DevOps Contract Job Trends in the North West

DevOps
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring DevOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 18 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 286 173 234
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.61% 8.92% 8.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.35% 9.88% 10.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 194 127 171
10th Percentile £378 £363 £413
25th Percentile £416 £413 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.47%
75th Percentile £581 £588 £650
90th Percentile £640 £675 £825
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 2 3
10th Percentile £25.38 £70.25 -
25th Percentile £28.35 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £42.69 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -48.26% +79.82% +5.95%
75th Percentile £74.50 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £82.75 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £65.25
% change year-on-year - +3.45% -0.38%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North 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 North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,764 1,751 2,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.25% 90.26% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,662 1,140 1,438
10th Percentile £300 £294 £307
25th Percentile £393 £388 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £586 £563 £588
90th Percentile £669 £662 £682
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 96 262
10th Percentile £17.06 £14.55 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.92 £14.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.20 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +82.12% +16.15% -25.75%
75th Percentile £74.26 £63.10 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £84.88 £66.61
England median hourly rate £45.59 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +62.80% -23.29% -2.67%

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

DevOps job vacancy trend in the North West

DevOps
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing DevOps.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing DevOps

DevOps
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DevOps in the North West over the 6 months to 26 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DevOps in the North West

DevOps
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing DevOps.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing DevOps

DevOps
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps in the North West over the 6 months to 26 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DevOps in the North West

DevOps
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 DevOps within the North West region over the 6 months to 26 May 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 +8 181 £500 -3.75% 134
Cheshire -3 64 £482 +13.44% 8
Lancashire +2 20 £575 +2.22% 41
Merseyside -12 16 £510 -2.63% 11
DevOps
England

DevOps
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 24 (8.39%) Confluence
2 8 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.40%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.70%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.35%) Apache
5 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.35%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (3.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (3.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.75%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.70%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) NEC Housing
1 2 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.35%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.35%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 153 (53.50%) Azure
2 132 (46.15%) AWS
3 67 (23.43%) Azure DevOps
4 48 (16.78%) Serverless
5 46 (16.08%) GCP
6 40 (13.99%) GitHub
7 23 (8.04%) GitHub Actions
8 21 (7.34%) AWS Lambda
9 20 (6.99%) Azure AKS
10 18 (6.29%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 17 (5.94%) Amazon S3
12 15 (5.24%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (5.24%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (4.55%) Amazon EKS
14 12 (4.20%) SaaS
15 11 (3.85%) Entra ID
15 11 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
15 11 (3.85%) OCI
16 10 (3.50%) AWS CloudFormation
16 10 (3.50%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 23 (8.04%) Firewall
2 9 (3.15%) BGP
2 9 (3.15%) BIG-IP
2 9 (3.15%) Ethernet VPN
2 9 (3.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 9 (3.15%) OSPF
2 9 (3.15%) SD-WAN
2 9 (3.15%) VXLAN
2 9 (3.15%) WAN
3 8 (2.80%) DNS
3 8 (2.80%) Wi-Fi
3 8 (2.80%) WLAN
4 6 (2.10%) DHCP
5 5 (1.75%) Network Security
5 5 (1.75%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.40%) NetScaler
7 2 (0.70%) VPN
8 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
8 1 (0.35%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.35%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.39%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (7.34%) MongoDB
3 19 (6.64%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.29%) NoSQL
5 13 (4.55%) RDBMS
6 12 (4.20%) DynamoDB
7 11 (3.85%) SQL Server
8 9 (3.15%) DocumentDB
8 9 (3.15%) Oracle Database
8 9 (3.15%) Tableau
9 8 (2.80%) Oracle Reports
10 7 (2.45%) Data Lake
10 7 (2.45%) Elasticsearch
11 6 (2.10%) Amazon RDS
11 6 (2.10%) Ataccama
12 5 (1.75%) BigQuery
12 5 (1.75%) MySQL
13 3 (1.05%) Data Vault
13 3 (1.05%) Spark SQL
13 3 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 55 (19.23%) GitLab
2 40 (13.99%) JIRA
3 38 (13.29%) Git
4 34 (11.89%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.50%) Selenium
6 9 (3.15%) JUnit
7 8 (2.80%) Cypress.io
7 8 (2.80%) Mocha
8 7 (2.45%) CircleCI
8 7 (2.45%) Gatling
8 7 (2.45%) REST Assured
9 6 (2.10%) Cucumber
9 6 (2.10%) SonarQube
10 5 (1.75%) Serenity BDD
11 4 (1.40%) Gradle
12 3 (1.05%) ClearCase
12 3 (1.05%) Maven
12 3 (1.05%) Postman
12 3 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.70%) Liquibase
General
1 62 (21.68%) Public Sector
2 55 (19.23%) Finance
3 52 (18.18%) Social Skills
4 26 (9.09%) Banking
5 18 (6.29%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.75%) Military
6 5 (1.75%) Retail
7 3 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.05%) Health Technology
7 3 (1.05%) Local Government
8 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.70%) Law
9 1 (0.35%) Advertising
9 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.35%) Legal
9 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.35%) Publishing
9 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
9 1 (0.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 54 (18.88%) Developer
2 46 (16.08%) DevOps Engineer
3 43 (15.03%) Senior
4 35 (12.24%) Lead
5 32 (11.19%) Architect
6 19 (6.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 19 (6.64%) Solutions Architect
7 18 (6.29%) Java Developer
7 18 (6.29%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.59%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (5.24%) Software Developer
10 14 (4.90%) Analyst
10 14 (4.90%) Full-Stack Developer
11 13 (4.55%) Lead Developer
12 12 (4.20%) Platform Engineer
12 12 (4.20%) Senior Developer
13 11 (3.85%) Azure DevOps Engineer
13 11 (3.85%) DBA
14 10 (3.50%) Security Engineer
14 10 (3.50%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (15.73%) Spring
2 44 (15.38%) Spring Boot
3 32 (11.19%) REST
4 30 (10.49%) React
5 27 (9.44%) Node.js
6 24 (8.39%) Kafka
7 20 (6.99%) XML
8 19 (6.64%) AngularJS
9 18 (6.29%) .NET
10 17 (5.94%) Playwright
11 14 (4.90%) JSON
12 12 (4.20%) Jest
13 11 (3.85%) RESTful
14 10 (3.50%) PySpark
15 8 (2.80%) GraphQL
16 7 (2.45%) OAuth
17 6 (2.10%) ARM Templates
17 6 (2.10%) HTML
17 6 (2.10%) Spring MVC
18 5 (1.75%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 57 (19.93%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.44%) Product Ownership
3 13 (4.55%) Data Protection Act
4 12 (4.20%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (3.85%) Data Centre
6 10 (3.50%) Onboarding
6 10 (3.50%) Private Cloud
7 9 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (3.15%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.45%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.10%) AI Agents
9 6 (2.10%) NHS
9 6 (2.10%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.75%) e-Learning
10 5 (1.75%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.75%) Replication
10 5 (1.75%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 4 (1.40%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.40%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 25 (8.74%) Linux
2 11 (3.85%) Windows
3 6 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.40%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.40%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (1.40%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.70%) VMS
6 1 (0.35%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (59.09%) CI/CD
2 110 (38.46%) Agile
3 72 (25.17%) Infrastructure as Code
4 70 (24.48%) Microservices
5 54 (18.88%) Containerisation
6 53 (18.53%) Test Automation
7 47 (16.43%) Observability
8 44 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
9 42 (14.69%) Mentoring
10 36 (12.59%) Problem-Solving
11 31 (10.84%) Stakeholder Management
12 30 (10.49%) AI
13 29 (10.14%) Technical Leadership
14 27 (9.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 27 (9.44%) Software Engineering
15 25 (8.74%) Platform Engineering
15 25 (8.74%) SDLC
16 24 (8.39%) Full-Stack Development
16 24 (8.39%) Migration
17 23 (8.04%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 82 (28.67%) Java
2 72 (25.17%) Python
3 34 (11.89%) SQL
4 29 (10.14%) TypeScript
5 28 (9.79%) JavaScript
6 27 (9.44%) PowerShell
7 20 (6.99%) Bash
8 14 (4.90%) C#
9 9 (3.15%) Bicep
10 7 (2.45%) Rust
11 6 (2.10%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.40%) Go
13 3 (1.05%) C++
13 3 (1.05%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.05%) VB
13 3 (1.05%) VB6
14 2 (0.70%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.35%) ActionScript
15 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 55 (19.23%) Security Cleared
2 32 (11.19%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.04%) AWS Certification
3 23 (8.04%) Degree
4 19 (6.64%) Azure Certification
5 18 (6.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (3.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 9 (3.15%) CISSP
8 8 (2.80%) ITIL Certification
9 6 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (1.75%) DV Cleared
11 4 (1.40%) IBM Certification
12 3 (1.05%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 3 (1.05%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.70%) CCIE
13 2 (0.70%) CCNP
13 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.70%) CISM
13 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.70%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.34%) Accessibility
2 18 (6.29%) QA
3 10 (3.50%) Data Quality
4 9 (3.15%) GDPR
5 8 (2.80%) WCAG
6 6 (2.10%) ISO 20022
6 6 (2.10%) NIST
6 6 (2.10%) PSD2
7 5 (1.75%) SEPA
8 3 (1.05%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (1.05%) GRC
8 3 (1.05%) HIPAA
8 3 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (1.05%) SLA
9 1 (0.35%) HL7
9 1 (0.35%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.35%) PMO
9 1 (0.35%) Solvency II
System Software
1 76 (26.57%) Docker
2 9 (3.15%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.10%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.75%) vSphere
5 2 (0.70%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.70%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.35%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 90 (31.47%) Terraform
2 74 (25.87%) Kubernetes
3 26 (9.09%) Ansible
4 18 (6.29%) Grafana
5 15 (5.24%) Prometheus
6 8 (2.80%) Argo
6 8 (2.80%) Istio
7 6 (2.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.40%) Progress Chef
8 4 (1.40%) SCCM
8 4 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.70%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.70%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.70%) linkerd
9 2 (0.70%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.70%) Packer
10 1 (0.35%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.35%) vRealize
10 1 (0.35%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 46 (16.08%) Microsoft
2 28 (9.79%) Oracle
3 20 (6.99%) Google
4 14 (4.90%) F5
4 14 (4.90%) Splunk
5 9 (3.15%) Aruba
5 9 (3.15%) Palo Alto
6 8 (2.80%) Arista
6 8 (2.80%) OpenAI
7 7 (2.45%) Databricks
7 7 (2.45%) Red Hat
8 6 (2.10%) VMware
9 5 (1.75%) IBM
9 5 (1.75%) Veeam
10 4 (1.40%) CyberArk
10 4 (1.40%) MuleSoft
10 4 (1.40%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.05%) Atlassian
11 3 (1.05%) Dynatrace
11 3 (1.05%) Foundry