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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 30 17
Rank change year-on-year +18 -13 -8
Contract jobs citing DevOps 293 107 272
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 8.21% 6.04% 8.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.28% 6.67% 10.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 84 170
10th Percentile £375 £363 £400
25th Percentile £413 £449 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £591 £625 £630
90th Percentile £650 £668 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 40
10th Percentile £64.15 - -
25th Percentile £76.00 - -
Median hourly rate £92.50 £82.96 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.50% +18.51% +6.70%
75th Percentile £102.50 - £74.44
90th Percentile £102.95 - £85.00
England median hourly rate £68.75 £66.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year +3.77% -5.36% +6.70%

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 2,850 1,605 2,708
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 79.88% 90.63% 82.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,541 965 1,703
10th Percentile £325 £217 £260
25th Percentile £413 £363 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £700
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 477 178 380
10th Percentile £16.62 £16.69 £13.86
25th Percentile £32.50 £18.60 £29.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £28.10 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +104.66% -48.92% -8.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.75 £70.25
90th Percentile £72.54 £70.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £46.90 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.48% -34.02% +1.65%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +11 102 £531 -3.41% 41
Wiltshire +18 64 £500 -6.98% 10
Gloucestershire +14 52 £575 -6.50% 68
Somerset +16 47 £450 -28.00% 16
Devon -16 14 £560 +7.69% 7
Dorset -8 6 £350 -36.36% 2
Cornwall -4 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 20 (6.83%) Confluence
2 10 (3.41%) Apache Spark
3 8 (2.73%) IIS
3 8 (2.73%) SharePoint
4 6 (2.05%) Mattermost
5 4 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (1.02%) Apache
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.34%) InDesign
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.34%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (2.05%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (1.37%) Maximo
2 4 (1.37%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.34%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 121 (41.30%) Azure
2 96 (32.76%) AWS
3 67 (22.87%) Azure DevOps
4 44 (15.02%) GCP
5 30 (10.24%) GitHub
6 19 (6.48%) Serverless
7 18 (6.14%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (4.10%) AWS CloudFormation
8 12 (4.10%) SaaS
9 11 (3.75%) Amazon EKS
9 11 (3.75%) Azure Key Vault
9 11 (3.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 10 (3.41%) Amazon S3
10 10 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (3.41%) Datadog
10 10 (3.41%) Power Platform
11 9 (3.07%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (2.73%) dbt
12 8 (2.73%) Entra ID
12 8 (2.73%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.75%) DNS
2 9 (3.07%) Firewall
3 7 (2.39%) VPN
4 3 (1.02%) 3GPP
4 3 (1.02%) TETRA
5 2 (0.68%) DHCP
6 1 (0.34%) AMQP
6 1 (0.34%) HTTP
6 1 (0.34%) LAN
6 1 (0.34%) NAS
6 1 (0.34%) Network Security
6 1 (0.34%) SAN
6 1 (0.34%) SMTP
6 1 (0.34%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (4.44%) SQL Server
2 10 (3.41%) NoSQL
2 10 (3.41%) Relational Database
3 9 (3.07%) Power BI
4 8 (2.73%) MongoDB
4 8 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.39%) Geospatial Data
5 7 (2.39%) SAP HANA
6 6 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (2.05%) Flink
7 4 (1.37%) Redis
8 3 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.68%) Big Data
9 2 (0.68%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.68%) Power Query
10 1 (0.34%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 36 (12.29%) JIRA
2 35 (11.95%) Git
3 24 (8.19%) GitLab
4 23 (7.85%) Jenkins
5 12 (4.10%) Gatling
5 12 (4.10%) LoadRunner
6 11 (3.75%) JMeter
7 8 (2.73%) MSI
8 7 (2.39%) Cucumber
8 7 (2.39%) REST Assured
9 6 (2.05%) Postman
10 4 (1.37%) IntelliJ
11 3 (1.02%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (1.02%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.68%) AdminStudio
12 2 (0.68%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.68%) InstallShield
13 1 (0.34%) JUnit
13 1 (0.34%) Oracle Forms
General
1 61 (20.82%) Social Skills
2 30 (10.24%) Public Sector
3 19 (6.48%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.10%) Finance
5 10 (3.41%) Legal
6 7 (2.39%) Military
7 5 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.37%) Banking
8 4 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (1.02%) Aerospace
9 3 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.02%) Local Government
9 3 (1.02%) Police
10 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.34%) Marketing
10 1 (0.34%) Publishing
10 1 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 89 (30.38%) DevOps Engineer
2 39 (13.31%) Developer
3 28 (9.56%) Senior
4 19 (6.48%) Architect
4 19 (6.48%) GCP Engineer
5 18 (6.14%) Analyst
6 17 (5.80%) Data Engineer
7 16 (5.46%) Site Engineer
7 16 (5.46%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 15 (5.12%) Lead
9 14 (4.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.44%) Azure Engineer
10 13 (4.44%) GCP DevOps
10 13 (4.44%) GCP DevOps Engineer
11 12 (4.10%) Performance Engineer
11 12 (4.10%) Platform Engineer
12 11 (3.75%) Backend Developer
13 10 (3.41%) Java Developer
14 9 (3.07%) Technical Architect
14 9 (3.07%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (10.24%) .NET
2 21 (7.17%) REST
3 19 (6.48%) RESTful
3 19 (6.48%) Spring Boot
4 18 (6.14%) .NET Framework
5 17 (5.80%) Spring
6 16 (5.46%) Kafka
6 16 (5.46%) React
7 14 (4.78%) Playwright
8 10 (3.41%) .NET Core
9 8 (2.73%) ATL
9 8 (2.73%) COM
9 8 (2.73%) CSS
9 8 (2.73%) GeoJSON
9 8 (2.73%) HTML
9 8 (2.73%) MFC
9 8 (2.73%) RabbitMQ
10 7 (2.39%) CSS3
10 7 (2.39%) HTML5
10 7 (2.39%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 47 (16.04%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.83%) Enterprise Software
3 18 (6.14%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (4.10%) Onboarding
5 9 (3.07%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
7 7 (2.39%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.71%) Legacy Code
9 5 (1.71%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.37%) Wiki
11 3 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.02%) EPoS
11 3 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (1.02%) Mobile App
11 3 (1.02%) Private Cloud
11 3 (1.02%) Replication
12 2 (0.68%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 47 (16.04%) Linux
2 40 (13.65%) Windows
3 13 (4.44%) Windows Server
4 12 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.02%) Unix
6 2 (0.68%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.34%) CentOS
7 1 (0.34%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (46.08%) CI/CD
2 98 (33.45%) Agile
3 71 (24.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (21.50%) Containerisation
5 55 (18.77%) Continuous Improvement
6 40 (13.65%) Microservices
7 37 (12.63%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 37 (12.63%) Test Automation
8 35 (11.95%) Problem-Solving
9 27 (9.22%) Stakeholder Management
10 26 (8.87%) ITIL
10 26 (8.87%) Observability
10 26 (8.87%) Platform Engineering
11 25 (8.53%) Analytics
12 24 (8.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 23 (7.85%) Data Modelling
13 23 (7.85%) DevSecOps
13 23 (7.85%) Root Cause Analysis
14 22 (7.51%) High Availability
15 21 (7.17%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 70 (23.89%) Python
2 51 (17.41%) SQL
3 36 (12.29%) Java
4 27 (9.22%) JavaScript
5 26 (8.87%) Bash
6 19 (6.48%) C#
7 17 (5.80%) PowerShell
8 13 (4.44%) Bicep
8 13 (4.44%) Go
8 13 (4.44%) TypeScript
9 8 (2.73%) PL/SQL
10 5 (1.71%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.37%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.68%) Groovy
13 1 (0.34%) C++
13 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.34%) PHP
13 1 (0.34%) Scala
13 1 (0.34%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 134 (45.73%) Security Cleared
2 103 (35.15%) SC Cleared
3 40 (13.65%) DV Cleared
4 14 (4.78%) Degree
5 8 (2.73%) AWS Certification
6 7 (2.39%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.05%) ISTQB
7 6 (2.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (2.05%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (1.37%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 4 (1.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.02%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 3 (1.02%) CISSP
9 3 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.02%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.68%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (0.68%) CISM
10 2 (0.68%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.34%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (6.83%) QA
2 12 (4.10%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.75%) NCSC
3 11 (3.75%) WCAG
4 9 (3.07%) Data Quality
5 8 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (2.39%) SLA
7 6 (2.05%) GDPR
8 3 (1.02%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.02%) PMO
9 2 (0.68%) NIST
9 2 (0.68%) NIST 800
System Software
1 66 (22.53%) Docker
2 13 (4.44%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.05%) Corosync
4 3 (1.02%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 109 (37.20%) Kubernetes
2 81 (27.65%) Terraform
3 35 (11.95%) Ansible
4 22 (7.51%) Prometheus
5 18 (6.14%) Grafana
6 12 (4.10%) Argo
7 7 (2.39%) Failover Clustering
7 7 (2.39%) Pacemaker
8 5 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (1.02%) Istio
9 3 (1.02%) Nagios
10 2 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.68%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.68%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.68%) SCCM
10 2 (0.68%) VxRail
11 1 (0.34%) CASB
11 1 (0.34%) logstash
11 1 (0.34%) Puppet
Vendors
1 46 (15.70%) Microsoft
2 23 (7.85%) Google
3 16 (5.46%) Red Hat
4 14 (4.78%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.44%) Databricks
5 13 (4.44%) Splunk
6 11 (3.75%) AppDynamics
6 11 (3.75%) New Relic
7 9 (3.07%) SAP
8 8 (2.73%) Salesforce
9 7 (2.39%) Oracle
9 7 (2.39%) VMware
10 6 (2.05%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.05%) Remedy
11 5 (1.71%) IBM
11 5 (1.71%) InterSystems
12 4 (1.37%) Conga
12 4 (1.37%) Dell
12 4 (1.37%) GoCardless
13 2 (0.68%) BeyondTrust