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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 18 16
Rank change year-on-year +1 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 294 171 236
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.77% 8.78% 8.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.53% 9.75% 10.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 128 171
10th Percentile £388 £373 £413
25th Percentile £413 £413 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £581 £585 £650
90th Percentile £650 £642 £825
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 2 3
10th Percentile £25.38 £70.25 -
25th Percentile £31.32 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £42.69 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -48.26% +79.82% +5.95%
75th Percentile £74.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £81.00 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £65.50
% change year-on-year - +3.05% -

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 2,793 1,754 2,314
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.32% 90.04% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,673 1,147 1,450
10th Percentile £300 £300 £306
25th Percentile £396 £391 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £553 £588
90th Percentile £675 £661 £676
England median daily rate £514 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 239 97 265
10th Percentile £17.10 £13.88 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.72 £14.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.40 £26.39
Median % change year-on-year +80.92% +15.20% -24.60%
75th Percentile £74.26 £63.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £84.80 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.00 £28.55 £37.18
% change year-on-year +64.62% -23.21% -0.85%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +6 182 £500 - 127
Cheshire -3 69 £455 +7.06% 8
Lancashire -1 22 £575 +2.22% 35
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 25 (8.50%) Confluence
2 8 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.36%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.34%) Apache
5 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.34%) Camunda
5 1 (0.34%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (3.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.70%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (1.02%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.68%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.68%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) NEC Housing
1 2 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.34%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.34%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 161 (54.76%) Azure
2 135 (45.92%) AWS
3 65 (22.11%) Azure DevOps
4 53 (18.03%) GCP
5 45 (15.31%) Serverless
6 40 (13.61%) GitHub
7 24 (8.16%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 23 (7.82%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (7.48%) AWS Lambda
10 21 (7.14%) Azure AKS
11 17 (5.78%) Amazon S3
12 15 (5.10%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (5.10%) Dynamics 365
13 14 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 13 (4.42%) Amazon EKS
15 12 (4.08%) SaaS
16 11 (3.74%) Entra ID
16 11 (3.74%) Microsoft 365
16 11 (3.74%) OCI
17 10 (3.40%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (9.86%) Firewall
2 9 (3.06%) BGP
2 9 (3.06%) BIG-IP
2 9 (3.06%) Ethernet VPN
2 9 (3.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 9 (3.06%) OSPF
2 9 (3.06%) SD-WAN
2 9 (3.06%) VXLAN
2 9 (3.06%) WAN
3 8 (2.72%) DNS
3 8 (2.72%) Wi-Fi
3 8 (2.72%) WLAN
4 6 (2.04%) DHCP
5 5 (1.70%) Network Security
5 5 (1.70%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.36%) NetScaler
7 2 (0.68%) VPN
8 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
8 1 (0.34%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.34%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.80%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (5.78%) MongoDB
3 16 (5.44%) Relational Database
4 15 (5.10%) SQL Server
5 14 (4.76%) NoSQL
6 12 (4.08%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.06%) DocumentDB
7 9 (3.06%) Oracle Database
7 9 (3.06%) RDBMS
7 9 (3.06%) Tableau
8 7 (2.38%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (2.38%) Ataccama
8 7 (2.38%) Data Lake
8 7 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 5 (1.70%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.70%) MySQL
11 4 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (19.39%) GitLab
2 40 (13.61%) JIRA
3 39 (13.27%) Git
4 35 (11.90%) Jenkins
5 11 (3.74%) Selenium
6 9 (3.06%) JUnit
7 8 (2.72%) Cypress.io
7 8 (2.72%) Mocha
8 7 (2.38%) CircleCI
8 7 (2.38%) Cucumber
8 7 (2.38%) Gatling
8 7 (2.38%) REST Assured
9 6 (2.04%) SonarQube
10 5 (1.70%) Serenity BDD
11 4 (1.36%) Gradle
11 4 (1.36%) Postman
11 4 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
12 3 (1.02%) ClearCase
12 3 (1.02%) Maven
13 2 (0.68%) Jasmine
General
1 64 (21.77%) Finance
2 60 (20.41%) Public Sector
3 55 (18.71%) Social Skills
4 27 (9.18%) Banking
5 19 (6.46%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.70%) Military
6 5 (1.70%) Retail
7 3 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.02%) Health Technology
7 3 (1.02%) Local Government
8 2 (0.68%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.68%) Law
9 1 (0.34%) Advertising
9 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.34%) Legal
9 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.34%) Publishing
9 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
9 1 (0.34%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 53 (18.03%) Developer
2 48 (16.33%) DevOps Engineer
3 44 (14.97%) Senior
4 35 (11.90%) Lead
5 34 (11.56%) Architect
6 21 (7.14%) Solutions Architect
7 19 (6.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 18 (6.12%) Software Engineer
9 17 (5.78%) Java Developer
10 16 (5.44%) Analyst
11 15 (5.10%) Azure Engineer
11 15 (5.10%) Security Engineer
11 15 (5.10%) Software Developer
12 14 (4.76%) Full-Stack Developer
13 13 (4.42%) Lead Developer
14 12 (4.08%) Cloud Engineer
14 12 (4.08%) Platform Engineer
14 12 (4.08%) Senior Developer
15 11 (3.74%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 10 (3.40%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (15.31%) Spring
2 44 (14.97%) Spring Boot
3 32 (10.88%) React
4 30 (10.20%) REST
5 29 (9.86%) Node.js
6 20 (6.80%) Kafka
7 18 (6.12%) AngularJS
7 18 (6.12%) Playwright
8 17 (5.78%) .NET
9 16 (5.44%) XML
10 12 (4.08%) Jest
11 11 (3.74%) RESTful
12 10 (3.40%) JSON
13 9 (3.06%) PySpark
14 8 (2.72%) GraphQL
15 7 (2.38%) OAuth
16 6 (2.04%) ARM Templates
16 6 (2.04%) HTML
16 6 (2.04%) Spring MVC
17 5 (1.70%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 65 (22.11%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.18%) Product Ownership
3 13 (4.42%) Security Posture
4 12 (4.08%) Data Protection Act
4 12 (4.08%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (4.08%) Private Cloud
5 11 (3.74%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.74%) Public Cloud
6 10 (3.40%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.06%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (3.06%) Management Information System
8 7 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (2.04%) AI Agents
9 6 (2.04%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.70%) e-Learning
10 5 (1.70%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.70%) NHS
10 5 (1.70%) Replication
11 4 (1.36%) Clustering
11 4 (1.36%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 31 (10.54%) Linux
2 18 (6.12%) Windows
3 12 (4.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.36%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.68%) VMS
6 1 (0.34%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (60.88%) CI/CD
2 114 (38.78%) Agile
3 74 (25.17%) Infrastructure as Code
4 71 (24.15%) Microservices
5 55 (18.71%) Test Automation
6 53 (18.03%) Containerisation
7 52 (17.69%) Observability
8 44 (14.97%) Continuous Improvement
9 38 (12.93%) Mentoring
9 38 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
10 31 (10.54%) AI
10 31 (10.54%) Stakeholder Management
10 31 (10.54%) Technical Leadership
11 30 (10.20%) Scrum
12 29 (9.86%) Software Engineering
13 27 (9.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 27 (9.18%) Migration
13 27 (9.18%) Platform Engineering
14 26 (8.84%) Load Balancing
15 25 (8.50%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 90 (30.61%) Java
2 80 (27.21%) Python
3 36 (12.24%) PowerShell
4 35 (11.90%) SQL
5 29 (9.86%) JavaScript
5 29 (9.86%) TypeScript
6 27 (9.18%) Bash
7 14 (4.76%) C#
8 8 (2.72%) Bicep
9 7 (2.38%) Rust
10 6 (2.04%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.70%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.36%) Go
13 3 (1.02%) C++
13 3 (1.02%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.02%) VB
13 3 (1.02%) VB6
14 1 (0.34%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 55 (18.71%) Security Cleared
2 33 (11.22%) SC Cleared
3 31 (10.54%) Degree
4 29 (9.86%) AWS Certification
5 25 (8.50%) Azure Certification
6 18 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (5.10%) CISSP
8 10 (3.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 9 (3.06%) ITIL Certification
10 7 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.70%) DV Cleared
12 4 (1.36%) IBM Certification
13 3 (1.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (1.02%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.68%) CCIE
14 2 (0.68%) CCNP
14 2 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
14 2 (0.68%) CISM
14 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (0.68%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.14%) Accessibility
2 17 (5.78%) QA
3 11 (3.74%) GDPR
4 9 (3.06%) Data Quality
5 8 (2.72%) WCAG
6 6 (2.04%) NIST
7 5 (1.70%) ISO 20022
7 5 (1.70%) PSD2
8 4 (1.36%) SEPA
8 4 (1.36%) SLA
9 3 (1.02%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (1.02%) GRC
9 3 (1.02%) HIPAA
9 3 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.34%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.34%) PMO
10 1 (0.34%) Solvency II
System Software
1 80 (27.21%) Docker
2 9 (3.06%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.04%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.70%) vSphere
5 2 (0.68%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.34%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 98 (33.33%) Terraform
2 82 (27.89%) Kubernetes
3 26 (8.84%) Ansible
4 18 (6.12%) Grafana
5 15 (5.10%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.40%) Progress Chef
7 8 (2.72%) Argo
7 8 (2.72%) Istio
8 6 (2.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.36%) SCCM
9 4 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.68%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.68%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.68%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.68%) linkerd
10 2 (0.68%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.68%) Packer
11 1 (0.34%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 50 (17.01%) Microsoft
2 28 (9.52%) Google
3 23 (7.82%) Oracle
4 15 (5.10%) Splunk
5 14 (4.76%) F5
6 13 (4.42%) Red Hat
7 9 (3.06%) Aruba
7 9 (3.06%) Palo Alto
8 8 (2.72%) Arista
8 8 (2.72%) OpenAI
9 7 (2.38%) Databricks
10 6 (2.04%) VMware
11 5 (1.70%) IBM
11 5 (1.70%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.70%) Veeam
12 4 (1.36%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.36%) MuleSoft
13 3 (1.02%) Atlassian
13 3 (1.02%) Foundry
13 3 (1.02%) SAP