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 27 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 13 17 14
Rank change year-on-year +4 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 263 187 234
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.68% 8.01% 8.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.12% 9.45% 9.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 98 170
10th Percentile £319 £356 £413
25th Percentile £395 £425 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £533 £545
Median % change year-on-year -14.08% -2.29% -5.22%
75th Percentile £585 £592 £623
90th Percentile £663 £652 £669
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 19
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -28.73% +38.12% -12.87%
75th Percentile - £77.50 -
90th Percentile £56.98 £83.50 £47.34
England median hourly rate £61.25 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% +7.69% -0.92%

All Process and 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 2,170 1,978 2,368
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.14% 84.67% 88.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,445 1,067 1,625
10th Percentile £213 £294 £270
25th Percentile £358 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £674 £653 £675
England median daily rate £501 £525 £548
% change year-on-year -4.67% -4.11% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 121 155
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £16.10
25th Percentile £19.29 £23.48 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.43% - +50.80%
75th Percentile £47.12 £51.91 £46.53
90th Percentile £70.93 £69.75 £64.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.43 £45.00
% change year-on-year -29.01% -21.27% +23.29%

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025. 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 -3 130 £500 -9.09% 62
Cheshire +16 85 £430 +16.06% 21
Lancashire +3 31 £575 +9.52% 47
Merseyside -2 10 £510 +2.00% 5
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 21 (7.98%) Confluence
2 16 (6.08%) JBoss
3 15 (5.70%) Apache
4 12 (4.56%) IIS
5 11 (4.18%) WebSphere
6 9 (3.42%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.42%) iPlanet
6 9 (3.42%) WebSphere Application Server
7 7 (2.66%) CICS
8 4 (1.52%) OpenStack
9 3 (1.14%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.76%) NetWeaver
10 2 (0.76%) nginx
10 2 (0.76%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.38%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.38%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.38%) Mule
11 1 (0.38%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.38%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.38%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.90%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.38%) Maximo
2 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 136 (51.71%) AWS
2 101 (38.40%) Azure
3 46 (17.49%) Azure DevOps
4 33 (12.55%) GitHub
5 32 (12.17%) Serverless
6 29 (11.03%) AWS CloudFormation
6 29 (11.03%) GCP
7 22 (8.37%) OpenShift
8 20 (7.60%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (7.22%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (5.32%) Power Platform
11 12 (4.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (4.56%) Amazon ECS
12 11 (4.18%) Amazon EKS
12 11 (4.18%) Amazon S3
13 10 (3.80%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (3.80%) SaaS
14 9 (3.42%) Figma
15 8 (3.04%) Kong
15 8 (3.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 16 (6.08%) Firewall
2 9 (3.42%) Kerberos
3 5 (1.90%) HTTPS
4 4 (1.52%) SSL
4 4 (1.52%) VPN
5 3 (1.14%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.76%) DNS
6 2 (0.76%) Network Security
7 1 (0.38%) DHCP
7 1 (0.38%) VLAN
7 1 (0.38%) VoIP
7 1 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.56%) SQL Server
2 11 (4.18%) Oracle Database
2 11 (4.18%) Relational Database
3 10 (3.80%) DynamoDB
4 9 (3.42%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (3.42%) Data Lake
4 9 (3.42%) MongoDB
4 9 (3.42%) NoSQL
5 8 (3.04%) Power BI
5 8 (3.04%) RDBMS
6 7 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (2.66%) Tableau
7 5 (1.90%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (1.52%) DocumentDB
9 3 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.14%) Metadata
9 3 (1.14%) MySQL
9 3 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.76%) DB2
Development Applications
1 57 (21.67%) JIRA
2 49 (18.63%) Git
3 48 (18.25%) Jenkins
4 40 (15.21%) GitLab
5 18 (6.84%) Sonatype Nexus
6 13 (4.94%) Bitbucket Server
6 13 (4.94%) CA Release Automation
7 9 (3.42%) JUnit
7 9 (3.42%) Selenium
7 9 (3.42%) SonarQube
8 8 (3.04%) Bitbucket
9 7 (2.66%) Gradle
10 6 (2.28%) Cucumber
10 6 (2.28%) Storybook
10 6 (2.28%) Xcode
11 5 (1.90%) Maven
11 5 (1.90%) Postman
12 4 (1.52%) TeamCity
13 3 (1.14%) Cypress.io
13 3 (1.14%) Mockito
General
1 63 (23.95%) Social Skills
2 58 (22.05%) Finance
3 41 (15.59%) Public Sector
4 31 (11.79%) Banking
5 24 (9.13%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.90%) Publishing
9 4 (1.52%) Games
10 3 (1.14%) Military
10 3 (1.14%) Retail
11 2 (0.76%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.76%) Law
11 2 (0.76%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.76%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.38%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.38%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 55 (20.91%) Developer
2 40 (15.21%) DevOps Engineer
3 36 (13.69%) Lead
3 36 (13.69%) Senior
4 22 (8.37%) Platform Engineer
5 20 (7.60%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (7.22%) AWS DevOps
7 16 (6.08%) Java Developer
8 15 (5.70%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 14 (5.32%) Software Engineer
10 13 (4.94%) Architect
11 11 (4.18%) Analyst
12 10 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.80%) Senior Developer
13 9 (3.42%) Business Analyst
13 9 (3.42%) Senior DevOps
14 8 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
15 7 (2.66%) Azure Engineer
15 7 (2.66%) Security Engineer
15 7 (2.66%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (12.17%) Spring Boot
2 30 (11.41%) REST
3 26 (9.89%) JSON
3 26 (9.89%) OAuth
4 25 (9.51%) Spring
5 19 (7.22%) React
6 17 (6.46%) Kafka
6 17 (6.46%) Node.js
6 17 (6.46%) XML
7 16 (6.08%) HTML
8 15 (5.70%) RESTful
9 14 (5.32%) JMS
9 14 (5.32%) SOAP
10 13 (4.94%) .NET
11 11 (4.18%) Elastic Stack
12 10 (3.80%) OpenID
12 10 (3.80%) SAML
13 9 (3.42%) AngularJS
13 9 (3.42%) CSS
13 9 (3.42%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 29 (11.03%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.70%) Virtual Team
3 12 (4.56%) Product Ownership
4 11 (4.18%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 9 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (3.04%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.66%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.66%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.66%) VSAM
8 5 (1.90%) IBM Mainframe
8 5 (1.90%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.52%) Low-Code
10 3 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.14%) Data Structures
10 3 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (1.14%) Synthetic Data
10 3 (1.14%) Taxonomies
11 2 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.76%) PKI
11 2 (0.76%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 41 (15.59%) Linux
2 20 (7.60%) Windows
3 9 (3.42%) Unix
3 9 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 6 (2.28%) Android
4 6 (2.28%) Apple iOS
4 6 (2.28%) zOS
5 5 (1.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.38%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (55.13%) CI/CD
2 102 (38.78%) Agile
3 60 (22.81%) Infrastructure as Code
4 54 (20.53%) Containerisation
5 40 (15.21%) Microservices
6 39 (14.83%) Problem-Solving
7 37 (14.07%) Continuous Improvement
8 36 (13.69%) Stakeholder Management
8 36 (13.69%) Test Automation
9 33 (12.55%) Change Management
9 33 (12.55%) ITIL
10 30 (11.41%) Observability
10 30 (11.41%) Project Delivery
11 26 (9.89%) SDLC
12 25 (9.51%) Cloud Security
13 24 (9.13%) Infrastructure Automation
14 22 (8.37%) Service Delivery
15 21 (7.98%) Platform Engineering
15 21 (7.98%) Release Management
15 21 (7.98%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 57 (21.67%) Python
2 48 (18.25%) Java
3 47 (17.87%) SQL
4 24 (9.13%) Bash
5 21 (7.98%) TypeScript
6 18 (6.84%) JavaScript
7 13 (4.94%) C#
8 12 (4.56%) Groovy
8 12 (4.56%) Shell Script
9 9 (3.42%) Go
9 9 (3.42%) Perl
10 7 (2.66%) JCL
10 7 (2.66%) PowerShell
11 6 (2.28%) CLIST
11 6 (2.28%) REXX
12 4 (1.52%) C++
12 4 (1.52%) Ruby
12 4 (1.52%) T-SQL
13 3 (1.14%) Bicep
13 3 (1.14%) Scala
Qualifications
1 48 (18.25%) Security Cleared
2 37 (14.07%) SC Cleared
3 30 (11.41%) Degree
4 15 (5.70%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 14 (5.32%) AWS Certification
6 11 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (3.42%) Azure Certification
8 8 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (3.04%) ITIL Certification
9 7 (2.66%) CISSP
10 6 (2.28%) CISM
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
12 1 (0.38%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.38%) PMP
12 1 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
12 1 (0.38%) Tableau Certification
12 1 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (10.27%) QA
2 19 (7.22%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.32%) PSD2
4 12 (4.56%) SEPA
5 11 (4.18%) ISO 20022
6 8 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (3.04%) NIST
7 4 (1.52%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.14%) GDPR
9 2 (0.76%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.38%) GRC
10 1 (0.38%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 71 (27.00%) Docker
2 14 (5.32%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.04%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 8 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.04%) vSphere
4 6 (2.28%) Time Sharing Option
5 2 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.38%) ISA Server
6 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 74 (28.14%) Kubernetes
2 72 (27.38%) Terraform
3 21 (7.98%) Ansible
4 17 (6.46%) Progress Chef
5 12 (4.56%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.80%) CA Single Sign-On
7 9 (3.42%) CA Wily
7 9 (3.42%) Grafana
8 8 (3.04%) Tivoli
9 7 (2.66%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (2.28%) OMEGAMON
11 5 (1.90%) CA Endevor
12 4 (1.52%) Fluentd
12 4 (1.52%) Kibana
13 3 (1.14%) Packer
13 3 (1.14%) Podman
13 3 (1.14%) SELinux
14 1 (0.38%) Istio
14 1 (0.38%) Puppet
14 1 (0.38%) SCCM
Vendors
1 50 (19.01%) Microsoft
2 30 (11.41%) Oracle
3 26 (9.89%) Splunk
4 21 (7.98%) IBM
5 15 (5.70%) ServiceNow
6 14 (5.32%) AppDynamics
7 10 (3.80%) Broadcom
8 9 (3.42%) VMware
9 8 (3.04%) SAP
10 6 (2.28%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.28%) Dynatrace
10 6 (2.28%) F5
10 6 (2.28%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.90%) Axway
11 5 (1.90%) Cloudera
11 5 (1.90%) Databricks
12 4 (1.52%) MuleSoft
12 4 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.52%) Veracode
13 3 (1.14%) Software AG