CI/CD Contract Job Trends in the North West

CI/CD
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring CI/CD skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 15 31
Rank change year-on-year +5 +16 +4
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 396 206 115
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.84% 9.29% 4.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.87% 10.46% 5.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 170 73
10th Percentile £385 £340 £318
25th Percentile £421 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +13.98% -2.11% -13.64%
75th Percentile £610 £579 £565
90th Percentile £675 £650 £610
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 1 3
10th Percentile £67.96 - £63.90
25th Percentile £74.42 - £66.00
Median hourly rate £76.00 £70.00 £72.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.57% -2.78% +15.20%
75th Percentile £77.00 - £81.00
90th Percentile £85.75 - £84.90
England median hourly rate £66.83 £65.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year +2.82% -5.45% -8.33%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

CI/CD 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 North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,335 1,969 2,013
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.84% 88.81% 83.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,887 1,303 1,100
10th Percentile £300 £257 £294
25th Percentile £403 £363 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £680 £650
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 371 144 111
10th Percentile £14.32 £13.93 £16.85
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £29.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +88.90% -37.64% +15.21%
75th Percentile £72.71 £45.37 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.25 £71.50
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -5.56%

CI/CD
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing CI/CD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

CI/CD job vacancy trend in the North West

CI/CD
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing CI/CD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing CI/CD

CI/CD
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing CI/CD in the North West over the 6 months to 14 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for CI/CD in the North West

CI/CD
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing CI/CD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing CI/CD

CI/CD
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing CI/CD in the North West over the 6 months to 14 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for CI/CD in the North West

CI/CD
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing CI/CD within the North West region over the 6 months to 14 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
Manchester +7 281 £525 +5.00% 342
Cheshire -6 61 £523 +20.11% 38
Lancashire -2 28 £625 +13.64% 37
Merseyside -8 12 £438 -14.22% 15
Cumbria - 6 £395 - 1
CI/CD
England

CI/CD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North 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 15 (3.79%) Confluence
2 9 (2.27%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.77%) Apache
4 6 (1.52%) Camunda
5 5 (1.26%) SAS
6 4 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.76%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.51%) CMS
9 1 (0.25%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.25%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.25%) Drupal
9 1 (0.25%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.25%) nginx
9 1 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
9 1 (0.25%) Traefik
9 1 (0.25%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.25%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.25%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.25%) SAP MM
2 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 199 (50.25%) AWS
2 149 (37.63%) Azure
3 72 (18.18%) GitHub
4 63 (15.91%) GCP
5 52 (13.13%) Azure DevOps
6 42 (10.61%) Serverless
7 40 (10.10%) GitHub Actions
8 35 (8.84%) AWS Lambda
9 25 (6.31%) Amazon ECS
10 24 (6.06%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 22 (5.56%) Azure AKS
12 21 (5.30%) SaaS
13 20 (5.05%) AWS CloudFormation
13 20 (5.05%) OCI
14 16 (4.04%) Amazon EKS
14 16 (4.04%) Power Platform
15 15 (3.79%) Entra ID
16 14 (3.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 14 (3.54%) Amazon S3
16 14 (3.54%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 44 (11.11%) Firewall
2 24 (6.06%) SD-WAN
2 24 (6.06%) WAN
3 20 (5.05%) Network Security
4 16 (4.04%) BIG-IP
4 16 (4.04%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 15 (3.79%) DNS
6 13 (3.28%) BGP
6 13 (3.28%) OSPF
7 11 (2.78%) Ethernet VPN
7 11 (2.78%) VXLAN
7 11 (2.78%) Wireless
8 10 (2.53%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (2.53%) WLAN
9 9 (2.27%) VPN
10 7 (1.77%) HTTP
11 6 (1.52%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 6 (1.52%) TCP/IP
12 4 (1.01%) SNMP
13 3 (0.76%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (6.82%) Relational Database
2 22 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 21 (5.30%) NoSQL
4 18 (4.55%) MongoDB
5 14 (3.54%) Data Warehouse
6 13 (3.28%) MySQL
7 11 (2.78%) Data Lake
7 11 (2.78%) DynamoDB
7 11 (2.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 10 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
9 9 (2.27%) Oracle Database
9 9 (2.27%) Power BI
9 9 (2.27%) RDBMS
10 7 (1.77%) BigQuery
10 7 (1.77%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 6 (1.52%) Amazon Redshift
11 6 (1.52%) Ataccama
11 6 (1.52%) Oracle Exadata
12 5 (1.26%) Azure SQL Database
12 5 (1.26%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 73 (18.43%) Git
2 66 (16.67%) GitLab
3 58 (14.65%) Jenkins
4 24 (6.06%) JIRA
5 22 (5.56%) Selenium
6 20 (5.05%) REST Assured
7 19 (4.80%) Claude Code
8 18 (4.55%) JUnit
9 16 (4.04%) Cucumber
10 13 (3.28%) Mockito
10 13 (3.28%) Postman
11 12 (3.03%) Sonatype Nexus
12 10 (2.53%) SonarQube
13 9 (2.27%) Maven
14 8 (2.02%) Gradle
15 7 (1.77%) Gatling
16 5 (1.26%) Cypress.io
17 4 (1.01%) MSTest
17 4 (1.01%) NUnit
17 4 (1.01%) TestNG
General
1 109 (27.53%) Social Skills
2 81 (20.45%) Finance
3 42 (10.61%) Public Sector
4 38 (9.60%) Banking
5 33 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
6 23 (5.81%) Retail
7 12 (3.03%) Military
8 7 (1.77%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.01%) iGaming
10 2 (0.51%) Automotive
10 2 (0.51%) Billing
10 2 (0.51%) Law
11 1 (0.25%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.25%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.25%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.25%) Legal
11 1 (0.25%) Marketing
11 1 (0.25%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.25%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 93 (23.48%) Senior
2 73 (18.43%) Developer
3 56 (14.14%) Software Engineer
4 49 (12.37%) DevOps Engineer
5 40 (10.10%) Java Engineer
6 33 (8.33%) Cloud Engineer
7 32 (8.08%) AWS Engineer
8 27 (6.82%) Architect
8 27 (6.82%) Java Software Engineer
9 24 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 23 (5.81%) Lead
11 19 (4.80%) Senior Developer
12 17 (4.29%) Security Engineer
13 16 (4.04%) Senior DevOps
13 16 (4.04%) Test Engineer
14 15 (3.79%) AWS Software Engineer
14 15 (3.79%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 14 (3.54%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 14 (3.54%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 14 (3.54%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (32.07%) Terraform
2 84 (21.21%) REST
3 70 (17.68%) Spring Boot
4 64 (16.16%) Spring
5 61 (15.40%) Kafka
6 43 (10.86%) React
7 27 (6.82%) Node.js
8 23 (5.81%) RESTful
9 21 (5.30%) JSON
10 18 (4.55%) Playwright
11 15 (3.79%) HTML
12 14 (3.54%) .NET
12 14 (3.54%) PySpark
13 13 (3.28%) CSS
13 13 (3.28%) GraphQL
14 10 (2.53%) Next.js
14 10 (2.53%) Vue
15 9 (2.27%) Django
15 9 (2.27%) OAuth
16 8 (2.02%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 106 (26.77%) Cloud Native
2 52 (13.13%) Distributed Systems
3 29 (7.32%) Onboarding
4 23 (5.81%) Security Posture
5 20 (5.05%) AI Agents
6 19 (4.80%) Data Centre
7 17 (4.29%) Hybrid Cloud
7 17 (4.29%) Public Cloud
8 16 (4.04%) Product Ownership
9 13 (3.28%) Management Information System
10 12 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.77%) Data Structures
13 6 (1.52%) Cloud Security Posture
13 6 (1.52%) Private Cloud
13 6 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
14 4 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
14 4 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
14 4 (1.01%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 53 (13.38%) Linux
2 27 (6.82%) Windows
3 19 (4.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.27%) Unix
5 6 (1.52%) AIX
5 6 (1.52%) Android
5 6 (1.52%) Apple iOS
5 6 (1.52%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.51%) VMS
7 1 (0.25%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (52.27%) DevOps
2 144 (36.36%) Agile
3 139 (35.10%) Infrastructure as Code
4 107 (27.02%) Observability
5 103 (26.01%) Test Automation
6 102 (25.76%) Software Engineering
7 82 (20.71%) Microservices
8 75 (18.94%) AI
9 68 (17.17%) Containerisation
10 62 (15.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 56 (14.14%) Event-Driven
12 55 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
13 51 (12.88%) Migration
14 47 (11.87%) Infrastructure Automation
15 46 (11.62%) Analytics
15 46 (11.62%) Cloud Security
15 46 (11.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 42 (10.61%) Data Modelling
17 41 (10.35%) SDLC
18 40 (10.10%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 136 (34.34%) Java
2 128 (32.32%) Python
3 70 (17.68%) SQL
4 42 (10.61%) JavaScript
4 42 (10.61%) PowerShell
4 42 (10.61%) TypeScript
5 36 (9.09%) Bash
6 23 (5.81%) Bicep
7 18 (4.55%) C#
8 16 (4.04%) Kotlin
9 8 (2.02%) Search Processing Language
10 7 (1.77%) T-SQL
11 6 (1.52%) ActionScript
12 5 (1.26%) Apex Code
12 5 (1.26%) Go
12 5 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (1.01%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.01%) Swift
14 3 (0.76%) C++
14 3 (0.76%) Scala
Qualifications
1 79 (19.95%) Security Cleared
2 62 (15.66%) SC Cleared
3 33 (8.33%) Degree
4 24 (6.06%) AWS Certification
4 24 (6.06%) Azure Certification
4 24 (6.06%) CISSP
5 22 (5.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.26%) GCFA
8 5 (1.26%) GCIH
9 3 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.76%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.25%) CCIE
11 1 (0.25%) CCNP
11 1 (0.25%) CCSP
11 1 (0.25%) CEH
11 1 (0.25%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (9.09%) QA
2 21 (5.30%) Accessibility
3 18 (4.55%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.02%) GDPR
5 6 (1.52%) PCI DSS
5 6 (1.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.76%) NCSC
6 3 (0.76%) WCAG
7 1 (0.25%) COBIT
7 1 (0.25%) NIST
7 1 (0.25%) SLA
7 1 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 104 (26.26%) Docker
2 10 (2.53%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.52%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.76%) Ceph
4 3 (0.76%) KVM
5 2 (0.51%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 2 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.25%) Squid
6 1 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.25%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 131 (33.08%) Kubernetes
2 46 (11.62%) Ansible
3 20 (5.05%) Progress Chef
4 19 (4.80%) Grafana
5 14 (3.54%) Prometheus
6 9 (2.27%) Istio
7 6 (1.52%) Data Guard
7 6 (1.52%) Oracle RMAN
8 5 (1.26%) CASB
9 4 (1.01%) Argo
10 3 (0.76%) Packer
11 2 (0.51%) Cisco Prime
11 2 (0.51%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.51%) WMI
12 1 (0.25%) Consul
12 1 (0.25%) Kibana
12 1 (0.25%) linkerd
12 1 (0.25%) Rancher
Vendors
1 39 (9.85%) Microsoft
2 28 (7.07%) Google
3 19 (4.80%) F5
4 18 (4.55%) Splunk
5 17 (4.29%) Red Hat
6 16 (4.04%) Databricks
7 15 (3.79%) Palo Alto
8 13 (3.28%) Oracle
9 12 (3.03%) Salesforce
10 11 (2.78%) Arista
10 11 (2.78%) Aruba
10 11 (2.78%) ServiceNow
11 10 (2.53%) Dynatrace
12 7 (1.77%) Cisco
13 6 (1.52%) IBM
13 6 (1.52%) OpenAI
14 5 (1.26%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.26%) Cribl.io
15 4 (1.01%) SAP
15 4 (1.01%) Veracode