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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 13 17
Rank change year-on-year -2 +4 -3
Contract jobs citing DevOps 331 195 231
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.03% 9.06% 8.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.78% 10.32% 10.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 153 157
10th Percentile £387 £333 £413
25th Percentile £413 £393 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +9.27% -9.52% -
75th Percentile £621 £575 £650
90th Percentile £700 £648 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 3
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £46.80 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -43.27% +79.82% -0.65%
75th Percentile £75.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £88.00 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £66.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +1.50% -5.00% +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 3,070 1,889 2,280
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.72% 87.78% 84.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,819 1,239 1,400
10th Percentile £300 £280 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +7.78% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £564 £582
90th Percentile £675 £671 £672
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 121 256
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.50 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.87 £15.50
Median hourly rate £53.00 £29.27 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +81.07% +7.41% -7.00%
75th Percentile £76.00 £60.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.50 £67.05
England median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -8.14%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 +6 218 £500 -2.72% 120
Cheshire -10 64 £491 +22.14% 11
Lancashire +7 28 £640 +18.52% 29
Merseyside -16 12 £510 -2.63% 7
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 23 (6.95%) Confluence
2 10 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.51%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.21%) SAS
5 3 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.60%) Apache
7 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.30%) Camunda
7 1 (0.30%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.30%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.30%) nginx
7 1 (0.30%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 6 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.60%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.60%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.60%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.30%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.30%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.30%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.30%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.30%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.30%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 181 (54.68%) Azure
2 148 (44.71%) AWS
3 83 (25.08%) Azure DevOps
4 54 (16.31%) GCP
5 50 (15.11%) GitHub
6 42 (12.69%) Serverless
7 30 (9.06%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (7.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 23 (6.95%) AWS Lambda
10 20 (6.04%) Azure AKS
11 16 (4.83%) Amazon S3
12 15 (4.53%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (4.53%) Dynamics 365
12 15 (4.53%) Power Platform
12 15 (4.53%) SaaS
12 15 (4.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 13 (3.93%) Entra ID
14 12 (3.63%) OCI
15 11 (3.32%) Amazon EKS
15 11 (3.32%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.57%) Firewall
2 10 (3.02%) BGP
2 10 (3.02%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.02%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.02%) OSPF
2 10 (3.02%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.02%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.02%) WAN
3 9 (2.72%) DNS
3 9 (2.72%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.72%) WLAN
4 8 (2.42%) Network Security
5 6 (1.81%) SSL
6 4 (1.21%) DHCP
7 3 (0.91%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.91%) VPN
8 2 (0.60%) NetScaler
9 1 (0.30%) NGFW
9 1 (0.30%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.16%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.25%) MongoDB
3 21 (6.34%) Relational Database
4 19 (5.74%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (3.93%) NoSQL
5 13 (3.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 11 (3.32%) RDBMS
7 9 (2.72%) Oracle Database
8 8 (2.42%) Data Lake
8 8 (2.42%) DocumentDB
8 8 (2.42%) DynamoDB
8 8 (2.42%) MySQL
9 7 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
9 7 (2.11%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (2.11%) Power BI
10 5 (1.51%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.51%) Data Vault
11 4 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 55 (16.62%) GitLab
2 46 (13.90%) Git
3 44 (13.29%) Jenkins
4 38 (11.48%) JIRA
5 14 (4.23%) Selenium
6 10 (3.02%) Postman
6 10 (3.02%) REST Assured
7 9 (2.72%) Claude Code
8 8 (2.42%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.42%) Gatling
8 8 (2.42%) SonarQube
9 6 (1.81%) JUnit
9 6 (1.81%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (1.51%) Gradle
10 5 (1.51%) Serenity BDD
11 4 (1.21%) Mocha
12 3 (0.91%) ClearCase
12 3 (0.91%) Cypress.io
12 3 (0.91%) Maven
12 3 (0.91%) Zephyr
General
1 66 (19.94%) Finance
2 59 (17.82%) Social Skills
3 54 (16.31%) Public Sector
4 25 (7.55%) Banking
5 22 (6.65%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (3.93%) Retail
7 7 (2.11%) Military
8 4 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.91%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.91%) Local Government
9 3 (0.91%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.60%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.60%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.60%) Publishing
11 1 (0.30%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 58 (17.52%) DevOps Engineer
1 58 (17.52%) Senior
2 55 (16.62%) Developer
3 49 (14.80%) Lead
4 30 (9.06%) Architect
5 19 (5.74%) Software Engineer
6 17 (5.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 16 (4.83%) Azure Engineer
7 16 (4.83%) Cloud Engineer
7 16 (4.83%) Java Developer
7 16 (4.83%) Lead Developer
7 16 (4.83%) Security Engineer
8 15 (4.53%) Software Developer
8 15 (4.53%) Solutions Architect
9 14 (4.23%) Analyst
9 14 (4.23%) Senior Developer
10 13 (3.93%) DBA
11 12 (3.63%) Platform Engineer
12 11 (3.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 11 (3.32%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (12.69%) Spring
2 41 (12.39%) Spring Boot
3 30 (9.06%) Kafka
4 29 (8.76%) REST
5 28 (8.46%) Node.js
6 27 (8.16%) React
7 17 (5.14%) .NET
7 17 (5.14%) Playwright
8 15 (4.53%) JSON
9 12 (3.63%) PySpark
9 12 (3.63%) XML
10 11 (3.32%) AngularJS
11 9 (2.72%) RESTful
12 8 (2.42%) ARM Templates
12 8 (2.42%) GraphQL
13 6 (1.81%) Next.js
14 5 (1.51%) LangChain
14 5 (1.51%) Langfuse
14 5 (1.51%) Spring Cloud
15 4 (1.21%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 76 (22.96%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.04%) Product Ownership
3 17 (5.14%) Security Posture
4 15 (4.53%) Management Information System
5 14 (4.23%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.63%) Data Centre
6 12 (3.63%) Replication
7 11 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (3.02%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.72%) Onboarding
10 8 (2.42%) Clustering
11 7 (2.11%) AI Agents
11 7 (2.11%) Data Structures
11 7 (2.11%) Private Cloud
11 7 (2.11%) Public Cloud
12 6 (1.81%) Algorithms
12 6 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
13 5 (1.51%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (1.51%) Mainframe
13 5 (1.51%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 35 (10.57%) Linux
2 24 (7.25%) Windows
3 14 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.81%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.21%) VMS
6 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.30%) AIX
7 1 (0.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (60.12%) CI/CD
2 122 (36.86%) Agile
3 87 (26.28%) Infrastructure as Code
4 65 (19.64%) Microservices
5 63 (19.03%) Observability
6 58 (17.52%) Test Automation
7 54 (16.31%) Containerisation
8 52 (15.71%) Continuous Improvement
9 45 (13.60%) AI
10 42 (12.69%) Mentoring
10 42 (12.69%) Software Engineering
11 37 (11.18%) Problem-Solving
12 36 (10.88%) Scrum
12 36 (10.88%) SDLC
13 35 (10.57%) Platform Engineering
14 34 (10.27%) Migration
14 34 (10.27%) Technical Leadership
15 32 (9.67%) Event-Driven
16 31 (9.37%) Roadmaps
17 30 (9.06%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 96 (29.00%) Python
2 87 (26.28%) Java
3 48 (14.50%) PowerShell
4 46 (13.90%) SQL
5 35 (10.57%) Bash
6 25 (7.55%) JavaScript
7 24 (7.25%) TypeScript
8 22 (6.65%) C#
9 12 (3.63%) Bicep
10 10 (3.02%) T-SQL
11 7 (2.11%) Rust
12 6 (1.81%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.91%) Go
13 3 (0.91%) VB
13 3 (0.91%) VB6
14 2 (0.60%) C++
14 2 (0.60%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.60%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.60%) Scala
15 1 (0.30%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 76 (22.96%) Security Cleared
2 56 (16.92%) SC Cleared
3 35 (10.57%) Degree
4 28 (8.46%) AWS Certification
4 28 (8.46%) Azure Certification
5 20 (6.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (5.14%) CISSP
7 12 (3.63%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (2.11%) ITIL Certification
11 4 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (0.91%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 3 (0.91%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 3 (0.91%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.60%) CCIE
13 2 (0.60%) CCNP
13 2 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 2 (0.60%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (8.46%) QA
2 17 (5.14%) Accessibility
3 14 (4.23%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.72%) GDPR
5 5 (1.51%) NIST
6 4 (1.21%) SLA
7 3 (0.91%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.91%) GRC
7 3 (0.91%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.91%) WCAG
8 2 (0.60%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.60%) PSD2
8 2 (0.60%) SEPA
9 1 (0.30%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.30%) PMO
9 1 (0.30%) Solvency II
System Software
1 83 (25.08%) Docker
2 10 (3.02%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (2.42%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.91%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.91%) vSphere
6 2 (0.60%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.30%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 122 (36.86%) Terraform
2 91 (27.49%) Kubernetes
3 36 (10.88%) Ansible
4 22 (6.65%) Grafana
5 17 (5.14%) Prometheus
6 12 (3.63%) Progress Chef
7 10 (3.02%) Argo
8 8 (2.42%) Istio
9 4 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.21%) SCOM
9 4 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.91%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.91%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.60%) CA Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.60%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.60%) linkerd
11 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.60%) Packer
11 2 (0.60%) SCCM
12 1 (0.30%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 66 (19.94%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.46%) Google
3 20 (6.04%) Oracle
4 16 (4.83%) Splunk
5 15 (4.53%) Red Hat
6 14 (4.23%) ServiceNow
7 13 (3.93%) F5
8 10 (3.02%) Aruba
8 10 (3.02%) Palo Alto
9 9 (2.72%) Arista
9 9 (2.72%) Databricks
9 9 (2.72%) OpenAI
10 8 (2.42%) Dynatrace
10 8 (2.42%) SAP
11 4 (1.21%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.21%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.21%) IBM
11 4 (1.21%) Salesforce
11 4 (1.21%) VMware
12 3 (0.91%) Veeam