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

6 months to
3 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 17 13
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 253 183 261
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.59% 7.85% 9.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.06% 9.40% 10.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 97 190
10th Percentile £318 £356 £413
25th Percentile £385 £413 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £525 £529
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -0.76% -3.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £623
90th Percentile £663 £656 £673
England median daily rate £525 £570 £575
% change year-on-year -7.89% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 21
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -28.73% +38.12% -38.43%
75th Percentile £52.66 £77.50 -
90th Percentile £83.93 £83.50 -
England median hourly rate £63.50 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -9.29% +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 2,097 1,946 2,468
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 87.74% 83.48% 88.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,379 1,051 1,696
10th Percentile £215 £294 £270
25th Percentile £360 £391 £400
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 £656 £674
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 109 169
10th Percentile £15.18 £16.78 £15.75
25th Percentile £19.07 £24.19 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.27 £40.33 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.41% +13.59% +46.15%
75th Percentile £47.12 £55.79 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.66 £70.90 £64.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £38.07 £44.50
% change year-on-year -33.94% -14.45% +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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -3 125 £500 -9.09% 127
Cheshire +12 87 £430 - 39
Lancashire +5 25 £550 +4.76% 74
Merseyside -3 9 £510 +3.29% 6
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 29 (11.46%) Confluence
2 16 (6.32%) Apache
2 16 (6.32%) JBoss
3 14 (5.53%) WebSphere
4 13 (5.14%) IIS
5 11 (4.35%) WebSphere Application Server
6 9 (3.56%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.56%) iPlanet
7 8 (3.16%) CICS
8 4 (1.58%) 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 (2.37%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.79%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.79%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.79%) Maximo
3 1 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 124 (49.01%) AWS
2 99 (39.13%) Azure
3 46 (18.18%) Azure DevOps
4 31 (12.25%) GitHub
5 29 (11.46%) GCP
6 27 (10.67%) Serverless
7 22 (8.70%) AWS CloudFormation
7 22 (8.70%) OpenShift
8 19 (7.51%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (6.72%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (5.93%) Power Platform
11 11 (4.35%) Amazon SQS
12 10 (3.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (3.95%) Amazon ECS
12 10 (3.95%) SaaS
13 9 (3.56%) Amazon S3
13 9 (3.56%) Figma
14 8 (3.16%) Amazon EC2
14 8 (3.16%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (3.16%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 16 (6.32%) Firewall
2 9 (3.56%) Kerberos
3 4 (1.58%) HTTPS
3 4 (1.58%) SSL
3 4 (1.58%) VPN
4 3 (1.19%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.79%) Calico
5 2 (0.79%) DNS
5 2 (0.79%) Network Security
6 1 (0.40%) DHCP
6 1 (0.40%) VLAN
6 1 (0.40%) VoIP
6 1 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (5.93%) SQL Server
2 13 (5.14%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
3 10 (3.95%) Relational Database
4 9 (3.56%) Data Lake
4 9 (3.56%) DynamoDB
5 8 (3.16%) MongoDB
5 8 (3.16%) NoSQL
5 8 (3.16%) Power BI
6 7 (2.77%) Tableau
7 6 (2.37%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.37%) RDBMS
8 5 (1.98%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (1.98%) DocumentDB
8 5 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (1.58%) DB2
10 3 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.19%) Metadata
10 3 (1.19%) MySQL
11 2 (0.79%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 60 (23.72%) JIRA
2 50 (19.76%) Jenkins
3 49 (19.37%) Git
4 40 (15.81%) GitLab
5 18 (7.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 13 (5.14%) Bitbucket Server
6 13 (5.14%) CA Release Automation
7 10 (3.95%) Selenium
8 9 (3.56%) JUnit
8 9 (3.56%) SonarQube
9 8 (3.16%) Bitbucket
9 8 (3.16%) Maven
10 7 (2.77%) Cucumber
10 7 (2.77%) Gradle
11 6 (2.37%) Storybook
11 6 (2.37%) Xcode
12 5 (1.98%) Postman
13 4 (1.58%) TeamCity
14 3 (1.19%) Cypress.io
14 3 (1.19%) Mockito
General
1 60 (23.72%) Social Skills
2 54 (21.34%) Finance
3 34 (13.44%) Public Sector
4 33 (13.04%) Banking
5 23 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.37%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.98%) Publishing
8 5 (1.98%) Retail
9 4 (1.58%) Games
10 3 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.19%) Military
11 2 (0.79%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.79%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.40%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.40%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 50 (19.76%) Developer
2 36 (14.23%) DevOps Engineer
3 34 (13.44%) Senior
4 28 (11.07%) Lead
5 23 (9.09%) Platform Engineer
6 19 (7.51%) AWS Engineer
7 17 (6.72%) AWS DevOps
8 16 (6.32%) Software Engineer
9 15 (5.93%) Java Developer
10 14 (5.53%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 13 (5.14%) Architect
12 10 (3.95%) Senior Developer
13 8 (3.16%) Analyst
13 8 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
13 8 (3.16%) Senior DevOps
13 8 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
14 7 (2.77%) DevSecOps Engineer
14 7 (2.77%) Engineering Manager
14 7 (2.77%) React Developer
15 6 (2.37%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (10.28%) Spring Boot
2 23 (9.09%) OAuth
3 22 (8.70%) JSON
4 20 (7.91%) REST
5 19 (7.51%) React
5 19 (7.51%) Spring
6 17 (6.72%) .NET
7 15 (5.93%) HTML
7 15 (5.93%) Kafka
8 13 (5.14%) Node.js
9 12 (4.74%) XML
10 11 (4.35%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (4.35%) RESTful
10 11 (4.35%) SOAP
11 10 (3.95%) JMS
11 10 (3.95%) OpenID
11 10 (3.95%) SAML
12 9 (3.56%) LDAP
13 8 (3.16%) CSS
14 7 (2.77%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 26 (10.28%) Cloud Native
2 12 (4.74%) Product Ownership
3 10 (3.95%) Virtual Team
4 8 (3.16%) Mainframe
4 8 (3.16%) Mobile App
4 8 (3.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 8 (3.16%) VSAM
5 7 (2.77%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (2.37%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.98%) IBM Mainframe
7 5 (1.98%) Management Information System
8 4 (1.58%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
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
11 1 (0.40%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 41 (16.21%) Linux
2 21 (8.30%) Windows
3 10 (3.95%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.56%) Unix
5 8 (3.16%) Android
5 8 (3.16%) Apple iOS
6 6 (2.37%) zOS
7 5 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.40%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (54.55%) CI/CD
2 95 (37.55%) Agile
3 53 (20.95%) Infrastructure as Code
4 47 (18.58%) Containerisation
5 41 (16.21%) Microservices
6 35 (13.83%) Problem-Solving
6 35 (13.83%) Stakeholder Management
7 34 (13.44%) Continuous Improvement
7 34 (13.44%) Test Automation
8 27 (10.67%) Change Management
8 27 (10.67%) ITIL
9 25 (9.88%) Observability
10 24 (9.49%) Cloud Security
10 24 (9.49%) Process Improvement
10 24 (9.49%) Project Delivery
10 24 (9.49%) Software Engineering
11 23 (9.09%) Scrum
12 22 (8.70%) Platform Engineering
12 22 (8.70%) SDLC
13 21 (8.30%) Release Management
Programming Languages
1 53 (20.95%) Java
1 53 (20.95%) Python
2 46 (18.18%) SQL
3 21 (8.30%) Bash
4 20 (7.91%) JavaScript
5 18 (7.11%) TypeScript
6 14 (5.53%) C#
6 14 (5.53%) Shell Script
7 12 (4.74%) Groovy
8 9 (3.56%) Perl
9 8 (3.16%) Go
9 8 (3.16%) JCL
10 6 (2.37%) CLIST
10 6 (2.37%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.37%) REXX
11 4 (1.58%) C++
11 4 (1.58%) T-SQL
12 3 (1.19%) COBOL
12 3 (1.19%) Scala
13 2 (0.79%) PHP
Qualifications
1 39 (15.42%) Security Cleared
2 32 (12.65%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.30%) Degree
4 13 (5.14%) AWS Certification
5 9 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (3.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
6 8 (3.16%) ITIL Certification
7 7 (2.77%) Azure Certification
7 7 (2.77%) CISSP
8 6 (2.37%) CISM
9 5 (1.98%) 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%) CBAP
11 1 (0.40%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.40%) ISEB
11 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.40%) PMP
11 1 (0.40%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (9.88%) QA
2 19 (7.51%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.35%) PSD2
3 11 (4.35%) SEPA
4 8 (3.16%) ISO 20022
4 8 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (3.16%) NIST
5 4 (1.58%) 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 65 (25.69%) Docker
2 14 (5.53%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.16%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 8 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.16%) vSphere
4 6 (2.37%) Time Sharing Option
5 2 (0.79%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 67 (26.48%) Kubernetes
2 64 (25.30%) Terraform
3 19 (7.51%) Ansible
4 17 (6.72%) Progress Chef
5 10 (3.95%) CA Single Sign-On
5 10 (3.95%) Prometheus
6 9 (3.56%) CA Wily
6 9 (3.56%) Grafana
7 8 (3.16%) Tivoli
8 7 (2.77%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (2.37%) OMEGAMON
10 5 (1.98%) CA Endevor
11 4 (1.58%) Fluentd
11 4 (1.58%) Kibana
12 3 (1.19%) Packer
12 3 (1.19%) Podman
12 3 (1.19%) SELinux
13 2 (0.79%) Istio
14 1 (0.40%) Argo
14 1 (0.40%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 53 (20.95%) Microsoft
2 26 (10.28%) Oracle
3 25 (9.88%) Splunk
4 23 (9.09%) IBM
5 15 (5.93%) ServiceNow
6 14 (5.53%) AppDynamics
7 10 (3.95%) Broadcom
8 9 (3.56%) VMware
9 6 (2.37%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.37%) F5
9 6 (2.37%) Palo Alto
9 6 (2.37%) SAP
10 5 (1.98%) Axway
10 5 (1.98%) Cloudera
10 5 (1.98%) Databricks
10 5 (1.98%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.58%) Red Hat
11 4 (1.58%) Veracode
12 2 (0.79%) OpenAI
12 2 (0.79%) Virgin Media