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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 14 15
Rank change year-on-year -3 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 317 217 213
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.09% 9.78% 8.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.80% 11.03% 10.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 179 137
10th Percentile £385 £321 £413
25th Percentile £413 £385 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £639 £575 £650
90th Percentile £712 £679 £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 3,235 1,968 2,048
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.55% 88.73% 83.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,896 1,278 1,233
10th Percentile £289 £297 £313
25th Percentile £400 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £500
Median % change year-on-year +9.95% -9.05% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £588
90th Percentile £680 £671 £679
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 131 159
10th Percentile £16.21 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.16 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -28.14% +9.80%
75th Percentile £72.28 £53.75 £52.20
90th Percentile £85.00 £72.50 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +2.41%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +1 203 £525 - 192
Cheshire -13 63 £492 +21.48% 18
Lancashire +5 31 £640 +21.90% 31
Merseyside -10 12 £510 - 9
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 21 (6.62%) Confluence
2 9 (2.84%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.58%) SAS
4 4 (1.26%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.95%) Apache
5 3 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.32%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.32%) Camunda
6 1 (0.32%) CMS
6 1 (0.32%) Drupal
6 1 (0.32%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.32%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.32%) WordPress
Applications
1 5 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.95%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.63%) Trello
4 1 (0.32%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.32%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.32%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 169 (53.31%) Azure
2 151 (47.63%) AWS
3 87 (27.44%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (17.35%) GCP
5 53 (16.72%) GitHub
6 33 (10.41%) Serverless
7 32 (10.09%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (8.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 21 (6.62%) AWS Lambda
9 21 (6.62%) Azure AKS
10 16 (5.05%) Amazon EKS
11 15 (4.73%) Amazon ECS
11 15 (4.73%) OCI
12 14 (4.42%) AWS CloudFormation
12 14 (4.42%) Power Platform
13 13 (4.10%) Azure Monitor
13 13 (4.10%) SaaS
14 12 (3.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 11 (3.47%) Entra ID
15 11 (3.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 35 (11.04%) Firewall
2 11 (3.47%) BGP
2 11 (3.47%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.47%) OSPF
2 11 (3.47%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.47%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.47%) WAN
3 10 (3.15%) BIG-IP
3 10 (3.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.84%) WLAN
5 8 (2.52%) SSL
6 7 (2.21%) DNS
6 7 (2.21%) Network Security
7 5 (1.58%) VPN
8 2 (0.63%) DHCP
8 2 (0.63%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.32%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.32%) MPLS
9 1 (0.32%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (9.46%) SQL Server
2 22 (6.94%) MongoDB
2 22 (6.94%) Relational Database
3 19 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (5.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 14 (4.42%) RDBMS
6 13 (4.10%) MySQL
6 13 (4.10%) NoSQL
7 11 (3.47%) Oracle Database
8 10 (3.15%) Power BI
9 7 (2.21%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.21%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
10 6 (1.89%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.58%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.58%) Oracle Exadata
12 4 (1.26%) Data Vault
12 4 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
12 4 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
12 4 (1.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 50 (15.77%) GitLab
2 43 (13.56%) Git
3 40 (12.62%) Jenkins
4 31 (9.78%) JIRA
5 14 (4.42%) Claude Code
6 12 (3.79%) Selenium
7 11 (3.47%) Postman
8 9 (2.84%) SonarQube
9 8 (2.52%) Cucumber
9 8 (2.52%) JUnit
9 8 (2.52%) REST Assured
10 7 (2.21%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (1.89%) Gatling
12 5 (1.58%) Mockito
13 3 (0.95%) ClearCase
13 3 (0.95%) Gradle
13 3 (0.95%) LoadRunner
13 3 (0.95%) Serenity BDD
13 3 (0.95%) TestRail
13 3 (0.95%) Zephyr
General
1 67 (21.14%) Finance
2 54 (17.03%) Social Skills
3 40 (12.62%) Public Sector
4 29 (9.15%) Banking
5 23 (7.26%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (5.05%) Retail
7 8 (2.52%) Military
8 4 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.95%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.95%) Local Government
9 3 (0.95%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.63%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.63%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.32%) Legal
11 1 (0.32%) Police
11 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 65 (20.50%) Senior
2 62 (19.56%) DevOps Engineer
3 44 (13.88%) Lead
4 39 (12.30%) Developer
5 27 (8.52%) Architect
6 22 (6.94%) Cloud Engineer
7 20 (6.31%) Security Engineer
8 18 (5.68%) Software Engineer
9 17 (5.36%) Senior DevOps
10 16 (5.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 16 (5.05%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 16 (5.05%) Solutions Architect
11 15 (4.73%) Analyst
11 15 (4.73%) DBA
12 14 (4.42%) AWS Engineer
12 14 (4.42%) Azure Engineer
13 13 (4.10%) Java Developer
13 13 (4.10%) Senior Developer
14 12 (3.79%) Principal Engineer
15 10 (3.15%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (38.80%) Terraform
2 33 (10.41%) Spring
3 32 (10.09%) Spring Boot
4 29 (9.15%) Kafka
5 28 (8.83%) REST
6 24 (7.57%) React
7 23 (7.26%) Node.js
8 20 (6.31%) JSON
9 14 (4.42%) .NET
9 14 (4.42%) Playwright
10 11 (3.47%) XML
11 10 (3.15%) PySpark
11 10 (3.15%) RESTful
12 9 (2.84%) AngularJS
13 8 (2.52%) Next.js
14 7 (2.21%) ARM Templates
15 6 (1.89%) Spring MVC
16 5 (1.58%) Langfuse
17 4 (1.26%) Azure Blueprints
17 4 (1.26%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 77 (24.29%) Cloud Native
2 19 (5.99%) Security Posture
3 17 (5.36%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.05%) Replication
5 15 (4.73%) Management Information System
6 14 (4.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 10 (3.15%) Clustering
7 10 (3.15%) Data Centre
8 9 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (2.84%) Data Structures
8 9 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.52%) Algorithms
10 7 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
10 7 (2.21%) Onboarding
11 6 (1.89%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.58%) Cloud Security Posture
12 5 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.58%) Mainframe
12 5 (1.58%) Public Cloud
13 4 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 34 (10.73%) Linux
2 31 (9.78%) Windows
3 17 (5.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.84%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.95%) AIX
5 3 (0.95%) Unix
5 3 (0.95%) VMS
6 1 (0.32%) Android
6 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (60.57%) CI/CD
2 116 (36.59%) Agile
3 97 (30.60%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (20.19%) Observability
5 56 (17.67%) Continuous Improvement
6 55 (17.35%) Microservices
6 55 (17.35%) Test Automation
7 52 (16.40%) Containerisation
8 50 (15.77%) AI
9 44 (13.88%) Software Engineering
10 43 (13.56%) Migration
11 38 (11.99%) Scrum
12 36 (11.36%) Cloud Security
12 36 (11.36%) Mentoring
12 36 (11.36%) Platform Engineering
12 36 (11.36%) SDLC
12 36 (11.36%) Technical Leadership
13 35 (11.04%) Event-Driven
14 33 (10.41%) Problem-Solving
14 33 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 97 (30.60%) Python
2 73 (23.03%) Java
3 52 (16.40%) PowerShell
4 49 (15.46%) SQL
5 42 (13.25%) Bash
6 21 (6.62%) JavaScript
7 19 (5.99%) Bicep
7 19 (5.99%) C#
8 18 (5.68%) TypeScript
9 13 (4.10%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.58%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.26%) Rust
12 3 (0.95%) VB
12 3 (0.95%) VB6
13 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.63%) PROC SQL
13 2 (0.63%) Scala
14 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.32%) Go
14 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 75 (23.66%) Security Cleared
2 62 (19.56%) SC Cleared
3 31 (9.78%) Azure Certification
3 31 (9.78%) Degree
4 27 (8.52%) AWS Certification
5 22 (6.94%) BPSS Clearance
6 19 (5.99%) CISSP
7 12 (3.79%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.52%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.58%) ITIL Certification
9 5 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 4 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.95%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.95%) CCIE
11 3 (0.95%) CCNP
11 3 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.32%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (9.78%) QA
2 16 (5.05%) Data Quality
3 12 (3.79%) Accessibility
4 7 (2.21%) GDPR
5 4 (1.26%) NIST
6 3 (0.95%) GRC
6 3 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.95%) SLA
7 2 (0.63%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.63%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.63%) WCAG
8 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.32%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.32%) PSD2
8 1 (0.32%) SEPA
8 1 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 79 (24.92%) Docker
2 10 (3.15%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.89%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.58%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (1.26%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.63%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 96 (30.28%) Kubernetes
2 40 (12.62%) Ansible
3 19 (5.99%) Grafana
4 16 (5.05%) Progress Chef
4 16 (5.05%) Prometheus
5 11 (3.47%) Argo
6 8 (2.52%) Istio
7 6 (1.89%) SCOM
8 5 (1.58%) Data Guard
8 5 (1.58%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.63%) linkerd
10 2 (0.63%) Packer
10 2 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.32%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.32%) Puppet
11 1 (0.32%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.32%) vRealize
11 1 (0.32%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 58 (18.30%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.83%) Google
3 22 (6.94%) Oracle
4 19 (5.99%) Red Hat
5 17 (5.36%) ServiceNow
6 16 (5.05%) Splunk
7 12 (3.79%) Palo Alto
8 11 (3.47%) F5
9 10 (3.15%) Aruba
9 10 (3.15%) SAP
10 9 (2.84%) Arista
10 9 (2.84%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.89%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.58%) Salesforce
13 4 (1.26%) Databricks
13 4 (1.26%) VMware
14 3 (0.95%) Fortinet
14 3 (0.95%) Informatica
14 3 (0.95%) MuleSoft
14 3 (0.95%) Zscaler