48%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.14%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.44%) MongoDB
3 7 (2.44%) SAP HANA
4 6 (2.09%) Elasticsearch
4 6 (2.09%) Flink
4 6 (2.09%) Power BI
5 4 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (1.39%) Redis
6 3 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (1.05%) Power Query
7 2 (0.70%) Big Data
8 1 (0.35%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.35%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.35%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
8 1 (0.35%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 30 (10.45%) JIRA
2 27 (9.41%) Git
3 25 (8.71%) GitLab
4 23 (8.01%) Jenkins
5 12 (4.18%) Gatling
5 12 (4.18%) LoadRunner
6 11 (3.83%) JMeter
7 7 (2.44%) Cucumber
7 7 (2.44%) REST Assured
8 6 (2.09%) Postman
9 4 (1.39%) IntelliJ
10 3 (1.05%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.05%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.70%) AdminStudio
11 2 (0.70%) InstallShield
11 2 (0.70%) JUnit
12 1 (0.35%) MSI
12 1 (0.35%) Oracle APEX
12 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 65 (22.65%) Social Skills
2 19 (6.62%) Public Sector
3 17 (5.92%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (5.57%) Finance
5 10 (3.48%) Legal
6 8 (2.79%) Military
7 5 (1.74%) Banking
7 5 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.39%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.35%) Back Office
9 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.35%) Marketing
9 1 (0.35%) Publishing
9 1 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 98 (34.15%) DevOps Engineer
2 27 (9.41%) Developer
3 26 (9.06%) Senior
4 19 (6.62%) Analyst
4 19 (6.62%) GCP Engineer
5 18 (6.27%) Architect
5 18 (6.27%) Site Engineer
5 18 (6.27%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 16 (5.57%) Azure Engineer
6 16 (5.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 13 (4.53%) Data Engineer
7 13 (4.53%) Lead
8 12 (4.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 12 (4.18%) GCP DevOps
8 12 (4.18%) GCP DevOps Engineer
8 12 (4.18%) Performance Engineer
9 11 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
9 11 (3.83%) Java Developer
10 10 (3.48%) Backend Developer
11 9 (3.14%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (7.32%) .NET
2 20 (6.97%) Kafka
3 18 (6.27%) Spring Boot
4 16 (5.57%) Spring
5 15 (5.23%) REST
6 14 (4.88%) React
7 13 (4.53%) Playwright
8 12 (4.18%) RESTful
9 11 (3.83%) .NET Framework
10 7 (2.44%) Node.js
10 7 (2.44%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (2.09%) Apache NiFi
11 6 (2.09%) ARM Templates
11 6 (2.09%) FastAPI
11 6 (2.09%) Flask
12 5 (1.74%) Elastic Stack
12 5 (1.74%) GraphQL
12 5 (1.74%) Java Concurrency
13 4 (1.39%) gRPC
13 4 (1.39%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 41 (14.29%) Cloud Native
2 19 (6.62%) Enterprise Software
3 13 (4.53%) Legacy Systems
4 11 (3.83%) Hybrid Cloud
4 11 (3.83%) Product Ownership
5 7 (2.44%) Public Cloud
6 6 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.74%) Legacy Code
7 5 (1.74%) Management Information System
8 4 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (1.39%) Mobile App
8 4 (1.39%) Wiki
9 3 (1.05%) EPoS
9 3 (1.05%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (1.05%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.05%) Replication
10 2 (0.70%) Clustering
10 2 (0.70%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.70%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 44 (15.33%) Linux
2 30 (10.45%) Windows
3 12 (4.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.48%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.05%) Unix
6 2 (0.70%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.35%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (45.30%) CI/CD
2 85 (29.62%) Agile
3 56 (19.51%) Infrastructure as Code
4 55 (19.16%) Continuous Improvement
5 52 (18.12%) Containerisation
6 36 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
7 35 (12.20%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 32 (11.15%) Microservices
9 30 (10.45%) ITIL
10 28 (9.76%) Test Automation
11 27 (9.41%) Analytics
12 26 (9.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 24 (8.36%) Observability
14 23 (8.01%) Stakeholder Management
15 22 (7.67%) Root Cause Analysis
16 21 (7.32%) Data Engineering
16 21 (7.32%) Data Modelling
16 21 (7.32%) High Availability
16 21 (7.32%) Mentoring
17 20 (6.97%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 71 (24.74%) Python
2 50 (17.42%) SQL
3 38 (13.24%) Java
4 28 (9.76%) Bash
5 20 (6.97%) PowerShell
6 19 (6.62%) JavaScript
7 17 (5.92%) Go
8 11 (3.83%) C#
9 10 (3.48%) Bicep
10 6 (2.09%) TypeScript
11 4 (1.39%) Apex Code
11 4 (1.39%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.39%) T-SQL
12 3 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.70%) Groovy
14 1 (0.35%) C++
14 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.35%) PHP
14 1 (0.35%) Scala
14 1 (0.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 127 (44.25%) Security Cleared
2 91 (31.71%) SC Cleared
3 39 (13.59%) DV Cleared
4 15 (5.23%) Degree
5 13 (4.53%) Azure Certification
6 8 (2.79%) AWS Certification
7 7 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (2.09%) ISTQB
8 6 (2.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (2.09%) TOGAF Certification
9 5 (1.74%) CISM
9 5 (1.74%) CISSP
9 5 (1.74%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 4 (1.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 4 (1.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (1.05%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 3 (1.05%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
13 1 (0.35%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (8.01%) QA
2 11 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (3.14%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.44%) NIST
5 6 (2.09%) GDPR
6 5 (1.74%) NIST 800
6 5 (1.74%) SLA
7 4 (1.39%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.39%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.05%) NCSC
8 3 (1.05%) PMO
8 3 (1.05%) WCAG
9 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 58 (20.21%) Docker
2 13 (4.53%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.09%) Corosync
4 2 (0.70%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 100 (34.84%) Kubernetes
2 76 (26.48%) Terraform
3 38 (13.24%) Ansible
4 21 (7.32%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.92%) Grafana
6 11 (3.83%) Argo
7 7 (2.44%) Failover Clustering
7 7 (2.44%) Pacemaker
8 4 (1.39%) 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%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.70%) SCCM
11 1 (0.35%) CASB
11 1 (0.35%) Docker Swarm
11 1 (0.35%) Packer
11 1 (0.35%) Puppet
11 1 (0.35%) VxRail
Vendors
1 42 (14.63%) Microsoft
2 21 (7.32%) Red Hat
3 20 (6.97%) Google
4 15 (5.23%) Dynatrace
5 14 (4.88%) Databricks
5 14 (4.88%) Splunk
6 11 (3.83%) AppDynamics
6 11 (3.83%) New Relic
7 9 (3.14%) SAP
8 8 (2.79%) Salesforce
9 7 (2.44%) IBM
10 6 (2.09%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.09%) Oracle
10 6 (2.09%) Remedy
10 6 (2.09%) VMware
11 5 (1.74%) InterSystems
12 4 (1.39%) Conga
12 4 (1.39%) GoCardless
13 3 (1.05%) Dell
14 2 (0.70%) NEC