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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 15 17
Rank change year-on-year -3 +2 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 317 214 191
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.03% 9.81% 7.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.71% 11.07% 9.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 213 187 103
10th Percentile £384 £317 £356
25th Percentile £413 £383 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £453 £550
Median % change year-on-year +15.89% -17.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £640 £575 £600
90th Percentile £723 £674 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £557
% change year-on-year - -5.70% -4.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 1 3
10th Percentile £37.25 - -
25th Percentile £46.80 - -
Median hourly rate £66.66 £95.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -29.83% +105.72% -
75th Percentile £73.00 - £66.84
90th Percentile £73.40 - £79.24
England median hourly rate £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +2.61% -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 3,264 1,933 2,000
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.63% 88.59% 83.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,847 1,284 1,108
10th Percentile £296 £269 £294
25th Percentile £402 £368 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £453 £488
Median % change year-on-year +10.38% -7.08% -2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £576
90th Percentile £675 £680 £675
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 136 109
10th Percentile £14.74 £13.68 £16.45
25th Percentile £21.17 £17.30 £28.50
Median hourly rate £46.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +86.76% -40.84% +21.43%
75th Percentile £71.91 £47.12 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £66.13 £73.75
England median hourly rate £40.08 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.36% -41.51% -3.37%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 +2 214 £535 +7.00% 348
Cheshire -18 46 £464 +11.02% 45
Lancashire -1 37 £640 +16.36% 43
Merseyside -14 8 £625 +23.76% 20
Cumbria - 3 £353 - 4
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 (6.94%) Confluence
2 7 (2.21%) SAS
2 7 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.58%) Camunda
4 4 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.95%) Apache
5 3 (0.95%) Apache Spark
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%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.32%) Traefik
6 1 (0.32%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.32%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (1.89%) MS Visio
2 4 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 7 (2.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.32%) SAP MM
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
1 156 (49.21%) Azure
2 146 (46.06%) AWS
3 82 (25.87%) Azure DevOps
4 53 (16.72%) GCP
5 48 (15.14%) GitHub
6 28 (8.83%) Power Platform
6 28 (8.83%) Serverless
7 27 (8.52%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (7.57%) AWS Lambda
9 23 (7.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 21 (6.62%) Azure AKS
11 19 (5.99%) Amazon ECS
12 18 (5.68%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (5.05%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (4.73%) Amazon EKS
14 15 (4.73%) OCI
15 14 (4.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 13 (4.10%) Entra ID
16 13 (4.10%) OpenShift
17 12 (3.79%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.46%) Firewall
2 12 (3.79%) SSL
3 11 (3.47%) BGP
3 11 (3.47%) Ethernet VPN
3 11 (3.47%) OSPF
3 11 (3.47%) SD-WAN
3 11 (3.47%) VXLAN
3 11 (3.47%) WAN
4 10 (3.15%) BIG-IP
4 10 (3.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 9 (2.84%) Network Security
5 9 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (2.84%) WLAN
6 8 (2.52%) DNS
7 5 (1.58%) VPN
8 3 (0.95%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.63%) DHCP
10 1 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
10 1 (0.32%) HTTP
10 1 (0.32%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.36%) SQL Server
2 20 (6.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 18 (5.68%) MongoDB
3 18 (5.68%) Relational Database
4 17 (5.36%) Power BI
5 16 (5.05%) MySQL
6 11 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (3.15%) Oracle Database
7 10 (3.15%) RDBMS
8 9 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (2.52%) NoSQL
10 7 (2.21%) Ataccama
10 7 (2.21%) Data Lake
11 6 (1.89%) DynamoDB
12 5 (1.58%) BigQuery
13 4 (1.26%) Azure SQL Database
13 4 (1.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 3 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
14 3 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
14 3 (0.95%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 58 (18.30%) GitLab
2 47 (14.83%) Jenkins
3 43 (13.56%) Git
4 27 (8.52%) JIRA
5 16 (5.05%) Selenium
6 15 (4.73%) JUnit
6 15 (4.73%) REST Assured
7 14 (4.42%) Claude Code
8 13 (4.10%) Sonatype Nexus
9 12 (3.79%) Cucumber
10 11 (3.47%) Postman
10 11 (3.47%) SonarQube
11 9 (2.84%) Mockito
12 8 (2.52%) Maven
13 7 (2.21%) Gradle
14 6 (1.89%) Gatling
15 4 (1.26%) Bitbucket Server
15 4 (1.26%) ClearCase
16 3 (0.95%) LoadRunner
16 3 (0.95%) TestNG
General
1 64 (20.19%) Finance
2 49 (15.46%) Social Skills
3 41 (12.93%) Public Sector
4 27 (8.52%) Banking
5 26 (8.20%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (5.05%) Retail
7 13 (4.10%) Military
8 5 (1.58%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.95%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.95%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.63%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Billing
11 1 (0.32%) iGaming
11 1 (0.32%) Law
11 1 (0.32%) Legal
11 1 (0.32%) Police
11 1 (0.32%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 68 (21.45%) Senior
2 66 (20.82%) DevOps Engineer
3 45 (14.20%) Developer
4 41 (12.93%) Lead
5 29 (9.15%) Architect
6 25 (7.89%) Cloud Engineer
7 20 (6.31%) Senior DevOps
8 19 (5.99%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 19 (5.99%) Software Engineer
9 17 (5.36%) AWS Engineer
9 17 (5.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 16 (5.05%) Security Engineer
11 15 (4.73%) Analyst
12 14 (4.42%) DBA
13 13 (4.10%) Solutions Architect
14 12 (3.79%) Azure Engineer
14 12 (3.79%) Consultant
14 12 (3.79%) SQL DBA
15 11 (3.47%) Java Developer
16 10 (3.15%) Lead DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (36.59%) Terraform
2 33 (10.41%) REST
3 32 (10.09%) Spring Boot
4 29 (9.15%) Kafka
4 29 (9.15%) Spring
5 26 (8.20%) React
6 23 (7.26%) Node.js
7 17 (5.36%) JSON
7 17 (5.36%) Playwright
8 13 (4.10%) .NET
8 13 (4.10%) RESTful
9 10 (3.15%) PySpark
10 9 (2.84%) HTML
10 9 (2.84%) XML
11 8 (2.52%) Next.js
12 7 (2.21%) AngularJS
12 7 (2.21%) CSS
13 6 (1.89%) ARM Templates
14 5 (1.58%) Azure Blueprints
14 5 (1.58%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 78 (24.61%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.68%) Security Posture
3 16 (5.05%) Replication
4 15 (4.73%) Management Information System
5 13 (4.10%) Clustering
5 13 (4.10%) Data Structures
5 13 (4.10%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.10%) Onboarding
5 13 (4.10%) Product Ownership
6 12 (3.79%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (3.15%) Data Centre
8 9 (2.84%) Algorithms
8 9 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.89%) Cloud Security Posture
9 6 (1.89%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.58%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.58%) Enterprise Cloud
10 5 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (1.26%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 40 (12.62%) Linux
2 34 (10.73%) Windows
3 18 (5.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (4.10%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.95%) AIX
5 3 (0.95%) Unix
6 2 (0.63%) VMS
7 1 (0.32%) Android
7 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.32%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (63.41%) CI/CD
2 112 (35.33%) Agile
3 94 (29.65%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (21.77%) Observability
5 61 (19.24%) Test Automation
6 58 (18.30%) Microservices
7 55 (17.35%) Continuous Improvement
8 53 (16.72%) Containerisation
9 51 (16.09%) AI
10 50 (15.77%) Software Engineering
11 46 (14.51%) Migration
12 38 (11.99%) Technical Leadership
13 37 (11.67%) Platform Engineering
13 37 (11.67%) Scrum
14 35 (11.04%) Event-Driven
15 34 (10.73%) Cloud Security
16 33 (10.41%) Infrastructure Automation
16 33 (10.41%) Roadmaps
16 33 (10.41%) SDLC
17 32 (10.09%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 86 (27.13%) Python
2 77 (24.29%) Java
3 58 (18.30%) SQL
4 48 (15.14%) PowerShell
5 34 (10.73%) Bash
6 27 (8.52%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.62%) C#
8 20 (6.31%) TypeScript
9 18 (5.68%) Bicep
10 17 (5.36%) T-SQL
11 6 (1.89%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (1.26%) VB
12 4 (1.26%) VB6
13 3 (0.95%) Rust
13 3 (0.95%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.63%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.63%) Scala
15 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.32%) Go
15 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 94 (29.65%) Security Cleared
2 80 (25.24%) SC Cleared
3 38 (11.99%) Degree
4 31 (9.78%) Azure Certification
5 27 (8.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (7.89%) AWS Certification
7 17 (5.36%) CISSP
7 17 (5.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (2.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 8 (2.52%) DV Cleared
10 7 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 1 (0.32%) CCIE
14 1 (0.32%) CCNP
14 1 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
14 1 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.09%) QA
2 19 (5.99%) Data Quality
3 12 (3.79%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.89%) GDPR
5 3 (0.95%) NCSC
6 2 (0.63%) PMO
6 2 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.63%) SLA
6 2 (0.63%) WCAG
7 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.32%) NIST
7 1 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 75 (23.66%) Docker
2 11 (3.47%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.89%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.63%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 94 (29.65%) Kubernetes
2 35 (11.04%) Ansible
3 17 (5.36%) Grafana
4 15 (4.73%) Progress Chef
5 14 (4.42%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.15%) SCOM
7 8 (2.52%) Istio
8 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.26%) Argo
10 3 (0.95%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.95%) Packer
11 2 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
12 1 (0.32%) Consul
12 1 (0.32%) linkerd
12 1 (0.32%) Puppet
12 1 (0.32%) Rancher
12 1 (0.32%) vRealize
12 1 (0.32%) vRealize Orchestrator
12 1 (0.32%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 53 (16.72%) Microsoft
2 27 (8.52%) Google
3 20 (6.31%) ServiceNow
4 17 (5.36%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.05%) Splunk
6 15 (4.73%) Oracle
7 12 (3.79%) Palo Alto
7 12 (3.79%) SAP
8 11 (3.47%) F5
9 10 (3.15%) Aruba
9 10 (3.15%) Dynatrace
10 9 (2.84%) Arista
11 6 (1.89%) IBM
11 6 (1.89%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.58%) Atlassian
12 5 (1.58%) Informatica
12 5 (1.58%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.58%) Veracode
13 4 (1.26%) Databricks
14 3 (0.95%) AppDynamics