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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 15 16
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 319 210 208
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.11% 9.46% 8.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.81% 10.68% 10.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 222 173 131
10th Percentile £381 £319 £413
25th Percentile £413 £385 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £470 £550
Median % change year-on-year +10.31% -14.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £639 £575 £650
90th Percentile £712 £680 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 2 2
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £43.15 £82.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -47.70% +78.65% -
75th Percentile £72.92 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £74.40 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -4.29% +6.87%

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 3,253 1,967 2,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.73% 88.56% 83.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,907 1,274 1,228
10th Percentile £295 £299 £311
25th Percentile £400 £375 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £500
Median % change year-on-year +9.95% -9.05% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £588
90th Percentile £678 £671 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 132 151
10th Percentile £16.50 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.44 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.25 £26.08 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +73.54% -26.26% +1.03%
75th Percentile £72.92 £53.13 £54.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £72.50 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 0 206 £505 -1.46% 94
Cheshire -9 62 £487 +20.12% 8
Lancashire +4 31 £640 +28.00% 6
Merseyside -13 12 £510 - 4
Cumbria - 1 - -
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 22 (6.90%) Confluence
2 9 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.57%) SAS
4 4 (1.25%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.25%) Camunda
5 3 (0.94%) Apache
5 3 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.31%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.31%) CMS
6 1 (0.31%) Drupal
6 1 (0.31%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.31%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.31%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.31%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.94%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.63%) Trello
4 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.31%) Dynamics AX
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
1 168 (52.66%) Azure
2 144 (45.14%) AWS
3 91 (28.53%) Azure DevOps
4 54 (16.93%) GitHub
5 52 (16.30%) GCP
6 33 (10.34%) GitHub Actions
6 33 (10.34%) Serverless
7 24 (7.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 22 (6.90%) Azure AKS
9 20 (6.27%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (5.02%) Amazon EKS
11 15 (4.70%) OCI
11 15 (4.70%) Power Platform
12 14 (4.39%) Amazon ECS
12 14 (4.39%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (4.08%) Azure Monitor
14 12 (3.76%) SaaS
15 11 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 11 (3.45%) Dynamics 365
15 11 (3.45%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.40%) Firewall
2 11 (3.45%) BGP
2 11 (3.45%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.45%) OSPF
2 11 (3.45%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.45%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.45%) WAN
3 10 (3.13%) BIG-IP
3 10 (3.13%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.82%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.82%) WLAN
5 8 (2.51%) SSL
6 7 (2.19%) DNS
6 7 (2.19%) Network Security
7 5 (1.57%) VPN
8 2 (0.63%) DHCP
8 2 (0.63%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.31%) HTTP
9 1 (0.31%) MPLS
9 1 (0.31%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.03%) SQL Server
2 22 (6.90%) MongoDB
2 22 (6.90%) Relational Database
3 18 (5.64%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (5.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 14 (4.39%) RDBMS
6 13 (4.08%) MySQL
6 13 (4.08%) NoSQL
7 11 (3.45%) Oracle Database
8 10 (3.13%) Power BI
9 7 (2.19%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.19%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.57%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.57%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.57%) Oracle Exadata
12 4 (1.25%) Data Vault
12 4 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
12 4 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 3 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 55 (17.24%) GitLab
2 44 (13.79%) Git
2 44 (13.79%) Jenkins
3 31 (9.72%) JIRA
4 14 (4.39%) Claude Code
5 13 (4.08%) Selenium
6 12 (3.76%) JUnit
6 12 (3.76%) REST Assured
6 12 (3.76%) SonarQube
7 11 (3.45%) Postman
8 10 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 9 (2.82%) Cucumber
10 8 (2.51%) Mockito
11 6 (1.88%) Gatling
11 6 (1.88%) Gradle
12 5 (1.57%) Maven
13 3 (0.94%) ClearCase
13 3 (0.94%) LoadRunner
13 3 (0.94%) TestRail
13 3 (0.94%) Zephyr
General
1 64 (20.06%) Finance
2 53 (16.61%) Social Skills
3 40 (12.54%) Public Sector
4 30 (9.40%) Banking
5 22 (6.90%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.70%) Retail
7 8 (2.51%) Military
8 4 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.94%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.94%) Local Government
9 3 (0.94%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.31%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.31%) iGaming
11 1 (0.31%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.31%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.31%) Legal
11 1 (0.31%) Publishing
11 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 65 (20.38%) DevOps Engineer
2 64 (20.06%) Senior
3 44 (13.79%) Lead
4 43 (13.48%) Developer
5 27 (8.46%) Architect
6 19 (5.96%) Cloud Engineer
7 18 (5.64%) Senior DevOps
8 17 (5.33%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 17 (5.33%) Software Engineer
9 16 (5.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (5.02%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (4.70%) Analyst
10 15 (4.70%) Azure Engineer
10 15 (4.70%) DBA
11 14 (4.39%) AWS Engineer
11 14 (4.39%) Security Engineer
12 13 (4.08%) Java Developer
12 13 (4.08%) Senior Developer
13 12 (3.76%) Consultant
13 12 (3.76%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (37.93%) Terraform
2 35 (10.97%) Spring Boot
3 33 (10.34%) Spring
4 32 (10.03%) Kafka
5 29 (9.09%) REST
6 27 (8.46%) React
7 23 (7.21%) Node.js
8 21 (6.58%) JSON
9 15 (4.70%) Playwright
10 14 (4.39%) .NET
11 12 (3.76%) XML
12 10 (3.13%) PySpark
12 10 (3.13%) RESTful
13 9 (2.82%) AngularJS
14 8 (2.51%) HTML
14 8 (2.51%) Next.js
15 7 (2.19%) ARM Templates
16 6 (1.88%) CSS
16 6 (1.88%) Spring MVC
17 5 (1.57%) Langfuse
Miscellaneous
1 71 (22.26%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.33%) Security Posture
3 16 (5.02%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.02%) Replication
4 14 (4.39%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.39%) Management Information System
5 12 (3.76%) Data Structures
6 11 (3.45%) Data Centre
7 10 (3.13%) Clustering
8 9 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.82%) Onboarding
9 8 (2.51%) Algorithms
9 8 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.88%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.57%) Cloud Security Posture
11 5 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.57%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.57%) Public Cloud
12 4 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.34%) Linux
2 29 (9.09%) Windows
3 15 (4.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.82%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.94%) AIX
5 3 (0.94%) Unix
5 3 (0.94%) VMS
6 1 (0.31%) Android
6 1 (0.31%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (60.50%) CI/CD
2 114 (35.74%) Agile
3 97 (30.41%) Infrastructure as Code
4 65 (20.38%) Observability
5 59 (18.50%) Test Automation
6 58 (18.18%) Microservices
7 56 (17.55%) Continuous Improvement
8 52 (16.30%) Containerisation
9 48 (15.05%) AI
10 46 (14.42%) Migration
11 44 (13.79%) Software Engineering
12 37 (11.60%) Platform Engineering
12 37 (11.60%) Scrum
12 37 (11.60%) Technical Leadership
13 36 (11.29%) Event-Driven
13 36 (11.29%) Mentoring
13 36 (11.29%) SDLC
14 33 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
15 32 (10.03%) Cloud Security
16 31 (9.72%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 91 (28.53%) Python
2 76 (23.82%) Java
3 51 (15.99%) SQL
4 49 (15.36%) PowerShell
5 39 (12.23%) Bash
6 24 (7.52%) JavaScript
7 20 (6.27%) Bicep
8 19 (5.96%) C#
9 17 (5.33%) TypeScript
10 13 (4.08%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.94%) Rust
12 3 (0.94%) VB
12 3 (0.94%) VB6
13 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.63%) PROC SQL
13 2 (0.63%) Scala
13 2 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
14 1 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.31%) PHP
Qualifications
1 76 (23.82%) Security Cleared
2 64 (20.06%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.34%) Degree
4 29 (9.09%) Azure Certification
5 23 (7.21%) AWS Certification
6 21 (6.58%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (4.70%) CISSP
8 12 (3.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (2.19%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.57%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 4 (1.25%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.94%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (0.94%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.94%) CCIE
13 3 (0.94%) CCNP
13 3 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
14 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.03%) QA
2 16 (5.02%) Data Quality
3 13 (4.08%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.88%) GDPR
5 3 (0.94%) GRC
5 3 (0.94%) NIST
5 3 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.94%) SLA
5 3 (0.94%) WCAG
6 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.31%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.31%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.31%) PSD2
7 1 (0.31%) SEPA
7 1 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (24.14%) Docker
2 10 (3.13%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.88%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.57%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (1.25%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.63%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 95 (29.78%) Kubernetes
2 40 (12.54%) Ansible
3 19 (5.96%) Grafana
4 16 (5.02%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.39%) Progress Chef
6 11 (3.45%) Argo
7 8 (2.51%) Istio
8 6 (1.88%) SCOM
9 5 (1.57%) Data Guard
9 5 (1.57%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.63%) linkerd
11 2 (0.63%) Packer
11 2 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.31%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.31%) Puppet
12 1 (0.31%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.31%) vRealize
12 1 (0.31%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 57 (17.87%) Microsoft
2 24 (7.52%) Google
3 21 (6.58%) Oracle
4 18 (5.64%) Splunk
5 17 (5.33%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.02%) ServiceNow
7 12 (3.76%) Palo Alto
8 11 (3.45%) F5
9 10 (3.13%) Aruba
9 10 (3.13%) SAP
10 9 (2.82%) Arista
10 9 (2.82%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.88%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.57%) IBM
12 5 (1.57%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.57%) Veracode
13 4 (1.25%) Databricks
13 4 (1.25%) VMware
14 3 (0.94%) MuleSoft
14 3 (0.94%) Zscaler