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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 20 20
Rank change year-on-year +7 0 -6
Contract jobs citing DevOps 285 171 205
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.90% 8.16% 7.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.53% 9.24% 8.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 96 149
10th Percentile £358 £353 £425
25th Percentile £400 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £518 £533
Median % change year-on-year -9.31% -2.77% -7.30%
75th Percentile £561 £588 £583
90th Percentile £650 £639 £664
England median daily rate £525 £575 £568
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.32% -5.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 4 13
10th Percentile £39.53 £50.14 £45.94
25th Percentile - £56.09 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £69.39 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -34.49% +50.27% -2.78%
75th Percentile £45.84 £80.00 -
90th Percentile £82.75 £84.50 -
England median hourly rate £50.00 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -25.93% +3.85% -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 2,275 1,851 2,515
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 87.03% 88.35% 87.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,499 1,079 1,678
10th Percentile £213 £275 £306
25th Percentile £358 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £551 £568 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £683
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 98 208
10th Percentile £16.25 £16.19 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.58 £22.72 £15.92
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.51 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.10% +5.03% -19.57%
75th Percentile £57.50 £52.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.90 £75.58 £54.13
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -1.41% +1.43%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 2 February 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 -2 147 £500 - 127
Cheshire +14 84 £447 +25.56% 14
Lancashire 0 28 £670 +16.52% 63
Merseyside -7 17 £510 -11.11% 13
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 26 (9.12%) Confluence
2 12 (4.21%) Apache
3 11 (3.86%) IIS
3 11 (3.86%) JBoss
4 10 (3.51%) WebSphere
5 9 (3.16%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (3.16%) iPlanet
5 9 (3.16%) WebSphere Application Server
6 4 (1.40%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.05%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (1.05%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.35%) CICS
9 1 (0.35%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (4.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.70%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.70%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 151 (52.98%) AWS
2 116 (40.70%) Azure
3 49 (17.19%) Azure DevOps
4 43 (15.09%) GitHub
5 42 (14.74%) Serverless
6 37 (12.98%) GCP
7 33 (11.58%) AWS CloudFormation
8 27 (9.47%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (9.12%) AWS Lambda
10 18 (6.32%) Power Platform
11 17 (5.96%) Amazon S3
12 16 (5.61%) Amazon ECS
12 16 (5.61%) OpenShift
13 15 (5.26%) Amazon EKS
14 14 (4.91%) Amazon EC2
15 13 (4.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 13 (4.56%) Amazon SQS
16 12 (4.21%) Azure AKS
17 10 (3.51%) Kong
18 9 (3.16%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.67%) Firewall
2 9 (3.16%) Kerberos
3 6 (2.11%) DNS
3 6 (2.11%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.75%) DHCP
4 5 (1.75%) HTTPS
4 5 (1.75%) Network Security
4 5 (1.75%) VPN
5 4 (1.40%) NetScaler
5 4 (1.40%) SSL
6 1 (0.35%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.35%) VLAN
6 1 (0.35%) VoIP
6 1 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.96%) DynamoDB
2 14 (4.91%) Tableau
3 13 (4.56%) NoSQL
4 12 (4.21%) MongoDB
5 11 (3.86%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (3.86%) Oracle Database
6 10 (3.51%) DocumentDB
6 10 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 10 (3.51%) Relational Database
7 9 (3.16%) Data Lake
7 9 (3.16%) Power BI
8 6 (2.11%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (1.75%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (1.75%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.05%) Metadata
11 2 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.70%) MySQL
12 1 (0.35%) Azure SQL Database
12 1 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 56 (19.65%) Git
2 54 (18.95%) JIRA
3 53 (18.60%) GitLab
4 38 (13.33%) Jenkins
5 11 (3.86%) JUnit
6 10 (3.51%) Bitbucket Server
6 10 (3.51%) CA Release Automation
6 10 (3.51%) CircleCI
6 10 (3.51%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (2.81%) Cypress.io
7 8 (2.81%) Gradle
7 8 (2.81%) Mocha
8 5 (1.75%) Postman
8 5 (1.75%) Selenium
8 5 (1.75%) Storybook
8 5 (1.75%) Xcode
9 3 (1.05%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.05%) Jasmine
9 3 (1.05%) Maven
9 3 (1.05%) REST Assured
General
1 64 (22.46%) Finance
2 61 (21.40%) Social Skills
3 60 (21.05%) Public Sector
4 39 (13.68%) Banking
5 25 (8.77%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (1.40%) Games
6 4 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (1.40%) Military
7 3 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.05%) Law
7 3 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.05%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.35%) Advertising
9 1 (0.35%) Electronics
9 1 (0.35%) Legal
9 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 66 (23.16%) Developer
2 46 (16.14%) DevOps Engineer
3 41 (14.39%) Senior
4 37 (12.98%) Lead
5 26 (9.12%) Architect
6 21 (7.37%) Platform Engineer
7 19 (6.67%) Java Developer
8 18 (6.32%) AWS Engineer
9 17 (5.96%) AWS DevOps
9 17 (5.96%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (5.26%) Software Engineer
11 14 (4.91%) AWS DevOps Engineer
12 13 (4.56%) Analyst
13 12 (4.21%) Full-Stack Developer
14 11 (3.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 10 (3.51%) Business Analyst
15 10 (3.51%) Senior Developer
16 7 (2.46%) Security Engineer
16 7 (2.46%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 7 (2.46%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (16.84%) Spring
1 48 (16.84%) Spring Boot
2 45 (15.79%) REST
3 30 (10.53%) React
4 28 (9.82%) JSON
4 28 (9.82%) OAuth
5 25 (8.77%) Node.js
6 21 (7.37%) XML
7 20 (7.02%) Kafka
8 17 (5.96%) AngularJS
8 17 (5.96%) JMS
9 15 (5.26%) RESTful
10 14 (4.91%) .NET
10 14 (4.91%) HTML
10 14 (4.91%) SOAP
11 13 (4.56%) Jest
11 13 (4.56%) Playwright
12 11 (3.86%) OpenID
12 11 (3.86%) SAML
13 9 (3.16%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.33%) Cloud Native
2 21 (7.37%) Product Ownership
3 20 (7.02%) Virtual Team
4 14 (4.91%) Onboarding
4 14 (4.91%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 13 (4.56%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (3.86%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.46%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.11%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.75%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.75%) e-Learning
10 4 (1.40%) Low-Code
11 3 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.05%) NHS
11 3 (1.05%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.70%) IoT
12 2 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (0.70%) PKI
13 1 (0.35%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 37 (12.98%) Linux
2 19 (6.67%) Windows
3 12 (4.21%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.81%) Unix
5 5 (1.75%) Android
5 5 (1.75%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.40%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (1.40%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.35%) VMS
7 1 (0.35%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (58.60%) CI/CD
2 117 (41.05%) Agile
3 69 (24.21%) Containerisation
4 63 (22.11%) Infrastructure as Code
5 59 (20.70%) Microservices
6 52 (18.25%) Problem-Solving
7 45 (15.79%) Test Automation
8 42 (14.74%) Continuous Improvement
9 38 (13.33%) Observability
10 37 (12.98%) Project Delivery
11 35 (12.28%) Mentoring
11 35 (12.28%) Stakeholder Management
12 32 (11.23%) Full-Stack Development
13 28 (9.82%) ITIL
14 24 (8.42%) SDLC
15 22 (7.72%) Change Management
15 22 (7.72%) Cloud Security
15 22 (7.72%) Software Engineering
16 20 (7.02%) Infrastructure Automation
16 20 (7.02%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 63 (22.11%) Java
2 54 (18.95%) Python
3 46 (16.14%) SQL
4 35 (12.28%) TypeScript
5 23 (8.07%) JavaScript
6 22 (7.72%) Bash
7 13 (4.56%) C#
8 12 (4.21%) Groovy
8 12 (4.21%) PowerShell
9 11 (3.86%) Shell Script
10 9 (3.16%) Go
11 5 (1.75%) Ruby
12 4 (1.40%) Perl
13 3 (1.05%) Bicep
13 3 (1.05%) C++
14 2 (0.70%) Scala
14 2 (0.70%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.35%) CLIST
15 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.35%) Rust
Qualifications
1 51 (17.89%) Security Cleared
2 31 (10.88%) Degree
2 31 (10.88%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.02%) AWS Certification
3 20 (7.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (5.26%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 10 (3.51%) Azure Certification
6 9 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.11%) CISM
7 6 (2.11%) CISSP
7 6 (2.11%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (1.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (1.40%) IBM Certification
10 2 (0.70%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.35%) CompTIA Security+
11 1 (0.35%) ISEB
11 1 (0.35%) SAFe Agilist
11 1 (0.35%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (9.82%) Accessibility
2 24 (8.42%) QA
3 18 (6.32%) PSD2
4 15 (5.26%) ISO 20022
5 14 (4.91%) SEPA
6 8 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (2.81%) NIST
7 7 (2.46%) WCAG
8 5 (1.75%) GDPR
9 4 (1.40%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.70%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.35%) GRC
11 1 (0.35%) HL7
11 1 (0.35%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.35%) PMO
11 1 (0.35%) SLA
11 1 (0.35%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 90 (31.58%) Docker
2 15 (5.26%) Active Directory
3 12 (4.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (4.21%) vSphere
4 8 (2.81%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 4 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (1.05%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.35%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 84 (29.47%) Kubernetes
2 80 (28.07%) Terraform
3 17 (5.96%) Ansible
4 15 (5.26%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.91%) Grafana
6 13 (4.56%) Progress Chef
7 11 (3.86%) CA Single Sign-On
8 9 (3.16%) CA Wily
9 8 (2.81%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.81%) Tivoli
10 5 (1.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.75%) SCCM
11 4 (1.40%) Fluentd
11 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (1.05%) Istio
13 2 (0.70%) Packer
14 1 (0.35%) Argo
14 1 (0.35%) CA Endevor
14 1 (0.35%) OMEGAMON
14 1 (0.35%) Puppet
Vendors
1 44 (15.44%) Microsoft
2 35 (12.28%) Oracle
3 23 (8.07%) Splunk
4 19 (6.67%) IBM
5 12 (4.21%) VMware
6 11 (3.86%) F5
7 10 (3.51%) Broadcom
7 10 (3.51%) Google
8 9 (3.16%) AppDynamics
9 8 (2.81%) ServiceNow
10 6 (2.11%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.11%) Databricks
10 6 (2.11%) MuleSoft
10 6 (2.11%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.75%) SAP
12 4 (1.40%) OpenAI
12 4 (1.40%) Veeam
13 3 (1.05%) Adobe
13 3 (1.05%) Dynatrace
13 3 (1.05%) webMethods