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 18 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 19 17
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 284 175 241
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.68% 8.90% 9.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.41% 9.89% 10.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 131 177
10th Percentile £373 £363 £411
25th Percentile £415 £419 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £581 £588 £643
90th Percentile £650 £680 £810
England median daily rate £525 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -3.63% -0.95% -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% +13.28%
75th Percentile £74.50 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £82.75 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -1.82% +5.77% -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 2,727 1,770 2,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.37% 90.03% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,667 1,153 1,459
10th Percentile £296 £300 £311
25th Percentile £381 £388 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.47% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £581 £575 £594
90th Percentile £653 £663 £689
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 229 104 255
10th Percentile £17.13 £15.23 £10.97
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.74 £13.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £31.88 £25.60
Median % change year-on-year +72.52% +24.53% -27.92%
75th Percentile £74.26 £63.10 £46.03
90th Percentile £85.00 £85.03 £62.50
England median hourly rate £47.00 £29.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +62.07% -20.55% +0.69%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +6 180 £500 -4.76% 123
Cheshire -1 67 £481 +13.18% 12
Lancashire 0 16 £575 - 36
Merseyside -13 16 £510 -2.63% 10
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 (8.45%) Confluence
2 8 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.41%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.06%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.35%) Apache
5 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.35%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (3.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (3.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.76%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (1.06%) 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%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 149 (52.46%) Azure
2 134 (47.18%) AWS
3 66 (23.24%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (17.25%) Serverless
5 46 (16.20%) GCP
6 40 (14.08%) GitHub
7 24 (8.45%) GitHub Actions
8 19 (6.69%) Amazon S3
8 19 (6.69%) AWS Lambda
9 18 (6.34%) Azure AKS
10 17 (5.99%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 15 (5.28%) Amazon EC2
11 15 (5.28%) Dynamics 365
12 14 (4.93%) Amazon EKS
13 12 (4.23%) AWS CloudFormation
14 11 (3.87%) Entra ID
14 11 (3.87%) Microsoft 365
15 10 (3.52%) Power Platform
15 10 (3.52%) SaaS
16 9 (3.17%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (7.04%) Firewall
2 8 (2.82%) DNS
3 7 (2.46%) BGP
3 7 (2.46%) BIG-IP
3 7 (2.46%) Ethernet VPN
3 7 (2.46%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 7 (2.46%) OSPF
3 7 (2.46%) SD-WAN
3 7 (2.46%) VXLAN
3 7 (2.46%) WAN
4 6 (2.11%) DHCP
4 6 (2.11%) Wi-Fi
4 6 (2.11%) WLAN
5 5 (1.76%) Network Security
5 5 (1.76%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.41%) NetScaler
7 2 (0.70%) VPN
8 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
8 1 (0.35%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.35%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.45%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (7.39%) MongoDB
3 19 (6.69%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.34%) NoSQL
5 14 (4.93%) DynamoDB
6 13 (4.58%) RDBMS
7 11 (3.87%) SQL Server
8 9 (3.17%) DocumentDB
8 9 (3.17%) Oracle Reports
8 9 (3.17%) Tableau
9 8 (2.82%) Oracle Database
10 7 (2.46%) Elasticsearch
11 6 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
12 5 (1.76%) Ataccama
12 5 (1.76%) Data Lake
13 4 (1.41%) MySQL
14 3 (1.06%) BigQuery
14 3 (1.06%) Data Vault
14 3 (1.06%) Power BI
14 3 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 51 (17.96%) GitLab
2 42 (14.79%) JIRA
3 39 (13.73%) Git
4 34 (11.97%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.52%) Selenium
6 9 (3.17%) JUnit
7 8 (2.82%) Cypress.io
7 8 (2.82%) Mocha
8 7 (2.46%) CircleCI
8 7 (2.46%) Gatling
8 7 (2.46%) REST Assured
9 6 (2.11%) Cucumber
9 6 (2.11%) SonarQube
10 5 (1.76%) Serenity BDD
11 4 (1.41%) Gradle
12 3 (1.06%) ClearCase
12 3 (1.06%) Jasmine
12 3 (1.06%) Maven
12 3 (1.06%) Postman
12 3 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 66 (23.24%) Public Sector
2 58 (20.42%) Finance
3 50 (17.61%) Social Skills
4 28 (9.86%) Banking
5 18 (6.34%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.76%) Military
6 5 (1.76%) Retail
7 3 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.06%) Health Technology
7 3 (1.06%) Local Government
8 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.70%) Law
8 2 (0.70%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (0.70%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.35%) Advertising
9 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.35%) Electronics
9 1 (0.35%) Legal
Job Titles
1 57 (20.07%) Developer
2 45 (15.85%) DevOps Engineer
3 40 (14.08%) Senior
4 35 (12.32%) Lead
5 31 (10.92%) Architect
6 18 (6.34%) Software Engineer
7 17 (5.99%) Java Developer
7 17 (5.99%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (5.63%) Azure Engineer
8 16 (5.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (5.28%) Analyst
9 15 (5.28%) Full-Stack Developer
9 15 (5.28%) Software Developer
10 13 (4.58%) Lead Developer
10 13 (4.58%) Platform Engineer
11 12 (4.23%) Senior Developer
12 11 (3.87%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 11 (3.87%) DBA
13 10 (3.52%) GCP Engineer
13 10 (3.52%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (16.90%) Spring
2 47 (16.55%) Spring Boot
3 34 (11.97%) REST
4 29 (10.21%) Node.js
5 28 (9.86%) React
6 24 (8.45%) Kafka
7 21 (7.39%) XML
8 19 (6.69%) AngularJS
9 18 (6.34%) Playwright
10 17 (5.99%) .NET
11 14 (4.93%) JSON
12 13 (4.58%) Jest
12 13 (4.58%) RESTful
13 8 (2.82%) GraphQL
13 8 (2.82%) HTML
13 8 (2.82%) OAuth
13 8 (2.82%) Spring MVC
14 7 (2.46%) PySpark
15 6 (2.11%) ARM Templates
15 6 (2.11%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 56 (19.72%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.51%) Product Ownership
3 13 (4.58%) Data Protection Act
4 11 (3.87%) Onboarding
5 10 (3.52%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.52%) Private Cloud
6 9 (3.17%) Data Centre
6 9 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.17%) Public Cloud
7 7 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.46%) Security Posture
7 7 (2.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 6 (2.11%) NHS
8 6 (2.11%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.76%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.76%) Replication
10 4 (1.41%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.41%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.41%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.06%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 26 (9.15%) Linux
2 10 (3.52%) Windows
3 6 (2.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.70%) VMS
6 1 (0.35%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 163 (57.39%) CI/CD
2 113 (39.79%) Agile
3 70 (24.65%) Microservices
4 68 (23.94%) Infrastructure as Code
5 57 (20.07%) Containerisation
6 55 (19.37%) Test Automation
7 48 (16.90%) Observability
8 44 (15.49%) Continuous Improvement
9 42 (14.79%) Mentoring
10 40 (14.08%) Problem-Solving
11 31 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
12 30 (10.56%) Technical Leadership
13 27 (9.51%) SDLC
13 27 (9.51%) Software Engineering
14 26 (9.15%) AI
14 26 (9.15%) Full-Stack Development
14 26 (9.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 24 (8.45%) Migration
15 24 (8.45%) Platform Engineering
16 23 (8.10%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 82 (28.87%) Java
2 71 (25.00%) Python
3 34 (11.97%) SQL
4 31 (10.92%) TypeScript
5 28 (9.86%) JavaScript
6 26 (9.15%) PowerShell
7 20 (7.04%) Bash
8 15 (5.28%) C#
9 10 (3.52%) Bicep
10 7 (2.46%) Rust
11 6 (2.11%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.41%) Go
13 3 (1.06%) C++
13 3 (1.06%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.06%) Ruby
13 3 (1.06%) VB
13 3 (1.06%) VB6
14 1 (0.35%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 59 (20.77%) Security Cleared
2 34 (11.97%) SC Cleared
3 24 (8.45%) AWS Certification
3 24 (8.45%) Degree
4 20 (7.04%) Azure Certification
4 20 (7.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (3.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 9 (3.17%) CISSP
7 8 (2.82%) ITIL Certification
8 7 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.76%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.41%) IBM Certification
11 3 (1.06%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (1.06%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.70%) CCIE
12 2 (0.70%) CCNP
12 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.70%) CISM
12 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.70%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.39%) Accessibility
2 20 (7.04%) QA
3 9 (3.17%) GDPR
4 8 (2.82%) ISO 20022
4 8 (2.82%) PSD2
4 8 (2.82%) WCAG
5 7 (2.46%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.46%) SEPA
6 6 (2.11%) NIST
7 3 (1.06%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (1.06%) GRC
7 3 (1.06%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.06%) SLA
8 1 (0.35%) HL7
8 1 (0.35%) NEBOSH
8 1 (0.35%) PMO
8 1 (0.35%) Solvency II
System Software
1 78 (27.46%) Docker
2 9 (3.17%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.76%) vSphere
5 3 (1.06%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.70%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.35%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 87 (30.63%) Terraform
2 76 (26.76%) Kubernetes
3 24 (8.45%) Ansible
4 18 (6.34%) Grafana
5 15 (5.28%) Prometheus
6 9 (3.17%) Istio
7 8 (2.82%) Argo
8 6 (2.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.41%) Progress Chef
9 4 (1.41%) SCCM
9 4 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.70%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.70%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.70%) linkerd
10 2 (0.70%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.35%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.35%) Packer
11 1 (0.35%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.35%) vRealize
Vendors
1 47 (16.55%) Microsoft
2 30 (10.56%) Oracle
3 20 (7.04%) Google
4 15 (5.28%) Splunk
5 12 (4.23%) F5
6 7 (2.46%) Aruba
6 7 (2.46%) Palo Alto
6 7 (2.46%) Red Hat
7 6 (2.11%) Arista
7 6 (2.11%) Databricks
7 6 (2.11%) OpenAI
7 6 (2.11%) VMware
8 5 (1.76%) IBM
8 5 (1.76%) MuleSoft
8 5 (1.76%) Veeam
9 4 (1.41%) CyberArk
9 4 (1.41%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.41%) SAP
9 4 (1.41%) ServiceNow
10 3 (1.06%) Foundry