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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 15 14
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 312 206 217
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 7.90% 9.48% 8.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.52% 10.70% 10.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 170 138
10th Percentile £389 £316 £376
25th Percentile £413 £376 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £450 £550
Median % change year-on-year +16.44% -18.18% +4.76%
75th Percentile £640 £545 £650
90th Percentile £712 £652 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -5.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 2 2
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £46.80 £82.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -43.27% +78.65% -
75th Percentile £73.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £74.60 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +0.75% -4.29% +7.69%

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 3,278 1,926 2,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.97% 88.63% 84.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,921 1,260 1,222
10th Percentile £295 £298 £311
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £598 £575 £588
90th Percentile £680 £671 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 127 134
10th Percentile £16.01 £13.23 £10.97
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.44 £20.13
Median hourly rate £46.43 £25.15 £40.16
Median % change year-on-year +84.61% -37.38% +18.13%
75th Percentile £73.00 £52.50 £55.34
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.87 £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 2 September 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 September 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 September 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 +2 205 £525 - 251
Cheshire -13 58 £478 +18.91% 29
Lancashire +2 31 £640 +21.90% 36
Merseyside -18 10 £568 +11.27% 8
Cumbria - 1 - - 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 (7.05%) Confluence
2 10 (3.21%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.60%) SAS
4 4 (1.28%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.28%) Camunda
5 3 (0.96%) Apache
5 3 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.32%) Anypoint
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 (1.60%) MS Visio
2 4 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.64%) Trello
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (1.60%) 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
1 165 (52.88%) Azure
2 141 (45.19%) AWS
3 88 (28.21%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (16.03%) GCP
5 47 (15.06%) GitHub
6 29 (9.29%) Serverless
7 28 (8.97%) GitHub Actions
8 22 (7.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 21 (6.73%) AWS Lambda
9 21 (6.73%) Power Platform
10 19 (6.09%) Azure AKS
11 17 (5.45%) Azure Monitor
12 15 (4.81%) Amazon ECS
12 15 (4.81%) Amazon EKS
12 15 (4.81%) OCI
13 13 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (4.17%) Entra ID
14 12 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 12 (3.85%) OpenShift
14 12 (3.85%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (9.94%) Firewall
2 12 (3.85%) SSL
3 11 (3.53%) BGP
3 11 (3.53%) Ethernet VPN
3 11 (3.53%) OSPF
3 11 (3.53%) SD-WAN
3 11 (3.53%) VXLAN
3 11 (3.53%) WAN
4 10 (3.21%) BIG-IP
4 10 (3.21%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 9 (2.88%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (2.88%) WLAN
6 8 (2.56%) Network Security
7 7 (2.24%) DNS
8 5 (1.60%) VPN
9 2 (0.64%) DHCP
9 2 (0.64%) TCP/IP
10 1 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
10 1 (0.32%) HTTP
10 1 (0.32%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.54%) SQL Server
2 20 (6.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 18 (5.77%) Relational Database
4 17 (5.45%) MongoDB
4 17 (5.45%) MySQL
5 14 (4.49%) Power BI
6 13 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (3.21%) Oracle Database
7 10 (3.21%) RDBMS
8 9 (2.88%) NoSQL
9 7 (2.24%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.24%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.60%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.60%) DynamoDB
12 4 (1.28%) Data Vault
12 4 (1.28%) Oracle Exadata
12 4 (1.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 52 (16.67%) GitLab
2 42 (13.46%) Git
3 40 (12.82%) Jenkins
4 30 (9.62%) JIRA
5 14 (4.49%) Claude Code
6 13 (4.17%) Selenium
7 12 (3.85%) JUnit
7 12 (3.85%) REST Assured
8 11 (3.53%) Postman
8 11 (3.53%) SonarQube
9 10 (3.21%) Sonatype Nexus
10 9 (2.88%) Cucumber
11 8 (2.56%) Mockito
12 6 (1.92%) Gatling
12 6 (1.92%) Gradle
13 5 (1.60%) Maven
14 3 (0.96%) ClearCase
14 3 (0.96%) LoadRunner
14 3 (0.96%) TestRail
14 3 (0.96%) Zephyr
General
1 63 (20.19%) Finance
2 53 (16.99%) Social Skills
3 38 (12.18%) Public Sector
4 28 (8.97%) Banking
5 22 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (4.49%) Retail
7 8 (2.56%) Military
8 4 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.96%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.96%) Local Government
9 3 (0.96%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.64%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.32%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.32%) iGaming
11 1 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.32%) Legal
11 1 (0.32%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 62 (19.87%) DevOps Engineer
2 60 (19.23%) Senior
3 45 (14.42%) Lead
4 41 (13.14%) Developer
5 29 (9.29%) Architect
6 22 (7.05%) Cloud Engineer
7 17 (5.45%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.13%) Security Engineer
8 16 (5.13%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.81%) Analyst
9 15 (4.81%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.81%) DBA
9 15 (4.81%) Senior DevOps
10 14 (4.49%) AWS Engineer
10 14 (4.49%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 12 (3.85%) Consultant
11 12 (3.85%) Java Developer
11 12 (3.85%) Senior Developer
11 12 (3.85%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (36.22%) Terraform
2 34 (10.90%) Spring Boot
3 32 (10.26%) Spring
4 28 (8.97%) Kafka
4 28 (8.97%) REST
5 26 (8.33%) React
6 23 (7.37%) Node.js
7 17 (5.45%) JSON
8 15 (4.81%) Playwright
9 13 (4.17%) .NET
10 10 (3.21%) PySpark
11 9 (2.88%) RESTful
12 8 (2.56%) AngularJS
12 8 (2.56%) HTML
12 8 (2.56%) Next.js
12 8 (2.56%) XML
13 7 (2.24%) ARM Templates
14 6 (1.92%) CSS
15 5 (1.60%) Langfuse
15 5 (1.60%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 72 (23.08%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.77%) Replication
2 18 (5.77%) Security Posture
3 15 (4.81%) Management Information System
4 14 (4.49%) Clustering
4 14 (4.49%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.17%) Product Ownership
6 12 (3.85%) Data Structures
7 11 (3.53%) Data Centre
8 10 (3.21%) Onboarding
9 9 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
10 8 (2.56%) Algorithms
10 8 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
11 7 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.92%) Cloud Security Posture
13 5 (1.60%) AI Agents
13 5 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (1.60%) Public Cloud
14 4 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
14 4 (1.28%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 36 (11.54%) Linux
2 35 (11.22%) Windows
3 17 (5.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (4.17%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.96%) AIX
5 3 (0.96%) Unix
5 3 (0.96%) VMS
6 1 (0.32%) Android
6 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (60.26%) CI/CD
2 109 (34.94%) Agile
3 92 (29.49%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (20.19%) Observability
5 58 (18.59%) Test Automation
6 56 (17.95%) Microservices
7 51 (16.35%) Continuous Improvement
8 50 (16.03%) Containerisation
9 48 (15.38%) AI
10 46 (14.74%) Migration
11 44 (14.10%) Software Engineering
12 37 (11.86%) Scrum
12 37 (11.86%) SDLC
13 36 (11.54%) Platform Engineering
14 35 (11.22%) Technical Leadership
15 33 (10.58%) Cloud Security
15 33 (10.58%) Event-Driven
16 31 (9.94%) Mentoring
16 31 (9.94%) Problem-Solving
16 31 (9.94%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 89 (28.53%) Python
2 77 (24.68%) Java
3 54 (17.31%) SQL
4 50 (16.03%) PowerShell
5 36 (11.54%) Bash
6 24 (7.69%) JavaScript
7 18 (5.77%) C#
8 17 (5.45%) Bicep
8 17 (5.45%) T-SQL
8 17 (5.45%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.28%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.96%) Rust
10 3 (0.96%) Search Processing Language
10 3 (0.96%) VB
10 3 (0.96%) VB6
11 2 (0.64%) PROC SQL
11 2 (0.64%) Scala
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 81 (25.96%) Security Cleared
2 70 (22.44%) SC Cleared
3 38 (12.18%) Degree
4 31 (9.94%) Azure Certification
5 25 (8.01%) BPSS Clearance
6 22 (7.05%) AWS Certification
7 17 (5.45%) CISSP
7 17 (5.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (2.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (2.24%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.28%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 1 (0.32%) CCIE
13 1 (0.32%) CCNP
13 1 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
13 1 (0.32%) OCP
13 1 (0.32%) Oracle Certification
13 1 (0.32%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (9.94%) QA
2 16 (5.13%) Data Quality
3 12 (3.85%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.92%) GDPR
5 3 (0.96%) NIST
5 3 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.96%) SLA
5 3 (0.96%) WCAG
6 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.32%) GRC
7 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.32%) PSD2
7 1 (0.32%) SEPA
7 1 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 75 (24.04%) Docker
2 13 (4.17%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.92%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.28%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (1.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.64%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 2 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.64%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 94 (30.13%) Kubernetes
2 37 (11.86%) Ansible
3 15 (4.81%) Grafana
3 15 (4.81%) Progress Chef
4 12 (3.85%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.21%) SCOM
6 7 (2.24%) Argo
7 6 (1.92%) Istio
8 5 (1.60%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.28%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.28%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.64%) Packer
10 2 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.32%) Puppet
11 1 (0.32%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.32%) vRealize
11 1 (0.32%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 57 (18.27%) Microsoft
2 25 (8.01%) Google
3 20 (6.41%) ServiceNow
4 19 (6.09%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.13%) Oracle
6 13 (4.17%) Splunk
7 12 (3.85%) Palo Alto
8 11 (3.53%) F5
9 10 (3.21%) Aruba
9 10 (3.21%) SAP
10 9 (2.88%) Arista
10 9 (2.88%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.92%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.60%) IBM
12 5 (1.60%) Salesforce
13 4 (1.28%) Databricks
13 4 (1.28%) Veracode
13 4 (1.28%) VMware
14 3 (0.96%) Atlassian
14 3 (0.96%) Informatica