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 29 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 12 19 16
Rank change year-on-year +7 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 273 168 228
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.91% 7.81% 8.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.37% 9.00% 9.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 90 161
10th Percentile £338 £349 £425
25th Percentile £400 £407 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -9.00% -6.98% -6.20%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £614
90th Percentile £650 £651 £673
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 5 19
10th Percentile £44.27 - -
25th Percentile - £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -28.73% +38.12% -2.78%
75th Percentile - £77.50 -
90th Percentile £51.52 £83.50 £47.34
England median hourly rate £54.25 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -19.63% +3.85% -0.92%

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 2,207 1,867 2,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.21% 86.84% 88.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,434 1,057 1,608
10th Percentile £213 £263 £306
25th Percentile £358 £390 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £571 £600
90th Percentile £650 £656 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 98 159
10th Percentile £16.58 £16.00 £15.95
25th Percentile £21.19 £21.05 £18.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.20 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.17% -19.47% +45.29%
75th Percentile £56.69 £49.80 £46.89
90th Percentile £69.94 £70.89 £64.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +25.35%

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 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 2025. 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 -1 140 £500 -2.44% 369
Cheshire +12 81 £446 +25.14% 190
Lancashire +8 31 £630 +20.00% 109
Merseyside 0 14 £505 +1.00% 75
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 (7.69%) Confluence
2 13 (4.76%) JBoss
3 12 (4.40%) Apache
4 11 (4.03%) IIS
5 10 (3.66%) WebSphere
6 9 (3.30%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.30%) iPlanet
6 9 (3.30%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (1.47%) OpenStack
8 3 (1.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.73%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.73%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.37%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.37%) CICS
10 1 (0.37%) Mule
10 1 (0.37%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.37%) nginx
10 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
1 9 (3.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.73%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.37%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.37%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.37%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 146 (53.48%) AWS
2 111 (40.66%) Azure
3 48 (17.58%) Azure DevOps
4 38 (13.92%) GitHub
5 35 (12.82%) GCP
5 35 (12.82%) Serverless
6 31 (11.36%) AWS CloudFormation
7 23 (8.42%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (7.33%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (6.96%) OpenShift
10 15 (5.49%) Power Platform
11 13 (4.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 13 (4.76%) Amazon ECS
11 13 (4.76%) Amazon EKS
11 13 (4.76%) Amazon S3
12 10 (3.66%) Amazon SQS
12 10 (3.66%) Kong
13 9 (3.30%) Datadog
13 9 (3.30%) Figma
14 8 (2.93%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.59%) Firewall
2 9 (3.30%) Kerberos
3 5 (1.83%) HTTPS
3 5 (1.83%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.47%) DNS
4 4 (1.47%) SSL
4 4 (1.47%) VPN
5 3 (1.10%) DHCP
6 2 (0.73%) NetScaler
6 2 (0.73%) Network Security
7 1 (0.37%) VLAN
7 1 (0.37%) VoIP
7 1 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.40%) DynamoDB
2 11 (4.03%) MongoDB
2 11 (4.03%) NoSQL
2 11 (4.03%) Relational Database
3 10 (3.66%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.66%) SQL Server
3 10 (3.66%) Tableau
4 9 (3.30%) Data Lake
4 9 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.30%) Power BI
4 9 (3.30%) RDBMS
5 8 (2.93%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.83%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (1.83%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (1.47%) DocumentDB
7 4 (1.47%) MySQL
8 3 (1.10%) Metadata
9 2 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.73%) Redis
Development Applications
1 53 (19.41%) JIRA
2 49 (17.95%) Git
3 45 (16.48%) GitLab
4 41 (15.02%) Jenkins
5 14 (5.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (4.03%) Bitbucket Server
6 11 (4.03%) CA Release Automation
7 10 (3.66%) JUnit
8 7 (2.56%) CircleCI
8 7 (2.56%) Cypress.io
8 7 (2.56%) Selenium
9 6 (2.20%) Bitbucket
9 6 (2.20%) Gradle
9 6 (2.20%) SonarQube
9 6 (2.20%) Storybook
9 6 (2.20%) Xcode
10 5 (1.83%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.83%) Postman
11 3 (1.10%) Jasmine
11 3 (1.10%) Rational DOORS
General
1 62 (22.71%) Finance
1 62 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 49 (17.95%) Public Sector
3 33 (12.09%) Banking
4 24 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (1.47%) Games
6 3 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (1.10%) Law
6 3 (1.10%) Military
7 2 (0.73%) Financial Institution
7 2 (0.73%) Manufacturing
7 2 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (0.73%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.37%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (0.37%) Electronics
8 1 (0.37%) Marketing
8 1 (0.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 57 (20.88%) Developer
2 44 (16.12%) DevOps Engineer
3 38 (13.92%) Senior
4 35 (12.82%) Lead
5 20 (7.33%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (6.96%) AWS DevOps
7 18 (6.59%) Platform Engineer
8 17 (6.23%) Architect
9 16 (5.86%) Java Developer
10 15 (5.49%) AWS DevOps Engineer
10 15 (5.49%) Software Engineer
11 13 (4.76%) Analyst
11 13 (4.76%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (3.66%) Business Analyst
12 10 (3.66%) Senior Developer
13 9 (3.30%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (3.30%) Senior DevOps
14 8 (2.93%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.93%) Full-Stack Developer
14 8 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (13.19%) REST
2 35 (12.82%) Spring Boot
3 31 (11.36%) Spring
4 29 (10.62%) JSON
5 28 (10.26%) OAuth
6 26 (9.52%) React
7 22 (8.06%) Node.js
8 21 (7.69%) XML
9 18 (6.59%) Kafka
10 17 (6.23%) AngularJS
10 17 (6.23%) HTML
10 17 (6.23%) RESTful
11 15 (5.49%) .NET
12 14 (5.13%) JMS
12 14 (5.13%) SOAP
13 11 (4.03%) Jest
14 10 (3.66%) OpenID
14 10 (3.66%) Playwright
14 10 (3.66%) SAML
15 9 (3.30%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 28 (10.26%) Cloud Native
2 17 (6.23%) Virtual Team
3 16 (5.86%) Product Ownership
4 11 (4.03%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.03%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 10 (3.66%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.56%) Mobile App
7 6 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.83%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.83%) Private Cloud
9 4 (1.47%) Low-Code
10 3 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.10%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.10%) Synthetic Data
10 3 (1.10%) Taxonomies
11 2 (0.73%) e-Learning
11 2 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.73%) PKI
11 2 (0.73%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 38 (13.92%) Linux
2 19 (6.96%) Windows
3 10 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.93%) Unix
5 6 (2.20%) Android
5 6 (2.20%) Apple iOS
6 3 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.37%) VMS
8 1 (0.37%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (56.78%) CI/CD
2 113 (41.39%) Agile
3 63 (23.08%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (22.71%) Containerisation
5 51 (18.68%) Microservices
6 47 (17.22%) Problem-Solving
7 39 (14.29%) Continuous Improvement
7 39 (14.29%) Test Automation
8 34 (12.45%) Stakeholder Management
9 32 (11.72%) Project Delivery
10 31 (11.36%) Observability
11 30 (10.99%) ITIL
12 26 (9.52%) Change Management
12 26 (9.52%) Mentoring
13 25 (9.16%) Cloud Security
13 25 (9.16%) Full-Stack Development
13 25 (9.16%) SDLC
14 24 (8.79%) Infrastructure Automation
15 23 (8.42%) Software Engineering
16 20 (7.33%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 57 (20.88%) Python
2 54 (19.78%) Java
3 49 (17.95%) SQL
4 30 (10.99%) TypeScript
5 24 (8.79%) Bash
6 21 (7.69%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.13%) C#
8 12 (4.40%) Groovy
9 11 (4.03%) Shell Script
10 10 (3.66%) Go
11 9 (3.30%) PowerShell
12 7 (2.56%) Perl
13 5 (1.83%) Bicep
13 5 (1.83%) C++
13 5 (1.83%) Ruby
14 4 (1.47%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.73%) PHP
15 2 (0.73%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.73%) Scala
16 1 (0.37%) JCL
Qualifications
1 52 (19.05%) Security Cleared
2 37 (13.55%) SC Cleared
3 32 (11.72%) Degree
4 17 (6.23%) AWS Certification
5 15 (5.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
6 13 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (4.40%) Azure Certification
8 11 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (2.56%) CISSP
10 6 (2.20%) CISM
11 5 (1.83%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.73%) IBM Certification
12 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.37%) CBAP
13 1 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.37%) SAFe Agilist
13 1 (0.37%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (10.26%) QA
2 23 (8.42%) Accessibility
3 15 (5.49%) PSD2
4 12 (4.40%) ISO 20022
5 11 (4.03%) SEPA
6 8 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (2.93%) NIST
7 5 (1.83%) GDPR
7 5 (1.83%) WCAG
8 4 (1.47%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.73%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.37%) GRC
10 1 (0.37%) HL7
10 1 (0.37%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
System Software
1 77 (28.21%) Docker
2 14 (5.13%) Active Directory
3 10 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (3.66%) vSphere
4 8 (2.93%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 3 (1.10%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.37%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 76 (27.84%) Kubernetes
1 76 (27.84%) Terraform
2 21 (7.69%) Ansible
3 15 (5.49%) Progress Chef
4 13 (4.76%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.66%) CA Single Sign-On
5 10 (3.66%) Grafana
6 9 (3.30%) CA Wily
7 8 (2.93%) Tivoli
8 7 (2.56%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.47%) Fluentd
10 3 (1.10%) Packer
10 3 (1.10%) Podman
10 3 (1.10%) SCCM
10 3 (1.10%) SELinux
11 2 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.73%) Istio
11 2 (0.73%) Kibana
11 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.37%) Argo
Vendors
1 41 (15.02%) Microsoft
2 32 (11.72%) Oracle
3 25 (9.16%) Splunk
4 17 (6.23%) IBM
5 12 (4.40%) AppDynamics
6 10 (3.66%) Broadcom
6 10 (3.66%) ServiceNow
6 10 (3.66%) VMware
7 8 (2.93%) F5
8 7 (2.56%) SAP
9 6 (2.20%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.20%) Google
9 6 (2.20%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.83%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.83%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.47%) Axway
11 4 (1.47%) Databricks
12 3 (1.10%) Adobe
12 3 (1.10%) Cloudera
12 3 (1.10%) Veracode