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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 15 15
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 311 208 211
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 7.90% 9.42% 8.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.53% 10.62% 10.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 213 170 133
10th Percentile £389 £317 £409
25th Percentile £413 £382 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £466 £550
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% -15.23% +4.76%
75th Percentile £640 £575 £650
90th Percentile £712 £678 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -6.38%
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 3,265 1,958 2,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.97% 88.72% 84.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,901 1,268 1,229
10th Percentile £288 £297 £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 £594 £575 £588
90th Percentile £680 £665 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 133 147
10th Percentile £16.30 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.44 £16.16
Median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +80.91% -28.87% +1.03%
75th Percentile £72.66 £52.50 £53.25
90th Percentile £84.25 £72.50 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 0 201 £525 - 229
Cheshire -12 59 £475 +18.03% 27
Lancashire +4 31 £640 +28.00% 39
Merseyside -11 12 £510 - 11
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 (7.07%) Confluence
2 10 (3.22%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.61%) SAS
4 4 (1.29%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.29%) 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 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
1 4 (1.29%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.64%) Trello
4 1 (0.32%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (1.61%) 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 (53.05%) Azure
2 141 (45.34%) AWS
3 88 (28.30%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (16.08%) GitHub
5 49 (15.76%) GCP
6 30 (9.65%) GitHub Actions
7 29 (9.32%) Serverless
8 21 (6.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 20 (6.43%) AWS Lambda
9 20 (6.43%) Azure AKS
10 16 (5.14%) Power Platform
11 15 (4.82%) OCI
12 14 (4.50%) Amazon ECS
12 14 (4.50%) Amazon EKS
13 13 (4.18%) Azure Monitor
14 12 (3.86%) AWS CloudFormation
14 12 (3.86%) Entra ID
14 12 (3.86%) OpenShift
14 12 (3.86%) SaaS
15 11 (3.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.65%) Firewall
2 11 (3.54%) BGP
2 11 (3.54%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.54%) OSPF
2 11 (3.54%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.54%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.54%) WAN
3 10 (3.22%) BIG-IP
3 10 (3.22%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.89%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.89%) WLAN
5 8 (2.57%) SSL
6 7 (2.25%) DNS
6 7 (2.25%) Network Security
7 5 (1.61%) VPN
8 2 (0.64%) DHCP
8 2 (0.64%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
9 1 (0.32%) HTTP
9 1 (0.32%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.29%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.79%) Relational Database
3 17 (5.47%) MongoDB
4 16 (5.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 13 (4.18%) MySQL
5 13 (4.18%) PostgreSQL
6 10 (3.22%) Oracle Database
6 10 (3.22%) Power BI
6 10 (3.22%) RDBMS
7 9 (2.89%) NoSQL
8 7 (2.25%) Ataccama
8 7 (2.25%) Data Lake
9 6 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.61%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.61%) DynamoDB
11 4 (1.29%) Data Vault
11 4 (1.29%) Oracle Exadata
11 4 (1.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 53 (17.04%) GitLab
2 44 (14.15%) Git
3 41 (13.18%) Jenkins
4 31 (9.97%) JIRA
5 14 (4.50%) Claude Code
6 13 (4.18%) Selenium
7 12 (3.86%) JUnit
7 12 (3.86%) REST Assured
8 11 (3.54%) Postman
8 11 (3.54%) SonarQube
9 10 (3.22%) Sonatype Nexus
10 9 (2.89%) Cucumber
11 8 (2.57%) Mockito
12 6 (1.93%) Gatling
12 6 (1.93%) Gradle
13 5 (1.61%) Maven
14 3 (0.96%) ClearCase
14 3 (0.96%) LoadRunner
14 3 (0.96%) TestRail
14 3 (0.96%) Zephyr
General
1 61 (19.61%) Finance
2 54 (17.36%) Social Skills
3 41 (13.18%) Public Sector
4 29 (9.32%) Banking
5 22 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.82%) Retail
7 8 (2.57%) Military
8 4 (1.29%) 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 64 (20.58%) DevOps Engineer
2 60 (19.29%) Senior
3 43 (13.83%) Lead
4 42 (13.50%) Developer
5 28 (9.00%) Architect
6 20 (6.43%) Cloud Engineer
7 17 (5.47%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.14%) Analyst
8 16 (5.14%) Azure Engineer
8 16 (5.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.14%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.82%) Senior DevOps
10 14 (4.50%) AWS Engineer
10 14 (4.50%) Security Engineer
10 14 (4.50%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.18%) Java Developer
12 12 (3.86%) Consultant
12 12 (3.86%) Senior Developer
13 11 (3.54%) Azure DevOps Engineer
13 11 (3.54%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (37.30%) Terraform
2 35 (11.25%) Spring Boot
3 33 (10.61%) Spring
4 28 (9.00%) Kafka
4 28 (9.00%) REST
5 26 (8.36%) React
6 23 (7.40%) Node.js
7 17 (5.47%) JSON
8 15 (4.82%) Playwright
9 13 (4.18%) .NET
10 10 (3.22%) PySpark
11 9 (2.89%) RESTful
12 8 (2.57%) AngularJS
12 8 (2.57%) HTML
12 8 (2.57%) Next.js
12 8 (2.57%) XML
13 7 (2.25%) ARM Templates
14 6 (1.93%) CSS
14 6 (1.93%) Spring MVC
15 5 (1.61%) Langfuse
Miscellaneous
1 71 (22.83%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.47%) Security Posture
3 14 (4.50%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (4.50%) Management Information System
3 14 (4.50%) Product Ownership
3 14 (4.50%) Replication
4 12 (3.86%) Data Structures
5 11 (3.54%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.89%) Clustering
6 9 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.89%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.57%) Algorithms
7 8 (2.57%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.93%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.61%) Cloud Security Posture
10 5 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.61%) Public Cloud
11 4 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
11 4 (1.29%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.61%) Linux
2 29 (9.32%) Windows
3 15 (4.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.89%) 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
1 189 (60.77%) CI/CD
2 110 (35.37%) Agile
3 93 (29.90%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (20.26%) Observability
5 60 (19.29%) Test Automation
6 57 (18.33%) Microservices
7 53 (17.04%) Continuous Improvement
8 51 (16.40%) Containerisation
9 49 (15.76%) AI
10 46 (14.79%) Migration
11 44 (14.15%) Software Engineering
12 38 (12.22%) Platform Engineering
13 37 (11.90%) Scrum
14 36 (11.58%) SDLC
14 36 (11.58%) Technical Leadership
15 33 (10.61%) Event-Driven
15 33 (10.61%) Problem-Solving
16 32 (10.29%) Mentoring
17 31 (9.97%) Cloud Security
17 31 (9.97%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 88 (28.30%) Python
2 76 (24.44%) Java
3 50 (16.08%) SQL
4 45 (14.47%) PowerShell
5 35 (11.25%) Bash
6 24 (7.72%) JavaScript
7 18 (5.79%) Bicep
7 18 (5.79%) C#
8 17 (5.47%) TypeScript
9 13 (4.18%) T-SQL
10 4 (1.29%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.96%) Rust
11 3 (0.96%) VB
11 3 (0.96%) VB6
12 2 (0.64%) PROC SQL
12 2 (0.64%) Scala
12 2 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.32%) Go
13 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 78 (25.08%) Security Cleared
2 66 (21.22%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.93%) Degree
4 26 (8.36%) Azure Certification
5 21 (6.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 20 (6.43%) AWS Certification
7 15 (4.82%) CISSP
8 12 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (2.25%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 4 (1.29%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.64%) CCIE
13 2 (0.64%) CCNP
13 2 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 2 (0.64%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.32%) OCP
14 1 (0.32%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (10.61%) QA
2 16 (5.14%) Data Quality
3 13 (4.18%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.93%) 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%) GRC
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%) 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 (24.12%) Docker
2 10 (3.22%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.93%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.29%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (1.29%) 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 (30.23%) Kubernetes
2 38 (12.22%) Ansible
3 16 (5.14%) Grafana
4 14 (4.50%) Progress Chef
5 13 (4.18%) Prometheus
6 8 (2.57%) Argo
7 6 (1.93%) Istio
7 6 (1.93%) SCOM
8 4 (1.29%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.29%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.64%) Packer
9 2 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.32%) Puppet
10 1 (0.32%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.32%) vRealize
10 1 (0.32%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 53 (17.04%) Microsoft
2 24 (7.72%) Google
3 17 (5.47%) Red Hat
4 16 (5.14%) Oracle
4 16 (5.14%) ServiceNow
5 14 (4.50%) Splunk
6 12 (3.86%) Palo Alto
7 11 (3.54%) F5
8 10 (3.22%) Aruba
8 10 (3.22%) SAP
9 9 (2.89%) Arista
9 9 (2.89%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.93%) OpenAI
11 5 (1.61%) IBM
11 5 (1.61%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.29%) Databricks
12 4 (1.29%) Veracode
12 4 (1.29%) VMware
13 3 (0.96%) Informatica
13 3 (0.96%) MuleSoft