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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 20 14
Rank change year-on-year +6 -6 +2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 324 135 252
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.68% 6.84% 9.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.15% 7.57% 11.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 107 151
10th Percentile £400 £342 £456
25th Percentile £449 £447 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £590
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -11.02% -1.67%
75th Percentile £613 £639 £668
90th Percentile £700 £700 £701
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -5.66%
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 £67.70 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +1.04% -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 2,907 1,784 2,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 77.91% 90.42% 83.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,643 1,032 1,323
10th Percentile £325 £220 £271
25th Percentile £429 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £706 £701
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 241 214
10th Percentile £14.83 £15.00 £16.18
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.51 £48.50
Median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +146.52% -62.74% +7.14%
75th Percentile £69.38 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £78.56 £68.75 £75.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 £534 +5.69% 113
Somerset +16 65 £475 +5.56% 44
Gloucestershire +11 55 £575 -11.54% 155
Wiltshire +11 52 £563 -5.26% 22
Devon -11 16 £560 +7.69% 23
Dorset -15 7 £350 -24.32% 22
Cornwall - 1 £505 - 3
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 25 (7.72%) Confluence
2 15 (4.63%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.16%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.54%) Apache
6 2 (0.62%) IIS
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 (2.16%) Spreadsheet
2 5 (1.54%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.93%) Trello
4 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.31%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (1.23%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.62%) 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
1 149 (45.99%) Azure
2 101 (31.17%) AWS
3 80 (24.69%) Azure DevOps
4 60 (18.52%) GCP
5 22 (6.79%) GitHub
6 16 (4.94%) dbt
6 16 (4.94%) Serverless
7 14 (4.32%) Azure AKS
8 13 (4.01%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (2.78%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (2.47%) Amazon S3
11 8 (2.47%) Azure Data Factory
11 8 (2.47%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 8 (2.47%) OpenShift
11 8 (2.47%) Power Platform
11 8 (2.47%) SaaS
12 7 (2.16%) Azure Key Vault
12 7 (2.16%) OCI
13 6 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.40%) DNS
1 11 (3.40%) Firewall
2 6 (1.85%) VPN
3 4 (1.23%) VSAN
4 2 (0.62%) CTI
5 1 (0.31%) AMQP
5 1 (0.31%) Network Security
5 1 (0.31%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.31%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.70%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.40%) Geospatial Data
3 9 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (2.47%) MongoDB
4 8 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.47%) Power BI
5 7 (2.16%) SAP HANA
6 5 (1.54%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.54%) Big Data
6 5 (1.54%) BigQuery
6 5 (1.54%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (1.54%) Metadata
6 5 (1.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.23%) Hadoop
7 4 (1.23%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.93%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.93%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.93%) EDRMS
8 3 (0.93%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.93%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 52 (16.05%) Git
2 38 (11.73%) JIRA
3 37 (11.42%) GitLab
3 37 (11.42%) Jenkins
4 11 (3.40%) MSI
5 10 (3.09%) Cucumber
6 7 (2.16%) Gatling
6 7 (2.16%) LoadRunner
6 7 (2.16%) REST Assured
7 6 (1.85%) JMeter
7 6 (1.85%) Postman
8 5 (1.54%) Selenium
9 3 (0.93%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.93%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.93%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.62%) AdminStudio
10 2 (0.62%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.62%) JUnit
10 2 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.62%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 66 (20.37%) Social Skills
2 36 (11.11%) Public Sector
3 25 (7.72%) Finance
4 18 (5.56%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (3.70%) Banking
6 6 (1.85%) Legal
7 5 (1.54%) Aerospace
7 5 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (1.54%) Military
7 5 (1.54%) Retail
8 4 (1.23%) Local Government
8 4 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.23%) Police
9 3 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.31%) Aviation
10 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 85 (26.23%) DevOps Engineer
2 50 (15.43%) Developer
3 31 (9.57%) Architect
4 28 (8.64%) Senior
5 27 (8.33%) Data Engineer
6 20 (6.17%) GCP Engineer
7 19 (5.86%) Software Developer
8 18 (5.56%) Lead
9 17 (5.25%) Azure Engineer
10 16 (4.94%) Analyst
10 16 (4.94%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 15 (4.63%) Platform Engineer
11 15 (4.63%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 14 (4.32%) Senior DevOps
12 14 (4.32%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 14 (4.32%) Site Engineer
13 12 (3.70%) GCP DevOps
13 12 (3.70%) GCP DevOps Engineer
14 10 (3.09%) AWS Engineer
15 9 (2.78%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (35.49%) Terraform
2 33 (10.19%) .NET
3 28 (8.64%) REST
4 20 (6.17%) RESTful
5 19 (5.86%) .NET Framework
6 17 (5.25%) React
7 16 (4.94%) Spring Boot
8 15 (4.63%) .NET Core
8 15 (4.63%) Kafka
8 15 (4.63%) Playwright
9 14 (4.32%) Spring
10 13 (4.01%) CSS
10 13 (4.01%) HTML
11 12 (3.70%) CSS3
11 12 (3.70%) HTML5
12 11 (3.40%) ATL
12 11 (3.40%) COM
12 11 (3.40%) GeoJSON
12 11 (3.40%) MFC
12 11 (3.40%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 57 (17.59%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.10%) Onboarding
3 22 (6.79%) Enterprise Software
3 22 (6.79%) Product Ownership
4 19 (5.86%) Legacy Systems
5 16 (4.94%) Hybrid Cloud
6 14 (4.32%) Wiki
7 6 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.54%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.23%) Enterprise Cloud
10 3 (0.93%) Clustering
10 3 (0.93%) EPoS
10 3 (0.93%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (0.93%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.93%) Replication
11 2 (0.62%) IVR
11 2 (0.62%) Legacy Code
11 2 (0.62%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 46 (14.20%) Linux
2 33 (10.19%) Windows
3 14 (4.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.85%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.23%) CentOS
5 4 (1.23%) Unix
6 2 (0.62%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.31%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (52.78%) CI/CD
2 114 (35.19%) Infrastructure as Code
3 111 (34.26%) Agile
4 76 (23.46%) Containerisation
5 74 (22.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 48 (14.81%) Test Automation
7 46 (14.20%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 46 (14.20%) Stakeholder Management
8 45 (13.89%) Platform Engineering
9 42 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
10 40 (12.35%) Deployment Automation
10 40 (12.35%) DevSecOps
11 36 (11.11%) Microservices
12 34 (10.49%) Observability
13 33 (10.19%) AI
14 32 (9.88%) Software Engineering
15 29 (8.95%) ETL
15 29 (8.95%) Technical Leadership
16 28 (8.64%) Software Delivery
17 27 (8.33%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 91 (28.09%) Python
2 48 (14.81%) Bash
3 46 (14.20%) SQL
4 40 (12.35%) Java
5 37 (11.42%) JavaScript
6 33 (10.19%) C#
7 25 (7.72%) Bicep
8 22 (6.79%) PowerShell
9 18 (5.56%) TypeScript
10 12 (3.70%) PL/SQL
11 9 (2.78%) Go
12 4 (1.23%) Apex Code
12 4 (1.23%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.93%) Groovy
13 3 (0.93%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 158 (48.77%) Security Cleared
2 108 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 57 (17.59%) DV Cleared
4 13 (4.01%) Degree
5 9 (2.78%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 5 (1.54%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.23%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 4 (1.23%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.93%) AWS Certified Developer
8 3 (0.93%) Computer Science 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
10 1 (0.31%) CISSP
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.31%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 1 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.79%) QA
2 17 (5.25%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.94%) WCAG
4 14 (4.32%) NCSC
5 12 (3.70%) Data Quality
6 7 (2.16%) SLA
7 6 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.93%) GDPR
8 3 (0.93%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.62%) GRC
9 2 (0.62%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.62%) NIST
9 2 (0.62%) PMO
9 2 (0.62%) SEPA
10 1 (0.31%) JSP 440
System Software
1 74 (22.84%) Docker
2 6 (1.85%) Corosync
2 6 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.54%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.23%) vSphere
5 3 (0.93%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.31%) zsh
Systems Management
1 117 (36.11%) Kubernetes
2 53 (16.36%) Ansible
3 15 (4.63%) Grafana
4 13 (4.01%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.09%) Argo
6 7 (2.16%) Failover Clustering
6 7 (2.16%) Pacemaker
7 4 (1.23%) PowerCLI
7 4 (1.23%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.93%) Istio
8 3 (0.93%) Puppet
9 2 (0.62%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.62%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.62%) SCCM
9 2 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.31%) CASB
10 1 (0.31%) Nagios
10 1 (0.31%) Nessus
10 1 (0.31%) OPNET
Vendors
1 56 (17.28%) Microsoft
2 32 (9.88%) Google
3 13 (4.01%) Oracle
4 12 (3.70%) Red Hat
4 12 (3.70%) VMware
5 11 (3.40%) Dynatrace
6 9 (2.78%) SAP
6 9 (2.78%) Splunk
7 8 (2.47%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.85%) AppDynamics
8 6 (1.85%) Databricks
8 6 (1.85%) New Relic
9 5 (1.54%) InterSystems
10 4 (1.23%) Conga
10 4 (1.23%) GoCardless
10 4 (1.23%) MuleSoft
10 4 (1.23%) SaltStack
11 3 (0.93%) Atlassian
11 3 (0.93%) Dell
11 3 (0.93%) Informatica