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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 17 15
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 320 184 246
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.14% 9.16% 8.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.92% 10.26% 10.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 143 172
10th Percentile £386 £357 £413
25th Percentile £413 £402 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -7.62% -
75th Percentile £599 £575 £643
90th Percentile £675 £638 £823
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 2 3
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £42.69 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -48.26% +79.82% +13.28%
75th Percentile £75.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £84.50 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - +3.70% +2.89%

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 2,930 1,793 2,354
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.64% 89.29% 84.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,718 1,193 1,434
10th Percentile £300 £305 £306
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £455 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -8.08% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £558 £585
90th Percentile £675 £663 £675
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 106 267
10th Percentile £17.25 £12.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.90 £14.18
Median hourly rate £50.00 £31.88 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.84% +13.86% -7.50%
75th Percentile £76.00 £63.30 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £82.21 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% +8.48%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 +7 202 £500 - 112
Cheshire -3 71 £481 +18.11% 8
Lancashire +5 26 £608 +10.45% 39
Merseyside -11 14 £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 28 (8.75%) Confluence
2 9 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.56%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.63%) Apache
5 2 (0.63%) SAS
6 1 (0.31%) Camunda
6 1 (0.31%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.31%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.31%) nginx
6 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 7 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.94%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.63%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.63%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.31%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.31%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.31%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.31%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 177 (55.31%) Azure
2 143 (44.69%) AWS
3 75 (23.44%) Azure DevOps
4 57 (17.81%) GCP
5 43 (13.44%) Serverless
6 39 (12.19%) GitHub
7 25 (7.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 22 (6.88%) AWS Lambda
8 22 (6.88%) GitHub Actions
9 21 (6.56%) Azure AKS
10 15 (4.69%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (4.69%) Dynamics 365
10 15 (4.69%) SaaS
10 15 (4.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (4.38%) Amazon S3
12 11 (3.44%) Amazon EKS
12 11 (3.44%) Entra ID
12 11 (3.44%) OCI
12 11 (3.44%) Power Platform
13 10 (3.13%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 33 (10.31%) Firewall
2 10 (3.13%) BGP
2 10 (3.13%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.13%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.13%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.13%) OSPF
2 10 (3.13%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.13%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.13%) WAN
3 9 (2.81%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.81%) WLAN
4 7 (2.19%) DNS
4 7 (2.19%) Network Security
5 4 (1.25%) DHCP
6 3 (0.94%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.63%) NetScaler
7 2 (0.63%) VPN
8 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
8 1 (0.31%) NAS
8 1 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.50%) MongoDB
2 22 (6.88%) SQL Server
3 20 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (6.25%) Relational Database
4 14 (4.38%) NoSQL
5 10 (3.13%) RDBMS
6 9 (2.81%) DocumentDB
6 9 (2.81%) DynamoDB
7 8 (2.50%) Data Lake
7 8 (2.50%) Oracle Database
8 7 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (2.19%) Ataccama
8 7 (2.19%) Elasticsearch
8 7 (2.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.88%) BigQuery
9 6 (1.88%) Tableau
10 4 (1.25%) MySQL
10 4 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.94%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 58 (18.13%) GitLab
2 45 (14.06%) Jenkins
3 43 (13.44%) Git
4 42 (13.13%) JIRA
5 14 (4.38%) Selenium
6 10 (3.13%) REST Assured
7 9 (2.81%) Postman
8 8 (2.50%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.50%) Gatling
8 8 (2.50%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.19%) JUnit
10 6 (1.88%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (1.56%) Claude Code
11 5 (1.56%) Gradle
11 5 (1.56%) Mocha
11 5 (1.56%) Serenity BDD
12 4 (1.25%) Cypress.io
13 3 (0.94%) CircleCI
13 3 (0.94%) ClearCase
13 3 (0.94%) Maven
General
1 66 (20.63%) Finance
2 60 (18.75%) Social Skills
3 55 (17.19%) Public Sector
4 30 (9.38%) Banking
5 22 (6.88%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (2.50%) Retail
7 6 (1.88%) Military
8 3 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.94%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (0.94%) Local Government
8 3 (0.94%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.63%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.63%) Publishing
10 1 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
10 1 (0.31%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 56 (17.50%) Developer
2 53 (16.56%) DevOps Engineer
3 48 (15.00%) Senior
4 42 (13.13%) Lead
5 35 (10.94%) Architect
6 19 (5.94%) Solutions Architect
7 18 (5.63%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.63%) Software Engineer
8 17 (5.31%) Analyst
8 17 (5.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (4.69%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.69%) Lead Developer
9 15 (4.69%) Security Engineer
9 15 (4.69%) Software Developer
10 13 (4.06%) Cloud Engineer
10 13 (4.06%) Senior Developer
11 11 (3.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.44%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.13%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 9 (2.81%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (14.06%) Spring
2 44 (13.75%) Spring Boot
3 30 (9.38%) Kafka
4 29 (9.06%) REST
5 24 (7.50%) Node.js
5 24 (7.50%) React
6 17 (5.31%) .NET
6 17 (5.31%) JSON
6 17 (5.31%) Playwright
7 15 (4.69%) XML
8 11 (3.44%) AngularJS
9 10 (3.13%) PySpark
10 9 (2.81%) RESTful
11 8 (2.50%) GraphQL
12 7 (2.19%) ARM Templates
12 7 (2.19%) OAuth
13 5 (1.56%) Jest
13 5 (1.56%) LangChain
13 5 (1.56%) Spring Cloud
14 4 (1.25%) Nunjucks
Miscellaneous
1 72 (22.50%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.19%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.00%) Security Posture
4 15 (4.69%) Management Information System
5 13 (4.06%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.75%) Data Centre
7 11 (3.44%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (3.13%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (3.13%) Private Cloud
9 9 (2.81%) Public Cloud
10 8 (2.50%) Onboarding
11 7 (2.19%) AI Agents
11 7 (2.19%) Data Structures
12 6 (1.88%) Algorithms
12 6 (1.88%) Replication
12 6 (1.88%) Virtual Team
13 5 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
13 5 (1.56%) e-Learning
13 5 (1.56%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (1.56%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.31%) Linux
2 18 (5.63%) Windows
3 13 (4.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.94%) VMS
5 2 (0.63%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.31%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (60.94%) CI/CD
2 122 (38.13%) Agile
3 77 (24.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (20.63%) Microservices
5 56 (17.50%) Observability
6 55 (17.19%) Test Automation
7 51 (15.94%) Containerisation
8 45 (14.06%) Continuous Improvement
9 39 (12.19%) AI
10 38 (11.88%) Problem-Solving
11 37 (11.56%) Mentoring
12 33 (10.31%) Scrum
12 33 (10.31%) SDLC
12 33 (10.31%) Software Engineering
13 32 (10.00%) Migration
13 32 (10.00%) Technical Leadership
14 31 (9.69%) Stakeholder Management
15 30 (9.38%) Platform Engineering
16 29 (9.06%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 28 (8.75%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 89 (27.81%) Python
2 88 (27.50%) Java
3 45 (14.06%) SQL
4 44 (13.75%) PowerShell
5 29 (9.06%) Bash
6 25 (7.81%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.56%) C#
7 21 (6.56%) TypeScript
8 8 (2.50%) Bicep
9 7 (2.19%) Rust
10 6 (1.88%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.88%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.94%) Go
11 3 (0.94%) VB
11 3 (0.94%) VB6
12 2 (0.63%) C++
12 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.63%) PROC SQL
13 1 (0.31%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 69 (21.56%) Security Cleared
2 48 (15.00%) SC Cleared
3 31 (9.69%) AWS Certification
3 31 (9.69%) Degree
4 25 (7.81%) Azure Certification
5 20 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (5.31%) CISSP
7 11 (3.44%) DV Cleared
8 10 (3.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 10 (3.13%) ITIL Certification
9 6 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.25%) IBM Certification
10 4 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.94%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.63%) CCIE
12 2 (0.63%) CCNP
12 2 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.63%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.94%) QA
2 17 (5.31%) Accessibility
3 12 (3.75%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.81%) GDPR
5 5 (1.56%) NIST
6 4 (1.25%) ISO 20022
6 4 (1.25%) PSD2
6 4 (1.25%) SEPA
6 4 (1.25%) SLA
6 4 (1.25%) WCAG
7 3 (0.94%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.94%) GRC
7 3 (0.94%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.31%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
9 1 (0.31%) Solvency II
System Software
1 80 (25.00%) Docker
2 7 (2.19%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.94%) vSphere
6 2 (0.63%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.31%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 109 (34.06%) Terraform
2 88 (27.50%) Kubernetes
3 36 (11.25%) Ansible
4 21 (6.56%) Grafana
5 16 (5.00%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.44%) Progress Chef
7 9 (2.81%) Argo
7 9 (2.81%) Istio
8 4 (1.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.63%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.63%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.63%) linkerd
9 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.63%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.63%) Packer
9 2 (0.63%) SCCM
10 1 (0.31%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.31%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 60 (18.75%) Microsoft
2 32 (10.00%) Google
3 21 (6.56%) Oracle
4 16 (5.00%) Splunk
5 14 (4.38%) Red Hat
6 13 (4.06%) F5
7 10 (3.13%) Aruba
7 10 (3.13%) Palo Alto
7 10 (3.13%) ServiceNow
8 9 (2.81%) Arista
8 9 (2.81%) OpenAI
9 7 (2.19%) Databricks
9 7 (2.19%) Dynatrace
9 7 (2.19%) IBM
10 6 (1.88%) SAP
11 4 (1.25%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.25%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.25%) VMware
12 3 (0.94%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.94%) Foundry