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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 20 15
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 331 146 249
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.93% 7.44% 9.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.46% 8.24% 11.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 117 143
10th Percentile £406 £360 £450
25th Percentile £463 £456 £504
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £590
Median % change year-on-year - -6.78% -1.67%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £680
90th Percentile £750 £700 £732
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 40
10th Percentile £58.71 - -
25th Percentile £62.40 £85.00 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £90.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.56% +28.57% -9.97%
75th Percentile - £95.00 £74.11
90th Percentile £81.25 - £85.00
England median hourly rate £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +2.61% -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 2,888 1,771 2,141
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 77.91% 90.22% 83.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,602 1,000 1,237
10th Percentile £338 £213 £300
25th Percentile £457 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.55% -3.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £717 £725
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 481 265 206
10th Percentile £14.31 £15.00 £22.50
25th Percentile £25.25 £18.51 £46.69
Median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +146.52% -62.74% +9.15%
75th Percentile £68.75 £60.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £76.75 £68.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -4.07%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 +13 128 £550 +4.76% 52
Somerset +17 59 £475 +5.56% 38
Gloucestershire +5 56 £575 -11.54% 73
Wiltshire +4 49 £570 -4.00% 34
Devon -4 16 £560 +7.69% 18
Dorset -13 8 £350 -6.67% 12
Cornwall - 1 £505 - 6
Avon - 1 - - 23
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 29 (8.76%) Confluence
2 14 (4.23%) Apache
3 13 (3.93%) SharePoint
4 12 (3.63%) Apache Spark
5 6 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (1.21%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.91%) IIS
8 1 (0.30%) JBoss
8 1 (0.30%) Mattermost
8 1 (0.30%) nginx
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 6 (1.81%) MS Visio
1 6 (1.81%) Spreadsheet
2 3 (0.91%) Trello
3 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.30%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (1.21%) Oracle Payroll
1 4 (1.21%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.30%) ResourceLink
2 1 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
2 1 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 142 (42.90%) Azure
2 97 (29.31%) AWS
3 79 (23.87%) Azure DevOps
4 68 (20.54%) GCP
5 20 (6.04%) GitHub
6 19 (5.74%) dbt
7 15 (4.53%) Serverless
8 13 (3.93%) Azure AKS
9 12 (3.63%) Amazon S3
9 12 (3.63%) AWS CloudFormation
9 12 (3.63%) OpenShift
10 10 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (3.02%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
10 10 (3.02%) Power Platform
11 8 (2.42%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 7 (2.11%) Cloud Composer
12 7 (2.11%) OCI
12 7 (2.11%) SaaS
12 7 (2.11%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.23%) DNS
1 14 (4.23%) Firewall
2 5 (1.51%) VPN
2 5 (1.51%) VSAN
3 4 (1.21%) TCP/IP
4 3 (0.91%) DHCP
5 2 (0.60%) CTI
6 1 (0.30%) Internet
6 1 (0.30%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.63%) Metadata
2 11 (3.32%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (3.32%) Geospatial Data
2 11 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.02%) Power BI
3 10 (3.02%) SQL Server
4 9 (2.72%) Big Data
4 9 (2.72%) Hadoop
5 8 (2.42%) BigQuery
6 7 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
6 7 (2.11%) SAP HANA
7 5 (1.51%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.51%) MongoDB
7 5 (1.51%) Parquet
7 5 (1.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (1.21%) Looker
8 4 (1.21%) Tableau
9 3 (0.91%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.91%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 53 (16.01%) Git
2 42 (12.69%) Jenkins
3 41 (12.39%) GitLab
3 41 (12.39%) JIRA
4 11 (3.32%) Cucumber
4 11 (3.32%) MSI
5 7 (2.11%) Postman
5 7 (2.11%) REST Assured
6 6 (1.81%) Selenium
7 3 (0.91%) Claude Code
7 3 (0.91%) Gatling
7 3 (0.91%) LoadRunner
7 3 (0.91%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.91%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.60%) Appium
8 2 (0.60%) JMeter
8 2 (0.60%) JUnit
8 2 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.60%) Visual Studio Team System
9 1 (0.30%) TestNG
General
1 61 (18.43%) Social Skills
2 37 (11.18%) Public Sector
3 23 (6.95%) Finance
4 19 (5.74%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (4.83%) Banking
6 6 (1.81%) Aerospace
7 5 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (1.51%) Military
8 4 (1.21%) Legal
8 4 (1.21%) Local Government
8 4 (1.21%) Police
8 4 (1.21%) Retail
9 2 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.30%) Aviation
10 1 (0.30%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 82 (24.77%) DevOps Engineer
2 52 (15.71%) Developer
3 37 (11.18%) Data Engineer
4 35 (10.57%) Senior
5 32 (9.67%) Architect
6 23 (6.95%) Software Developer
7 22 (6.65%) GCP Engineer
8 18 (5.44%) Lead
9 17 (5.14%) Analyst
9 17 (5.14%) Senior DevOps
9 17 (5.14%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 15 (4.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 15 (4.53%) Azure Engineer
10 15 (4.53%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.02%) AWS Engineer
11 10 (3.02%) GCP DevOps
11 10 (3.02%) GCP DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 9 (2.72%) Oracle Developer
12 9 (2.72%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (38.07%) Terraform
2 33 (9.97%) REST
3 27 (8.16%) .NET
4 18 (5.44%) RESTful
5 17 (5.14%) React
6 16 (4.83%) Kafka
7 15 (4.53%) Playwright
8 14 (4.23%) .NET Core
8 14 (4.23%) .NET Framework
8 14 (4.23%) CSS
8 14 (4.23%) HTML
8 14 (4.23%) Spring Boot
9 12 (3.63%) CSS3
9 12 (3.63%) HTML5
9 12 (3.63%) Spring
10 11 (3.32%) ATL
10 11 (3.32%) COM
10 11 (3.32%) GeoJSON
10 11 (3.32%) MFC
10 11 (3.32%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 58 (17.52%) Cloud Native
2 26 (7.85%) Onboarding
3 19 (5.74%) Enterprise Software
3 19 (5.74%) Product Ownership
4 18 (5.44%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (4.83%) Legacy Systems
6 12 (3.63%) Wiki
7 6 (1.81%) Clustering
8 5 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.21%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.21%) Enterprise Cloud
9 4 (1.21%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (0.91%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.91%) Replication
11 2 (0.60%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.60%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.60%) IVR
11 2 (0.60%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 46 (13.90%) Linux
2 34 (10.27%) Windows
3 12 (3.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.51%) Unix
5 4 (1.21%) CentOS
5 4 (1.21%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.30%) Android
6 1 (0.30%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (54.08%) CI/CD
2 121 (36.56%) Infrastructure as Code
3 101 (30.51%) Agile
4 79 (23.87%) Containerisation
5 66 (19.94%) Continuous Improvement
6 51 (15.41%) Test Automation
7 49 (14.80%) Platform Engineering
8 46 (13.90%) AI
9 44 (13.29%) Problem-Solving
9 44 (13.29%) Stakeholder Management
10 43 (12.99%) DevSecOps
10 43 (12.99%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 41 (12.39%) Deployment Automation
12 40 (12.08%) ETL
13 36 (10.88%) Data Modelling
13 36 (10.88%) Technical Leadership
14 33 (9.97%) Software Engineering
15 32 (9.67%) Microservices
15 32 (9.67%) Observability
16 31 (9.37%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 106 (32.02%) Python
2 56 (16.92%) SQL
3 53 (16.01%) Bash
4 45 (13.60%) Java
5 39 (11.78%) JavaScript
6 32 (9.67%) C#
7 26 (7.85%) PowerShell
8 24 (7.25%) Bicep
9 18 (5.44%) TypeScript
10 14 (4.23%) PL/SQL
11 12 (3.63%) Go
12 5 (1.51%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.21%) Apex Code
14 3 (0.91%) Groovy
14 3 (0.91%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.30%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 168 (50.76%) Security Cleared
2 110 (33.23%) SC Cleared
3 71 (21.45%) DV Cleared
4 17 (5.14%) Degree
5 9 (2.72%) AWS Certification
6 7 (2.11%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 5 (1.51%) ISTQB
8 4 (1.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.91%) AWS Certified Developer
9 3 (0.91%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.91%) VCAP
9 3 (0.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 2 (0.60%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.30%) CompTIA Security+
11 1 (0.30%) SAFe Agilist
11 1 (0.30%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (6.34%) QA
2 18 (5.44%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.83%) WCAG
4 15 (4.53%) NCSC
5 13 (3.93%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.51%) SLA
8 3 (0.91%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.60%) GDPR
9 2 (0.60%) GRC
9 2 (0.60%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.60%) NIST
9 2 (0.60%) SEPA
10 1 (0.30%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.30%) PMO
System Software
1 75 (22.66%) Docker
2 6 (1.81%) Corosync
2 6 (1.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 6 (1.81%) VMware NSX
3 5 (1.51%) VMware ESXi
3 5 (1.51%) vSphere
4 4 (1.21%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.30%) zsh
Systems Management
1 119 (35.95%) Kubernetes
2 65 (19.64%) Ansible
3 11 (3.32%) Grafana
4 10 (3.02%) Prometheus
5 7 (2.11%) Failover Clustering
5 7 (2.11%) Pacemaker
6 5 (1.51%) Argo
6 5 (1.51%) PowerCLI
6 5 (1.51%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.91%) Istio
8 2 (0.60%) Puppet
8 2 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.30%) CASB
9 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.30%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.30%) Nessus
9 1 (0.30%) OPNET
9 1 (0.30%) SCCM
9 1 (0.30%) VxRail
Vendors
1 52 (15.71%) Microsoft
2 40 (12.08%) Google
3 15 (4.53%) Oracle
4 12 (3.63%) VMware
5 10 (3.02%) Red Hat
6 8 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 8 (2.42%) SAP
7 7 (2.11%) Dynatrace
8 6 (1.81%) Databricks
8 6 (1.81%) Splunk
9 5 (1.51%) Atlassian
9 5 (1.51%) MuleSoft
9 5 (1.51%) SaltStack
10 4 (1.21%) Conga
10 4 (1.21%) GoCardless
10 4 (1.21%) InterSystems
10 4 (1.21%) webMethods
11 3 (0.91%) Dell
11 3 (0.91%) IBM
11 3 (0.91%) Informatica