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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 20 13
Rank change year-on-year +5 -7 +4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 323 144 254
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.61% 7.30% 9.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.07% 8.05% 11.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 115 149
10th Percentile £406 £348 £455
25th Percentile £450 £450 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £590
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -11.02% -1.67%
75th Percentile £613 £644 £675
90th Percentile £738 £700 £723
England median daily rate £525 £525 £561
% change year-on-year - -6.46% -3.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 40
10th Percentile £60.20 - -
25th Percentile £66.13 £85.00 -
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 £74.11
90th Percentile £90.60 - £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 2,918 1,788 2,175
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 77.79% 90.67% 84.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,638 1,031 1,274
10th Percentile £325 £213 £300
25th Percentile £450 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £617 £638
90th Percentile £730 £706 £723
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 476 264 208
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £21.70
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.78 £48.00
Median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +146.52% -62.74% +7.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £77.75 £68.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.23% -41.51% -1.94%

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 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 26 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 26 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 +8 120 £543 +4.33% 90
Somerset +15 62 £475 +5.56% 42
Gloucestershire +9 55 £575 -11.54% 100
Wiltshire +10 47 £563 -4.26% 34
Devon -10 16 £560 +7.69% 21
Dorset -14 7 £350 -6.67% 17
Cornwall - 1 £505 - 3
Avon - 1 - - 33
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 (8.05%) Confluence
2 14 (4.33%) SharePoint
3 8 (2.48%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.55%) Apache
6 1 (0.31%) JBoss
6 1 (0.31%) Mattermost
6 1 (0.31%) nginx
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle Coherence
6 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.31%) WebSphere
Applications
1 6 (1.86%) Spreadsheet
2 5 (1.55%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.93%) Trello
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.31%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (1.24%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.93%) 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
Cloud Services
1 142 (43.96%) Azure
2 97 (30.03%) AWS
3 76 (23.53%) Azure DevOps
4 67 (20.74%) GCP
5 20 (6.19%) dbt
5 20 (6.19%) GitHub
6 14 (4.33%) Azure AKS
6 14 (4.33%) Serverless
7 12 (3.72%) AWS CloudFormation
8 10 (3.10%) Azure Data Factory
9 9 (2.79%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (2.79%) Power Platform
10 8 (2.48%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (2.48%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 8 (2.48%) SaaS
11 7 (2.17%) Amazon S3
11 7 (2.17%) Cloud Composer
11 7 (2.17%) OCI
11 7 (2.17%) OpenShift
11 7 (2.17%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.41%) DNS
1 11 (3.41%) Firewall
2 6 (1.86%) VPN
3 4 (1.24%) VSAN
4 2 (0.62%) CTI
5 1 (0.31%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.31%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (3.41%) Geospatial Data
3 10 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.10%) SQL Server
4 9 (2.79%) Power BI
5 8 (2.48%) BigQuery
6 7 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
6 7 (2.17%) Metadata
6 7 (2.17%) SAP HANA
7 6 (1.86%) MongoDB
8 5 (1.55%) Big Data
8 5 (1.55%) Hadoop
8 5 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (1.24%) Looker
9 4 (1.24%) NoSQL
9 4 (1.24%) Tableau
10 3 (0.93%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.93%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.93%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 53 (16.41%) Git
2 38 (11.76%) JIRA
3 37 (11.46%) Jenkins
4 34 (10.53%) GitLab
5 11 (3.41%) Cucumber
5 11 (3.41%) MSI
6 7 (2.17%) Postman
6 7 (2.17%) REST Assured
7 6 (1.86%) Gatling
7 6 (1.86%) LoadRunner
7 6 (1.86%) Selenium
8 5 (1.55%) JMeter
9 3 (0.93%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.93%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.93%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.62%) Appium
10 2 (0.62%) JUnit
10 2 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.62%) Visual Studio Team System
11 1 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 60 (18.58%) Social Skills
2 36 (11.15%) Public Sector
3 22 (6.81%) Finance
4 17 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (4.33%) Banking
6 5 (1.55%) Aerospace
6 5 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (1.55%) Legal
6 5 (1.55%) Military
6 5 (1.55%) Retail
7 4 (1.24%) Local Government
7 4 (1.24%) Police
8 3 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.31%) Aviation
10 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 80 (24.77%) DevOps Engineer
2 51 (15.79%) Developer
3 34 (10.53%) Architect
4 32 (9.91%) Data Engineer
5 30 (9.29%) Senior
6 23 (7.12%) GCP Engineer
7 20 (6.19%) Software Developer
8 17 (5.26%) Analyst
8 17 (5.26%) Lead
9 15 (4.64%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 15 (4.64%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.64%) Platform Engineer
9 15 (4.64%) Senior DevOps
9 15 (4.64%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 12 (3.72%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (3.41%) GCP DevOps
11 11 (3.41%) GCP DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.41%) Site Engineer
12 10 (3.10%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (35.91%) Terraform
2 30 (9.29%) .NET
3 27 (8.36%) REST
4 19 (5.88%) RESTful
5 17 (5.26%) .NET Framework
5 17 (5.26%) React
6 15 (4.64%) .NET Core
6 15 (4.64%) Kafka
6 15 (4.64%) Playwright
7 14 (4.33%) Spring Boot
8 13 (4.02%) CSS
8 13 (4.02%) HTML
9 12 (3.72%) CSS3
9 12 (3.72%) HTML5
9 12 (3.72%) Spring
10 11 (3.41%) ATL
10 11 (3.41%) COM
10 11 (3.41%) GeoJSON
10 11 (3.41%) MFC
10 11 (3.41%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 56 (17.34%) Cloud Native
2 25 (7.74%) Onboarding
3 20 (6.19%) Product Ownership
4 18 (5.57%) Enterprise Software
5 17 (5.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 16 (4.95%) Legacy Systems
7 14 (4.33%) Wiki
8 6 (1.86%) Clustering
9 5 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.24%) Enterprise Cloud
10 4 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.93%) EPoS
11 3 (0.93%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.93%) Replication
12 2 (0.62%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.62%) IVR
12 2 (0.62%) Private Cloud
12 2 (0.62%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 43 (13.31%) Linux
2 28 (8.67%) Windows
3 12 (3.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.24%) CentOS
4 4 (1.24%) Unix
4 4 (1.24%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.31%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (53.25%) CI/CD
2 112 (34.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 106 (32.82%) Agile
4 73 (22.60%) Containerisation
5 68 (21.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 48 (14.86%) Test Automation
7 45 (13.93%) Platform Engineering
8 44 (13.62%) Stakeholder Management
9 43 (13.31%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 40 (12.38%) DevSecOps
11 39 (12.07%) AI
11 39 (12.07%) Deployment Automation
12 38 (11.76%) ETL
12 38 (11.76%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (10.53%) Technical Leadership
14 33 (10.22%) Data Modelling
14 33 (10.22%) Microservices
15 32 (9.91%) Observability
15 32 (9.91%) Software Engineering
16 29 (8.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 97 (30.03%) Python
2 51 (15.79%) SQL
3 46 (14.24%) Bash
4 40 (12.38%) Java
5 37 (11.46%) JavaScript
6 34 (10.53%) C#
7 24 (7.43%) Bicep
8 18 (5.57%) TypeScript
9 17 (5.26%) PowerShell
10 13 (4.02%) PL/SQL
11 10 (3.10%) Go
12 4 (1.24%) Apex Code
13 3 (0.93%) Groovy
13 3 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.93%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 154 (47.68%) Security Cleared
2 104 (32.20%) SC Cleared
3 60 (18.58%) DV Cleared
4 12 (3.72%) Degree
5 9 (2.79%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 5 (1.55%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.55%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (0.93%) AWS Certified Developer
8 3 (0.93%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
8 3 (0.93%) VCAP
8 3 (0.93%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.31%) CISSP
10 1 (0.31%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.31%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 1 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.74%) QA
2 18 (5.57%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.95%) WCAG
4 13 (4.02%) Data Quality
4 13 (4.02%) NCSC
5 6 (1.86%) SLA
6 5 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.93%) GDPR
8 2 (0.62%) GRC
8 2 (0.62%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.62%) NIST
8 2 (0.62%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.62%) SEPA
9 1 (0.31%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
System Software
1 70 (21.67%) Docker
2 6 (1.86%) Corosync
2 6 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.55%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.24%) vSphere
5 2 (0.62%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.31%) Active Directory
6 1 (0.31%) zsh
Systems Management
1 111 (34.37%) Kubernetes
2 51 (15.79%) Ansible
3 12 (3.72%) Grafana
4 10 (3.10%) Prometheus
5 7 (2.17%) Argo
5 7 (2.17%) Failover Clustering
5 7 (2.17%) Pacemaker
6 4 (1.24%) PowerCLI
6 4 (1.24%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.93%) Istio
8 2 (0.62%) Puppet
8 2 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.31%) CASB
9 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.31%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.31%) Nagios
9 1 (0.31%) Nessus
9 1 (0.31%) OPNET
9 1 (0.31%) VxRail
Vendors
1 52 (16.10%) Microsoft
2 38 (11.76%) Google
3 14 (4.33%) Oracle
4 12 (3.72%) VMware
5 10 (3.10%) Dynatrace
5 10 (3.10%) Red Hat
6 8 (2.48%) Salesforce
6 8 (2.48%) SAP
6 8 (2.48%) Splunk
7 6 (1.86%) Databricks
8 5 (1.55%) AppDynamics
8 5 (1.55%) New Relic
9 4 (1.24%) Conga
9 4 (1.24%) GoCardless
9 4 (1.24%) InterSystems
9 4 (1.24%) MuleSoft
9 4 (1.24%) SaltStack
10 3 (0.93%) Dell
10 3 (0.93%) Informatica
10 3 (0.93%) webMethods