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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 20 14
Rank change year-on-year +3 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 314 132 271
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.58% 6.84% 9.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.88% 7.61% 11.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 100 165
10th Percentile £400 £324 £453
25th Percentile £445 £425 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £563
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -8.00% -6.25%
75th Percentile £609 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £696 £696
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 42
10th Percentile £64.15 £83.37 -
25th Percentile £76.00 £83.98 -
Median hourly rate £92.50 £90.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.78% +28.57% -2.10%
75th Percentile £102.50 £95.00 £74.33
90th Percentile £102.95 - £85.00
England median hourly rate £67.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -4.29% +6.87%

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 2,887 1,735 2,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 78.86% 89.85% 83.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,629 1,013 1,473
10th Percentile £325 £213 £264
25th Percentile £425 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £619 £615 £634
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 435 220 255
10th Percentile £14.91 £14.98 £13.86
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.51 £40.00
Median hourly rate £62.25 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +147.51% -62.74% +5.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £64.06 £72.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £76.50
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +3.61%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +11 108 £525 +3.96% 45
Somerset +17 67 £475 -9.05% 8
Wiltshire +13 62 £563 +3.45% 8
Gloucestershire +8 48 £575 +3.37% 39
Devon -13 16 £560 +7.69% 7
Dorset -15 2 £665 +77.33% 4
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 28 (8.92%) Confluence
2 9 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 8 (2.55%) IIS
4 5 (1.59%) Apache Spark
5 4 (1.27%) 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%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.32%) Tomcat
Applications
1 6 (1.91%) Spreadsheet
2 5 (1.59%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.27%) Trello
4 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.32%) InDesign
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (1.27%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.64%) Maximo
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle Payroll
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
1 142 (45.22%) Azure
2 100 (31.85%) AWS
3 75 (23.89%) Azure DevOps
4 52 (16.56%) GCP
5 27 (8.60%) GitHub
6 16 (5.10%) Serverless
7 14 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (4.14%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (3.50%) Azure Key Vault
9 11 (3.50%) dbt
10 10 (3.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 10 (3.18%) SaaS
11 8 (2.55%) Azure AKS
11 8 (2.55%) Power Platform
12 7 (2.23%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
12 7 (2.23%) Entra ID
12 7 (2.23%) OCI
13 6 (1.91%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.91%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.46%) DNS
2 11 (3.50%) Firewall
3 6 (1.91%) VPN
4 4 (1.27%) 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%) HTTP
7 1 (0.32%) Network Security
7 1 (0.32%) SMTP
7 1 (0.32%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.32%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (4.46%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.50%) Geospatial Data
3 8 (2.55%) MongoDB
3 8 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (2.23%) Power BI
4 7 (2.23%) SAP HANA
5 6 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.27%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.27%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.96%) Big Data
7 3 (0.96%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.96%) Metadata
7 3 (0.96%) Redis
7 3 (0.96%) SQLite
8 2 (0.64%) EDRMS
8 2 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.64%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 45 (14.33%) Git
2 39 (12.42%) JIRA
3 30 (9.55%) Jenkins
4 28 (8.92%) GitLab
5 12 (3.82%) Gatling
5 12 (3.82%) LoadRunner
5 12 (3.82%) MSI
6 11 (3.50%) JMeter
7 7 (2.23%) Cucumber
7 7 (2.23%) REST Assured
8 6 (1.91%) Postman
9 4 (1.27%) IntelliJ
10 3 (0.96%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.64%) AdminStudio
11 2 (0.64%) Claude Code
11 2 (0.64%) InstallShield
11 2 (0.64%) JUnit
11 2 (0.64%) Selenium
11 2 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 67 (21.34%) Social Skills
2 38 (12.10%) Public Sector
3 19 (6.05%) Finance
4 18 (5.73%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (2.23%) Legal
6 6 (1.91%) Banking
6 6 (1.91%) Military
7 5 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (1.59%) Retail
8 4 (1.27%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.27%) Police
9 3 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.96%) Local Government
10 1 (0.32%) Aviation
10 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.32%) Marketing
10 1 (0.32%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 81 (25.80%) DevOps Engineer
2 48 (15.29%) Developer
3 27 (8.60%) Architect
4 24 (7.64%) Senior
5 21 (6.69%) Data Engineer
6 20 (6.37%) GCP Engineer
6 20 (6.37%) Lead
7 18 (5.73%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 17 (5.41%) Site Engineer
9 14 (4.46%) GCP DevOps
9 14 (4.46%) GCP DevOps Engineer
9 14 (4.46%) Platform Engineer
9 14 (4.46%) Software Developer
10 13 (4.14%) Analyst
11 12 (3.82%) Azure Engineer
11 12 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (3.50%) Performance Engineer
13 10 (3.18%) Delivery Manager
14 9 (2.87%) Technical Architect
14 9 (2.87%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (32.80%) Terraform
2 37 (11.78%) .NET
3 30 (9.55%) REST
4 23 (7.32%) .NET Framework
5 18 (5.73%) RESTful
6 15 (4.78%) .NET Core
6 15 (4.78%) React
7 14 (4.46%) Playwright
8 12 (3.82%) ATL
8 12 (3.82%) COM
8 12 (3.82%) CSS
8 12 (3.82%) GeoJSON
8 12 (3.82%) HTML
8 12 (3.82%) Kafka
8 12 (3.82%) MFC
8 12 (3.82%) Spring Boot
9 11 (3.50%) CSS3
9 11 (3.50%) HTML5
9 11 (3.50%) WPF
10 10 (3.18%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 56 (17.83%) Cloud Native
2 22 (7.01%) Legacy Systems
3 20 (6.37%) Enterprise Software
4 19 (6.05%) Onboarding
5 15 (4.78%) Hybrid Cloud
6 14 (4.46%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.55%) Wiki
8 6 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.59%) Legacy Code
10 4 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.96%) EPoS
11 3 (0.96%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (0.96%) Public Cloud
11 3 (0.96%) Replication
12 2 (0.64%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.64%) Enterprise Cloud
12 2 (0.64%) Management Information System
12 2 (0.64%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 46 (14.65%) Linux
2 39 (12.42%) Windows
3 14 (4.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (3.82%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.96%) CentOS
5 3 (0.96%) Unix
6 2 (0.64%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.32%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 109 (34.71%) Agile
3 99 (31.53%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (21.97%) Continuous Improvement
5 66 (21.02%) Containerisation
6 46 (14.65%) Test Automation
7 45 (14.33%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 42 (13.38%) Stakeholder Management
9 38 (12.10%) Platform Engineering
9 38 (12.10%) Problem-Solving
10 37 (11.78%) Microservices
11 32 (10.19%) Deployment Automation
11 32 (10.19%) DevSecOps
12 29 (9.24%) Software Engineering
13 26 (8.28%) Root Cause Analysis
14 25 (7.96%) Migration
14 25 (7.96%) Observability
14 25 (7.96%) Technical Leadership
15 23 (7.32%) AI
16 22 (7.01%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 82 (26.11%) Python
2 45 (14.33%) SQL
3 39 (12.42%) Bash
4 35 (11.15%) Java
4 35 (11.15%) JavaScript
5 31 (9.87%) C#
6 19 (6.05%) Bicep
6 19 (6.05%) PowerShell
7 18 (5.73%) TypeScript
8 12 (3.82%) PL/SQL
9 10 (3.18%) Go
10 4 (1.27%) Apex Code
10 4 (1.27%) Shell Script
10 4 (1.27%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.96%) Groovy
12 1 (0.32%) C++
12 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 155 (49.36%) Security Cleared
2 119 (37.90%) SC Cleared
3 42 (13.38%) DV Cleared
4 12 (3.82%) Degree
5 10 (3.18%) AWS Certification
6 8 (2.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 7 (2.23%) ISTQB
8 6 (1.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (1.91%) TOGAF Certification
9 4 (1.27%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Developer
10 3 (0.96%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.96%) VCAP
10 3 (0.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.64%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.41%) Accessibility
1 17 (5.41%) QA
2 16 (5.10%) WCAG
3 14 (4.46%) NCSC
4 10 (3.18%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.23%) SLA
6 5 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.96%) GDPR
8 2 (0.64%) GRC
8 2 (0.64%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.64%) PMO
9 1 (0.32%) NIST
System Software
1 69 (21.97%) Docker
2 6 (1.91%) Corosync
2 6 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.59%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.59%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.27%) vSphere
5 2 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.32%) zsh
Systems Management
1 112 (35.67%) Kubernetes
2 51 (16.24%) Ansible
3 15 (4.78%) Grafana
4 13 (4.14%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.87%) Argo
6 7 (2.23%) Failover Clustering
6 7 (2.23%) Pacemaker
7 4 (1.27%) PowerCLI
7 4 (1.27%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.96%) Istio
9 2 (0.64%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.64%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.64%) Puppet
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%) Nessus
10 1 (0.32%) OPNET
Vendors
1 53 (16.88%) Microsoft
2 27 (8.60%) Google
3 16 (5.10%) Dynatrace
4 13 (4.14%) Red Hat
4 13 (4.14%) Splunk
5 11 (3.50%) AppDynamics
5 11 (3.50%) New Relic
5 11 (3.50%) Oracle
5 11 (3.50%) VMware
6 9 (2.87%) SAP
7 7 (2.23%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.91%) Atlassian
9 5 (1.59%) Databricks
9 5 (1.59%) InterSystems
10 4 (1.27%) Conga
10 4 (1.27%) GoCardless
10 4 (1.27%) IBM
10 4 (1.27%) SaltStack
11 3 (0.96%) Dell
11 3 (0.96%) MuleSoft