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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 14 15
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 330 198 223
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.94% 9.15% 8.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.71% 10.42% 10.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 156 152
10th Percentile £386 £334 £413
25th Percentile £413 £398 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £475 £545
Median % change year-on-year +9.30% -12.84% +3.81%
75th Percentile £622 £577 £650
90th Percentile £700 £650 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 2
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 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +0.75% -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 3,081 1,901 2,200
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.45% 87.89% 84.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,817 1,242 1,353
10th Percentile £297 £275 £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 £570 £585
90th Percentile £675 £669 £675
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 294 122 232
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.92 £15.50
Median hourly rate £56.44 £28.75 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +96.31% +6.48% -7.85%
75th Percentile £76.00 £59.75 £47.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.13 £68.87
England median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £39.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -36.33% -7.06%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +7 218 £500 -4.76% 102
Cheshire -9 62 £491 +22.14% 12
Lancashire +6 28 £640 +18.52% 24
Merseyside -11 13 £510 -2.39% 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 22 (6.67%) Confluence
2 9 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.52%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.21%) SAS
5 3 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.61%) Apache
7 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.30%) Camunda
7 1 (0.30%) CMS
7 1 (0.30%) Drupal
7 1 (0.30%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.30%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.30%) nginx
7 1 (0.30%) SharePoint 2013
7 1 (0.30%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.30%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.61%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.61%) Trello
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.52%) 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
1 179 (54.24%) Azure
2 150 (45.45%) AWS
3 81 (24.55%) Azure DevOps
4 54 (16.36%) GCP
5 50 (15.15%) GitHub
6 38 (11.52%) Serverless
7 29 (8.79%) GitHub Actions
8 25 (7.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 21 (6.36%) AWS Lambda
9 21 (6.36%) Azure AKS
10 15 (4.55%) SaaS
10 15 (4.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (4.24%) Amazon S3
11 14 (4.24%) Dynamics 365
11 14 (4.24%) Power Platform
12 13 (3.94%) Amazon EC2
12 13 (3.94%) Entra ID
12 13 (3.94%) OCI
13 11 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (3.33%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.61%) Firewall
2 10 (3.03%) BGP
2 10 (3.03%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.03%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.03%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.03%) OSPF
2 10 (3.03%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.03%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.03%) WAN
3 9 (2.73%) DNS
3 9 (2.73%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.73%) WLAN
4 8 (2.42%) Network Security
5 6 (1.82%) SSL
6 4 (1.21%) DHCP
7 3 (0.91%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.91%) VPN
8 2 (0.61%) NetScaler
9 1 (0.30%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.30%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.18%) SQL Server
2 25 (7.58%) MongoDB
3 22 (6.67%) Relational Database
4 18 (5.45%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (3.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 12 (3.64%) NoSQL
6 12 (3.64%) RDBMS
7 9 (2.73%) MySQL
7 9 (2.73%) Oracle Database
8 8 (2.42%) Data Lake
8 8 (2.42%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (2.12%) Amazon RDS
9 7 (2.12%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.12%) DynamoDB
9 7 (2.12%) Power BI
10 5 (1.52%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.52%) Data Vault
10 5 (1.52%) DocumentDB
11 4 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 54 (16.36%) GitLab
2 44 (13.33%) Git
3 43 (13.03%) Jenkins
4 36 (10.91%) JIRA
5 14 (4.24%) Selenium
6 11 (3.33%) Claude Code
7 10 (3.03%) Postman
7 10 (3.03%) REST Assured
8 8 (2.42%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.42%) Gatling
8 8 (2.42%) SonarQube
9 6 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (1.52%) Gradle
10 5 (1.52%) JUnit
10 5 (1.52%) Serenity BDD
11 3 (0.91%) ClearCase
11 3 (0.91%) Maven
11 3 (0.91%) TestRail
11 3 (0.91%) Zephyr
12 2 (0.61%) Flyway
General
1 66 (20.00%) Finance
2 56 (16.97%) Social Skills
3 49 (14.85%) Public Sector
4 25 (7.58%) Banking
5 22 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (4.24%) Retail
7 7 (2.12%) Military
8 4 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.91%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.91%) Local Government
9 3 (0.91%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.61%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.61%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.61%) Publishing
11 1 (0.30%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.30%) Law
11 1 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 61 (18.48%) Senior
2 59 (17.88%) DevOps Engineer
3 53 (16.06%) Developer
4 48 (14.55%) Lead
5 29 (8.79%) Architect
6 20 (6.06%) Software Engineer
7 17 (5.15%) Cloud Engineer
7 17 (5.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 17 (5.15%) Security Engineer
8 16 (4.85%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.55%) Java Developer
9 15 (4.55%) Lead Developer
9 15 (4.55%) Senior Developer
9 15 (4.55%) Solutions Architect
10 14 (4.24%) Analyst
10 14 (4.24%) Software Developer
11 13 (3.94%) DBA
11 13 (3.94%) Senior DevOps
12 12 (3.64%) Platform Engineer
12 12 (3.64%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (11.82%) Spring
2 38 (11.52%) Spring Boot
3 30 (9.09%) Kafka
4 28 (8.48%) React
5 27 (8.18%) REST
6 25 (7.58%) Node.js
7 18 (5.45%) .NET
8 16 (4.85%) JSON
8 16 (4.85%) Playwright
9 12 (3.64%) PySpark
9 12 (3.64%) XML
10 11 (3.33%) AngularJS
11 9 (2.73%) RESTful
12 8 (2.42%) ARM Templates
13 7 (2.12%) GraphQL
14 6 (1.82%) Next.js
15 5 (1.52%) LangChain
15 5 (1.52%) Langfuse
15 5 (1.52%) Spring Cloud
16 4 (1.21%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 74 (22.42%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.06%) Product Ownership
3 18 (5.45%) Security Posture
4 15 (4.55%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.55%) Management Information System
5 12 (3.64%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.64%) Replication
6 11 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.42%) Clustering
8 8 (2.42%) Data Structures
8 8 (2.42%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.12%) AI Agents
9 7 (2.12%) Algorithms
9 7 (2.12%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (1.52%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.52%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.52%) NHS
10 5 (1.52%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 37 (11.21%) Linux
2 25 (7.58%) Windows
3 15 (4.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.82%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.91%) VMS
6 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.30%) AIX
7 1 (0.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (60.00%) CI/CD
2 120 (36.36%) Agile
3 86 (26.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (19.09%) Observability
5 61 (18.48%) Microservices
6 56 (16.97%) Test Automation
7 54 (16.36%) Containerisation
8 53 (16.06%) Continuous Improvement
9 48 (14.55%) AI
10 43 (13.03%) Software Engineering
11 42 (12.73%) Mentoring
12 38 (11.52%) Scrum
13 37 (11.21%) Problem-Solving
14 36 (10.91%) Platform Engineering
14 36 (10.91%) SDLC
15 33 (10.00%) Migration
15 33 (10.00%) Technical Leadership
16 32 (9.70%) Roadmaps
17 31 (9.39%) Machine Learning
18 30 (9.09%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 102 (30.91%) Python
2 86 (26.06%) Java
3 49 (14.85%) PowerShell
4 46 (13.94%) SQL
5 38 (11.52%) Bash
6 25 (7.58%) JavaScript
7 23 (6.97%) C#
8 22 (6.67%) TypeScript
9 13 (3.94%) Bicep
10 10 (3.03%) T-SQL
11 8 (2.42%) Rust
12 6 (1.82%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.91%) Go
13 3 (0.91%) VB
13 3 (0.91%) VB6
14 2 (0.61%) C++
14 2 (0.61%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.61%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.61%) Scala
15 1 (0.30%) PHP
Qualifications
1 75 (22.73%) Security Cleared
2 56 (16.97%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.00%) Degree
4 28 (8.48%) AWS Certification
4 28 (8.48%) Azure Certification
5 18 (5.45%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (5.45%) CISSP
6 12 (3.64%) DV Cleared
7 9 (2.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 8 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.82%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.91%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.91%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 3 (0.91%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.61%) CCIE
11 2 (0.61%) CCNP
11 2 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.61%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (8.79%) QA
2 17 (5.15%) Accessibility
3 14 (4.24%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.73%) GDPR
5 5 (1.52%) 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 (0.61%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.61%) PSD2
8 2 (0.61%) SEPA
9 1 (0.30%) PMO
9 1 (0.30%) Solvency II
System Software
1 82 (24.85%) Docker
2 10 (3.03%) 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 (0.61%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.30%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 122 (36.97%) Terraform
2 92 (27.88%) Kubernetes
3 37 (11.21%) Ansible
4 22 (6.67%) Grafana
5 18 (5.45%) Prometheus
6 13 (3.94%) Progress Chef
7 11 (3.33%) 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 (0.61%) CA Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.61%) linkerd
11 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.61%) Packer
11 2 (0.61%) SCCM
12 1 (0.30%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 64 (19.39%) Microsoft
2 27 (8.18%) Google
3 20 (6.06%) Oracle
4 16 (4.85%) Red Hat
4 16 (4.85%) Splunk
5 15 (4.55%) ServiceNow
6 13 (3.94%) F5
7 11 (3.33%) Palo Alto
8 10 (3.03%) Aruba
9 9 (2.73%) Arista
9 9 (2.73%) Databricks
9 9 (2.73%) OpenAI
10 8 (2.42%) Dynatrace
10 8 (2.42%) SAP
11 5 (1.52%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.21%) Atlassian
12 4 (1.21%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.21%) VMware
13 3 (0.91%) Foundry
13 3 (0.91%) Veeam