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 9 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 18 20
Rank change year-on-year +4 +2 -7
Contract jobs citing DevOps 275 177 216
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.45% 8.37% 7.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.07% 9.46% 8.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 101 155
10th Percentile £358 £356 £425
25th Percentile £400 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £523 £533
Median % change year-on-year -11.48% -1.97% -6.65%
75th Percentile £556 £588 £586
90th Percentile £650 £638 £658
England median daily rate £525 £575 £570
% change year-on-year -8.70% +0.88% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 3 13
10th Percentile £39.53 £62.01 £45.88
25th Percentile - £65.95 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -39.39% +62.41% -2.78%
75th Percentile £45.84 £82.50 -
90th Percentile £82.75 £85.50 -
England median hourly rate £50.00 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -25.93% +3.85% -0.76%

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 2,279 1,872 2,484
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 86.62% 88.51% 86.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,479 1,106 1,653
10th Percentile £213 £274 £306
25th Percentile £358 £381 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +0.25%
75th Percentile £551 £570 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £679
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 98 216
10th Percentile £16.21 £16.04 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.85 £21.62 £15.63
Median hourly rate £42.69 £30.95 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.92% +3.17% -20.00%
75th Percentile £60.61 £52.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.58 £53.75
England median hourly rate £25.47 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -27.23% - -

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 9 February 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 9 February 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 9 February 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 +1 149 £500 - 133
Cheshire +14 79 £447 +25.56% 14
Lancashire +1 27 £670 +16.52% 63
Merseyside -15 12 £500 -4.31% 14
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 27 (9.82%) Confluence
2 9 (3.27%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (2.91%) Apache
4 7 (2.55%) IIS
4 7 (2.55%) JBoss
5 6 (2.18%) iPlanet
5 6 (2.18%) WebSphere
5 6 (2.18%) WebSphere Application Server
6 4 (1.45%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (1.09%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.73%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.36%) CICS
9 1 (0.36%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (5.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (5.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.73%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.73%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 149 (54.18%) AWS
2 110 (40.00%) Azure
3 44 (16.00%) Azure DevOps
3 44 (16.00%) GitHub
4 43 (15.64%) Serverless
5 36 (13.09%) GCP
6 32 (11.64%) AWS CloudFormation
7 28 (10.18%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (9.45%) AWS Lambda
9 18 (6.55%) Amazon S3
9 18 (6.55%) Power Platform
10 17 (6.18%) Amazon EKS
11 16 (5.82%) Amazon ECS
12 15 (5.45%) Amazon EC2
13 13 (4.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (4.73%) Amazon SQS
13 13 (4.73%) OpenShift
14 10 (3.64%) Kong
15 9 (3.27%) Azure AKS
15 9 (3.27%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.91%) Firewall
2 6 (2.18%) DNS
2 6 (2.18%) Kerberos
2 6 (2.18%) TCP/IP
3 5 (1.82%) DHCP
3 5 (1.82%) HTTPS
3 5 (1.82%) Network Security
3 5 (1.82%) VPN
4 4 (1.45%) NetScaler
4 4 (1.45%) SSL
5 1 (0.36%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.36%) VLAN
5 1 (0.36%) VoIP
5 1 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.55%) DynamoDB
2 14 (5.09%) NoSQL
2 14 (5.09%) Tableau
3 12 (4.36%) MongoDB
4 11 (4.00%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (4.00%) DocumentDB
4 11 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (3.64%) Relational Database
6 9 (3.27%) Data Lake
6 9 (3.27%) Power BI
7 8 (2.91%) Oracle Database
8 6 (2.18%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (1.82%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (1.82%) SQL Server
10 4 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (1.09%) Metadata
12 2 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
12 2 (0.73%) MySQL
13 1 (0.36%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 55 (20.00%) GitLab
2 52 (18.91%) JIRA
3 49 (17.82%) Git
4 37 (13.45%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.64%) CircleCI
6 8 (2.91%) Cypress.io
6 8 (2.91%) Gradle
6 8 (2.91%) JUnit
6 8 (2.91%) Mocha
6 8 (2.91%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (2.18%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (2.18%) CA Release Automation
8 5 (1.82%) Storybook
8 5 (1.82%) Xcode
9 4 (1.45%) Selenium
10 3 (1.09%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.09%) Jasmine
10 3 (1.09%) Maven
11 2 (0.73%) Gatling
11 2 (0.73%) SonarQube
General
1 59 (21.45%) Social Skills
2 57 (20.73%) Public Sector
3 56 (20.36%) Finance
4 37 (13.45%) Banking
5 25 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (1.45%) Games
6 4 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.09%) Law
7 3 (1.09%) Military
7 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.09%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.73%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.36%) Advertising
9 1 (0.36%) Electronics
9 1 (0.36%) Legal
9 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.36%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 62 (22.55%) Developer
2 45 (16.36%) DevOps Engineer
3 37 (13.45%) Lead
4 36 (13.09%) Senior
5 26 (9.45%) Architect
6 20 (7.27%) Platform Engineer
7 18 (6.55%) AWS Engineer
8 17 (6.18%) AWS DevOps
8 17 (6.18%) Software Engineer
8 17 (6.18%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (5.45%) Java Developer
10 14 (5.09%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.73%) Analyst
12 12 (4.36%) Full-Stack Developer
13 10 (3.64%) Business Analyst
13 10 (3.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Azure Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Security Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (16.00%) Spring
1 44 (16.00%) Spring Boot
2 43 (15.64%) REST
3 26 (9.45%) React
4 24 (8.73%) JSON
4 24 (8.73%) Node.js
4 24 (8.73%) OAuth
5 22 (8.00%) Kafka
6 21 (7.64%) XML
7 15 (5.45%) JMS
8 14 (5.09%) .NET
8 14 (5.09%) HTML
8 14 (5.09%) SOAP
9 13 (4.73%) AngularJS
9 13 (4.73%) Jest
9 13 (4.73%) Playwright
10 12 (4.36%) RESTful
11 9 (3.27%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (2.91%) JWT
12 8 (2.91%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 37 (13.45%) Cloud Native
2 21 (7.64%) Product Ownership
2 21 (7.64%) Virtual Team
3 14 (5.09%) Onboarding
4 12 (4.36%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 11 (4.00%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.55%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.18%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.82%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.82%) e-Learning
10 4 (1.45%) Low-Code
11 3 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.09%) NHS
11 3 (1.09%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.73%) Enterprise Software
12 2 (0.73%) IoT
12 2 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
13 1 (0.36%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 37 (13.45%) Linux
2 15 (5.45%) Windows
3 8 (2.91%) Windows Server
4 6 (2.18%) Unix
5 5 (1.82%) Android
5 5 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.45%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (1.45%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.36%) VMS
7 1 (0.36%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (58.55%) CI/CD
2 115 (41.82%) Agile
3 64 (23.27%) Containerisation
3 64 (23.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 58 (21.09%) Microservices
5 51 (18.55%) Problem-Solving
6 42 (15.27%) Continuous Improvement
7 41 (14.91%) Test Automation
8 38 (13.82%) Observability
9 37 (13.45%) Project Delivery
10 36 (13.09%) Mentoring
11 34 (12.36%) Stakeholder Management
12 26 (9.45%) Full-Stack Development
12 26 (9.45%) ITIL
13 24 (8.73%) Software Engineering
14 22 (8.00%) Cloud Security
14 22 (8.00%) SDLC
15 21 (7.64%) Change Management
16 19 (6.91%) Infrastructure Automation
16 19 (6.91%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 61 (22.18%) Java
2 56 (20.36%) Python
3 44 (16.00%) SQL
4 37 (13.45%) TypeScript
5 26 (9.45%) JavaScript
6 22 (8.00%) Bash
7 13 (4.73%) C#
8 12 (4.36%) PowerShell
9 9 (3.27%) Go
10 8 (2.91%) Groovy
10 8 (2.91%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.82%) Ruby
12 4 (1.45%) Rust
13 3 (1.09%) Bicep
13 3 (1.09%) C++
13 3 (1.09%) Perl
14 2 (0.73%) Scala
14 2 (0.73%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.36%) CLIST
15 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 53 (19.27%) Security Cleared
2 31 (11.27%) Degree
2 31 (11.27%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.27%) AWS Certification
3 20 (7.27%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (5.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 10 (3.64%) Azure Certification
6 9 (3.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 9 (3.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.18%) CISM
7 6 (2.18%) CISSP
7 6 (2.18%) ITIL Certification
8 4 (1.45%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.45%) IBM Certification
9 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.36%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.36%) SAFe Agilist
10 1 (0.36%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (9.09%) Accessibility
2 22 (8.00%) QA
3 16 (5.82%) PSD2
4 13 (4.73%) ISO 20022
5 12 (4.36%) SEPA
6 7 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (2.55%) NIST
6 7 (2.55%) WCAG
7 5 (1.82%) GDPR
8 3 (1.09%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.73%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.36%) HL7
10 1 (0.36%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.36%) PMO
10 1 (0.36%) SLA
10 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 84 (30.55%) Docker
2 12 (4.36%) Active Directory
2 12 (4.36%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (4.36%) vSphere
3 6 (2.18%) Tivoli Directory Server
4 4 (1.45%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (1.09%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.36%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 85 (30.91%) Terraform
2 82 (29.82%) Kubernetes
3 17 (6.18%) Ansible
4 15 (5.45%) Prometheus
5 14 (5.09%) Grafana
6 10 (3.64%) Progress Chef
7 8 (2.91%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (2.55%) CA Single Sign-On
9 6 (2.18%) CA Wily
9 6 (2.18%) Tivoli
10 5 (1.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.82%) SCCM
11 4 (1.45%) Fluentd
11 4 (1.45%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (1.09%) Istio
13 1 (0.36%) Argo
13 1 (0.36%) CA Endevor
13 1 (0.36%) OMEGAMON
13 1 (0.36%) Packer
13 1 (0.36%) Puppet
Vendors
1 42 (15.27%) Microsoft
2 30 (10.91%) Oracle
3 19 (6.91%) Splunk
4 16 (5.82%) IBM
5 12 (4.36%) VMware
6 11 (4.00%) F5
7 10 (3.64%) Google
8 6 (2.18%) AppDynamics
8 6 (2.18%) Broadcom
8 6 (2.18%) Cribl.io
8 6 (2.18%) Databricks
8 6 (2.18%) MuleSoft
8 6 (2.18%) Palo Alto
8 6 (2.18%) ServiceNow
9 4 (1.45%) OpenAI
9 4 (1.45%) SAP
9 4 (1.45%) Veeam
10 3 (1.09%) Adobe
10 3 (1.09%) Software AG
10 3 (1.09%) webMethods