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

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 18 15
Rank change year-on-year +4 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 252 185 247
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.42% 7.85% 8.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.85% 9.36% 10.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 96 176
10th Percentile £317 £356 £425
25th Percentile £385 £413 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -13.71% -2.10% -3.81%
75th Percentile £575 £595 £615
90th Percentile £653 £650 £671
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 20
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -28.73% +38.12% -30.82%
75th Percentile - £77.50 -
90th Percentile £56.98 £83.50 £46.76
England median hourly rate £58.50 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -16.43% +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 2,127 1,977 2,455
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 87.97% 83.91% 88.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,395 1,072 1,684
10th Percentile £213 £294 £270
25th Percentile £360 £391 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £593
90th Percentile £678 £650 £675
England median daily rate £506 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.62% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 190 112 163
10th Percentile £15.18 £16.28 £15.80
25th Percentile £19.07 £24.18 £17.88
Median hourly rate £29.60 £35.68 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.04% +1.94% +57.30%
75th Percentile £45.46 £52.05 £46.18
90th Percentile £70.29 £70.90 £63.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -32.93% -15.73% +27.14%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -4 122 £500 -9.09% 228
Cheshire +15 81 £430 +3.68% 38
Lancashire +3 32 £550 +4.76% 61
Merseyside 0 10 £510 +2.00% 7
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 (8.33%) Confluence
2 16 (6.35%) Apache
2 16 (6.35%) JBoss
3 14 (5.56%) WebSphere
4 13 (5.16%) IIS
5 11 (4.37%) WebSphere Application Server
6 9 (3.57%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.57%) iPlanet
7 7 (2.78%) CICS
8 4 (1.59%) OpenStack
9 3 (1.19%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.79%) NetWeaver
10 2 (0.79%) nginx
10 2 (0.79%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.40%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.40%) Mule
11 1 (0.40%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.40%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.79%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.40%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.79%) Maximo
3 1 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 126 (50.00%) AWS
2 100 (39.68%) Azure
3 46 (18.25%) Azure DevOps
4 32 (12.70%) GitHub
5 29 (11.51%) GCP
6 28 (11.11%) Serverless
7 26 (10.32%) AWS CloudFormation
8 22 (8.73%) OpenShift
9 20 (7.94%) AWS Lambda
10 18 (7.14%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (5.95%) Power Platform
12 12 (4.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 12 (4.76%) Amazon ECS
13 10 (3.97%) Amazon EKS
13 10 (3.97%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (3.97%) SaaS
14 9 (3.57%) Amazon S3
14 9 (3.57%) Figma
15 8 (3.17%) Amazon EC2
15 8 (3.17%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 16 (6.35%) Firewall
2 9 (3.57%) Kerberos
3 5 (1.98%) HTTPS
4 4 (1.59%) SSL
4 4 (1.59%) VPN
5 3 (1.19%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.79%) Calico
6 2 (0.79%) DNS
6 2 (0.79%) Network Security
7 1 (0.40%) DHCP
7 1 (0.40%) VLAN
7 1 (0.40%) VoIP
7 1 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (5.16%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.76%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.97%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (3.57%) Data Lake
4 9 (3.57%) Relational Database
5 8 (3.17%) DynamoDB
5 8 (3.17%) Power BI
6 7 (2.78%) MongoDB
6 7 (2.78%) NoSQL
6 7 (2.78%) Tableau
7 6 (2.38%) RDBMS
8 5 (1.98%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (1.59%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (1.59%) DocumentDB
10 3 (1.19%) DB2
10 3 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.19%) Metadata
10 3 (1.19%) MySQL
11 2 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 54 (21.43%) JIRA
2 50 (19.84%) Jenkins
3 48 (19.05%) Git
4 40 (15.87%) GitLab
5 18 (7.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 13 (5.16%) Bitbucket Server
6 13 (5.16%) CA Release Automation
7 9 (3.57%) JUnit
7 9 (3.57%) Selenium
7 9 (3.57%) SonarQube
8 8 (3.17%) Bitbucket
9 7 (2.78%) Gradle
9 7 (2.78%) Maven
10 6 (2.38%) Cucumber
10 6 (2.38%) Storybook
10 6 (2.38%) Xcode
11 5 (1.98%) Postman
12 4 (1.59%) TeamCity
13 3 (1.19%) Cypress.io
13 3 (1.19%) Mockito
General
1 64 (25.40%) Social Skills
2 52 (20.63%) Finance
3 35 (13.89%) Public Sector
4 31 (12.30%) Banking
5 24 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.38%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.98%) Publishing
9 4 (1.59%) Games
10 3 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.19%) Military
10 3 (1.19%) Retail
11 2 (0.79%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.79%) Law
12 1 (0.40%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.40%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.40%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 50 (19.84%) Developer
2 37 (14.68%) DevOps Engineer
2 37 (14.68%) Senior
3 35 (13.89%) Lead
4 23 (9.13%) Platform Engineer
5 19 (7.54%) AWS Engineer
6 17 (6.75%) AWS DevOps
7 15 (5.95%) Java Developer
7 15 (5.95%) Software Engineer
8 14 (5.56%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 12 (4.76%) Architect
10 10 (3.97%) Senior Developer
11 9 (3.57%) Analyst
11 9 (3.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 9 (3.57%) Senior DevOps
12 8 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
13 7 (2.78%) Business Analyst
13 7 (2.78%) React Developer
13 7 (2.78%) Security Engineer
13 7 (2.78%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (10.32%) Spring Boot
2 24 (9.52%) JSON
2 24 (9.52%) OAuth
3 23 (9.13%) REST
4 19 (7.54%) Spring
5 18 (7.14%) React
6 15 (5.95%) Node.js
7 14 (5.56%) .NET
7 14 (5.56%) HTML
7 14 (5.56%) Kafka
7 14 (5.56%) XML
8 13 (5.16%) RESTful
8 13 (5.16%) SOAP
9 11 (4.37%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (4.37%) JMS
10 10 (3.97%) OpenID
10 10 (3.97%) SAML
11 9 (3.57%) LDAP
12 8 (3.17%) Web Services
13 7 (2.78%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 25 (9.92%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.95%) Virtual Team
3 11 (4.37%) Product Ownership
4 8 (3.17%) Mobile App
4 8 (3.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 7 (2.78%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (2.78%) Mainframe
5 7 (2.78%) VSAM
6 6 (2.38%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.98%) IBM Mainframe
7 5 (1.98%) Management Information System
8 4 (1.59%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.19%) Synthetic Data
9 3 (1.19%) Taxonomies
10 2 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.79%) PKI
10 2 (0.79%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 41 (16.27%) Linux
2 21 (8.33%) Windows
3 10 (3.97%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.57%) Unix
5 8 (3.17%) Android
5 8 (3.17%) Apple iOS
6 6 (2.38%) zOS
7 5 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.40%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (55.56%) CI/CD
2 95 (37.70%) Agile
3 57 (22.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 45 (17.86%) Containerisation
5 38 (15.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 36 (14.29%) Microservices
6 36 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (13.49%) Test Automation
8 33 (13.10%) Change Management
8 33 (13.10%) ITIL
8 33 (13.10%) Stakeholder Management
9 30 (11.90%) Project Delivery
10 27 (10.71%) Observability
11 25 (9.92%) Cloud Security
12 24 (9.52%) Infrastructure Automation
13 22 (8.73%) Platform Engineering
13 22 (8.73%) SDLC
13 22 (8.73%) Service Delivery
14 21 (8.33%) Release Management
14 21 (8.33%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 56 (22.22%) Python
2 44 (17.46%) Java
3 43 (17.06%) SQL
4 23 (9.13%) Bash
5 20 (7.94%) JavaScript
5 20 (7.94%) TypeScript
6 14 (5.56%) Shell Script
7 12 (4.76%) C#
7 12 (4.76%) Groovy
8 9 (3.57%) Go
8 9 (3.57%) Perl
9 7 (2.78%) JCL
10 6 (2.38%) CLIST
10 6 (2.38%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.38%) REXX
11 4 (1.59%) C++
11 4 (1.59%) T-SQL
12 3 (1.19%) Scala
13 2 (0.79%) COBOL
13 2 (0.79%) PHP
Qualifications
1 41 (16.27%) Security Cleared
2 34 (13.49%) SC Cleared
3 28 (11.11%) Degree
4 15 (5.95%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 13 (5.16%) AWS Certification
6 9 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (3.17%) ITIL Certification
8 7 (2.78%) Azure Certification
8 7 (2.78%) CISSP
9 6 (2.38%) CISM
9 6 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.79%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.40%) CompTIA Security+
11 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.40%) PMP
11 1 (0.40%) SAFe Agilist
11 1 (0.40%) Tableau Certification
11 1 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (9.52%) QA
2 19 (7.54%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.37%) PSD2
3 11 (4.37%) SEPA
4 8 (3.17%) ISO 20022
4 8 (3.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (3.17%) NIST
5 4 (1.59%) PCI DSS
6 3 (1.19%) GDPR
7 2 (0.79%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.40%) GRC
8 1 (0.40%) SOC 1
8 1 (0.40%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 66 (26.19%) Docker
2 14 (5.56%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 8 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.17%) vSphere
4 6 (2.38%) Time Sharing Option
5 2 (0.79%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 69 (27.38%) Kubernetes
2 68 (26.98%) Terraform
3 21 (8.33%) Ansible
4 17 (6.75%) Progress Chef
5 12 (4.76%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.97%) CA Single Sign-On
7 9 (3.57%) CA Wily
7 9 (3.57%) Grafana
8 8 (3.17%) Tivoli
9 7 (2.78%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (2.38%) OMEGAMON
11 5 (1.98%) CA Endevor
12 4 (1.59%) Fluentd
12 4 (1.59%) Kibana
13 3 (1.19%) Packer
13 3 (1.19%) Podman
13 3 (1.19%) SELinux
14 2 (0.79%) Istio
15 1 (0.40%) Argo
15 1 (0.40%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 51 (20.24%) Microsoft
2 25 (9.92%) Oracle
2 25 (9.92%) Splunk
3 24 (9.52%) IBM
4 15 (5.95%) ServiceNow
5 14 (5.56%) AppDynamics
6 10 (3.97%) Broadcom
7 9 (3.57%) VMware
8 7 (2.78%) SAP
9 6 (2.38%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.38%) F5
9 6 (2.38%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.98%) Axway
10 5 (1.98%) Cloudera
10 5 (1.98%) Databricks
10 5 (1.98%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.59%) Red Hat
11 4 (1.59%) Veracode
12 3 (1.19%) Software AG
12 3 (1.19%) webMethods