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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 15 16 15
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 211 197 243
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 9.66% 8.20% 8.60%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.87% 9.84% 9.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 114 173
10th Percentile £317 £356 £403
25th Percentile £385 £426 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -11.90% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £611 £625
90th Percentile £679 £734 £675
England median daily rate £525 £550 £580
% change year-on-year -4.55% -5.17% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 18
10th Percentile - - £44.21
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £95.00 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +105.72% - -38.43%
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -4.29% +7.69% -0.92%

All Process and 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 1,942 2,003 2,483
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.92% 83.42% 87.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,285 1,158 1,670
10th Percentile £299 £294 £270
25th Percentile £375 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.72% -1.40% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £679 £675 £675
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 109 163
10th Percentile £13.61 £16.45 £15.80
25th Percentile £17.39 £28.50 £18.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% +21.43% +57.30%
75th Percentile £49.84 £58.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.06 £71.02 £66.60
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +53.66%

DevOps
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing DevOps as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for DevOps 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 19 September 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
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 19 September 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 -5 105 £525 -4.55% 143
Cheshire +6 75 £418 -6.70% 32
Lancashire +1 14 £550 +4.76% 86
Merseyside +4 10 £505 -3.81% 10
DevOps
England

DevOps
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 24 (11.37%) Confluence
2 18 (8.53%) Apache
3 16 (7.58%) JBoss
4 15 (7.11%) WebSphere
5 13 (6.16%) IIS
6 11 (5.21%) WebSphere Application Server
7 9 (4.27%) iPlanet
8 8 (3.79%) CICS
9 5 (2.37%) nginx
9 5 (2.37%) Tomcat
10 3 (1.42%) Apache Spark
11 2 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
11 2 (0.95%) NetWeaver
12 1 (0.47%) Anypoint
12 1 (0.47%) CMS
12 1 (0.47%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.47%) Mule
12 1 (0.47%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 5 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.95%) Trello
3 1 (0.47%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.95%) Maximo
2 1 (0.47%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 91 (43.13%) AWS
2 76 (36.02%) Azure
3 39 (18.48%) Azure DevOps
4 21 (9.95%) Serverless
5 19 (9.00%) OpenShift
6 18 (8.53%) GCP
6 18 (8.53%) GitHub
7 14 (6.64%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (5.69%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (5.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 10 (4.74%) Amazon S3
11 9 (4.27%) Figma
11 9 (4.27%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (2.84%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (2.84%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (2.84%) Amazon SQS
12 6 (2.84%) SaaS
13 5 (2.37%) Kong
13 5 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
13 5 (2.37%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 9 (4.27%) Kerberos
2 6 (2.84%) Firewall
3 4 (1.90%) SSL
4 3 (1.42%) DNS
4 3 (1.42%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.42%) TCP/IP
4 3 (1.42%) VPN
5 2 (0.95%) Calico
5 2 (0.95%) Network Security
6 1 (0.47%) DHCP
6 1 (0.47%) VLAN
6 1 (0.47%) VoIP
6 1 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (11.37%) SQL Server
2 18 (8.53%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (8.06%) Relational Database
4 13 (6.16%) Oracle Database
5 11 (5.21%) MongoDB
6 6 (2.84%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (2.84%) NoSQL
6 6 (2.84%) RDBMS
7 5 (2.37%) DB2
8 4 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (1.90%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.90%) MySQL
9 3 (1.42%) Big Data
9 3 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.42%) Power BI
10 2 (0.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.95%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 58 (27.49%) JIRA
2 56 (26.54%) Jenkins
3 47 (22.27%) Git
4 31 (14.69%) GitLab
5 17 (8.06%) JUnit
6 16 (7.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (7.11%) Gradle
8 13 (6.16%) Bitbucket Server
8 13 (6.16%) CA Release Automation
9 11 (5.21%) Mockito
10 10 (4.74%) Selenium
11 9 (4.27%) SonarQube
12 8 (3.79%) Liquibase
12 8 (3.79%) Maven
13 7 (3.32%) Cucumber
14 6 (2.84%) Bitbucket
14 6 (2.84%) Postman
14 6 (2.84%) Storybook
14 6 (2.84%) Xcode
15 4 (1.90%) TeamCity
General
1 55 (26.07%) Finance
2 44 (20.85%) Social Skills
3 36 (17.06%) Public Sector
4 27 (12.80%) Banking
5 21 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (4.74%) Manufacturing
7 9 (4.27%) Telecoms
8 8 (3.79%) Electronics
8 8 (3.79%) Marketing
9 6 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (2.84%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (2.84%) Retail
10 5 (2.37%) Military
10 5 (2.37%) Publishing
11 3 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.95%) Games
12 2 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.47%) Aviation
13 1 (0.47%) Digital Healthcare
13 1 (0.47%) Legal
Job Titles
1 46 (21.80%) Developer
2 30 (14.22%) Senior
3 29 (13.74%) DevOps Engineer
4 19 (9.00%) Java Developer
5 16 (7.58%) Platform Engineer
6 15 (7.11%) AWS Engineer
7 14 (6.64%) Architect
7 14 (6.64%) AWS DevOps
7 14 (6.64%) Lead
7 14 (6.64%) Software Engineer
8 12 (5.69%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 11 (5.21%) React Developer
10 10 (4.74%) Senior Developer
11 9 (4.27%) Senior DevOps
12 8 (3.79%) Engineering Manager
13 7 (3.32%) Analyst
13 7 (3.32%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 6 (2.84%) Change Manager
14 6 (2.84%) ITIL Change Manager
14 6 (2.84%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (14.22%) Spring Boot
2 26 (12.32%) OAuth
2 26 (12.32%) React
3 24 (11.37%) Kafka
4 23 (10.90%) Spring
5 18 (8.53%) REST
6 15 (7.11%) .NET
6 15 (7.11%) JSON
7 13 (6.16%) HTML
7 13 (6.16%) RESTful
8 11 (5.21%) Node.js
8 11 (5.21%) Swagger
9 10 (4.74%) OpenAPI
9 10 (4.74%) OpenID
9 10 (4.74%) SAML
10 9 (4.27%) CSS
10 9 (4.27%) LDAP
11 8 (3.79%) JMS
11 8 (3.79%) Web Services
11 8 (3.79%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (10.90%) Cloud Native
2 9 (4.27%) Mainframe
2 9 (4.27%) Mobile App
2 9 (4.27%) Product Ownership
3 8 (3.79%) VSAM
4 7 (3.32%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 6 (2.84%) Management Information System
6 5 (2.37%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.90%) IBM Mainframe
7 4 (1.90%) Replication
8 3 (1.42%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.95%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.95%) PKI
10 1 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.47%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.47%) Enterprise Storage
10 1 (0.47%) IBM XIV
10 1 (0.47%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 31 (14.69%) Linux
2 20 (9.48%) Windows
3 11 (5.21%) Windows Server
4 10 (4.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (4.74%) Unix
5 8 (3.79%) Android
5 8 (3.79%) Apple iOS
6 5 (2.37%) zOS
7 2 (0.95%) HPUX
7 2 (0.95%) Solaris
8 1 (0.47%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (55.45%) CI/CD
2 86 (40.76%) Agile
3 46 (21.80%) Microservices
4 45 (21.33%) Containerisation
5 36 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 31 (14.69%) Test Automation
7 28 (13.27%) Software Engineering
8 27 (12.80%) Migration
8 27 (12.80%) Stakeholder Management
9 24 (11.37%) Problem-Solving
10 22 (10.43%) Continuous Integration
10 22 (10.43%) Scrum
11 21 (9.95%) Release Management
12 20 (9.48%) Continuous Improvement
12 20 (9.48%) SDLC
13 19 (9.00%) ITIL
13 19 (9.00%) Process Improvement
14 18 (8.53%) Service Management
14 18 (8.53%) TDD
15 17 (8.06%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 60 (28.44%) Java
2 50 (23.70%) SQL
3 37 (17.54%) Python
4 26 (12.32%) TypeScript
5 16 (7.58%) JavaScript
6 14 (6.64%) Shell Script
7 13 (6.16%) Bash
8 10 (4.74%) C#
8 10 (4.74%) Groovy
9 8 (3.79%) JCL
10 7 (3.32%) Perl
11 6 (2.84%) REXX
12 5 (2.37%) CLIST
12 5 (2.37%) Go
13 4 (1.90%) Bicep
13 4 (1.90%) COBOL
13 4 (1.90%) PowerShell
14 3 (1.42%) C++
15 2 (0.95%) Scala
15 2 (0.95%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 41 (19.43%) Security Cleared
2 35 (16.59%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.64%) Degree
4 9 (4.27%) AWS Certification
4 9 (4.27%) ITIL Certification
5 7 (3.32%) Azure Certification
6 6 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.90%) CISSP
8 3 (1.42%) CISM
9 2 (0.95%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.95%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.95%) PMP
10 1 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.47%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.47%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
10 1 (0.47%) Tableau Certification
10 1 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.47%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (9.00%) QA
2 14 (6.64%) Accessibility
3 10 (4.74%) PSD2
3 10 (4.74%) SEPA
4 7 (3.32%) ISO 20022
5 4 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.90%) NIST
6 3 (1.42%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.42%) GDPR
7 2 (0.95%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.47%) COBIT
8 1 (0.47%) GRC
8 1 (0.47%) SOC 1
8 1 (0.47%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (28.44%) Docker
2 14 (6.64%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.79%) Tivoli Directory Server
4 5 (2.37%) Time Sharing Option
5 1 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.47%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 55 (26.07%) Kubernetes
2 45 (21.33%) Terraform
3 24 (11.37%) Ansible
4 20 (9.48%) Progress Chef
5 10 (4.74%) CA Single Sign-On
6 9 (4.27%) CA Wily
7 8 (3.79%) Tivoli
8 7 (3.32%) Kibana
9 6 (2.84%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (2.37%) OMEGAMON
11 4 (1.90%) CA Endevor
11 4 (1.90%) Prometheus
12 3 (1.42%) Grafana
12 3 (1.42%) Packer
12 3 (1.42%) Podman
12 3 (1.42%) SELinux
13 2 (0.95%) Fluentd
13 2 (0.95%) Istio
14 1 (0.47%) Docker Swarm
14 1 (0.47%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 45 (21.33%) Microsoft
2 28 (13.27%) Oracle
3 23 (10.90%) IBM
4 20 (9.48%) Splunk
5 17 (8.06%) AppDynamics
6 15 (7.11%) ServiceNow
7 13 (6.16%) SAP
8 10 (4.74%) Broadcom
9 5 (2.37%) Axway
9 5 (2.37%) Cloudera
9 5 (2.37%) Databricks
9 5 (2.37%) Dynatrace
9 5 (2.37%) Red Hat
10 3 (1.42%) Google
10 3 (1.42%) Veracode
10 3 (1.42%) VMware
11 2 (0.95%) CheckPoint
11 2 (0.95%) F5
11 2 (0.95%) MuleSoft
11 2 (0.95%) Palo Alto