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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 15 15
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 316 211 211
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.03% 9.47% 8.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.70% 10.67% 10.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 173 133
10th Percentile £387 £319 £409
25th Percentile £413 £385 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £470 £550
Median % change year-on-year +10.87% -14.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £639 £575 £650
90th Percentile £712 £680 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -6.78%
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 3,257 1,977 2,048
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.79% 88.69% 84.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,908 1,283 1,224
10th Percentile £293 £300 £310
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £591 £575 £588
90th Percentile £680 £669 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 134 147
10th Percentile £16.50 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.44 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +80.91% -28.87% +1.03%
75th Percentile £72.28 £52.50 £53.25
90th Percentile £84.50 £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 27 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 27 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 27 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 0 204 £525 +2.44% 90
Cheshire -13 61 £478 +18.02% 7
Lancashire +4 31 £640 +28.00% 6
Merseyside -12 12 £510 - 5
Cumbria - 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 (6.96%) Confluence
2 10 (3.16%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.58%) SAS
4 4 (1.27%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.27%) Camunda
5 3 (0.95%) Apache
5 3 (0.95%) 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 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
1 4 (1.27%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.63%) Trello
4 1 (0.32%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (1.58%) 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
1 168 (53.16%) Azure
2 142 (44.94%) AWS
3 91 (28.80%) Azure DevOps
4 52 (16.46%) GitHub
5 50 (15.82%) GCP
6 31 (9.81%) GitHub Actions
7 30 (9.49%) Serverless
8 22 (6.96%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 21 (6.65%) Azure AKS
10 20 (6.33%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (5.06%) Power Platform
12 15 (4.75%) Amazon EKS
12 15 (4.75%) OCI
13 14 (4.43%) Amazon ECS
14 13 (4.11%) Azure Monitor
15 12 (3.80%) AWS CloudFormation
15 12 (3.80%) Entra ID
15 12 (3.80%) OpenShift
15 12 (3.80%) SaaS
16 11 (3.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.49%) Firewall
2 11 (3.48%) BGP
2 11 (3.48%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.48%) OSPF
2 11 (3.48%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.48%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.48%) WAN
3 10 (3.16%) BIG-IP
3 10 (3.16%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.85%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.85%) WLAN
5 8 (2.53%) SSL
6 7 (2.22%) DNS
6 7 (2.22%) Network Security
7 5 (1.58%) VPN
8 2 (0.63%) DHCP
8 2 (0.63%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.32%) HTTP
9 1 (0.32%) MPLS
9 1 (0.32%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.13%) SQL Server
2 19 (6.01%) MongoDB
2 19 (6.01%) Relational Database
3 16 (5.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 15 (4.75%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (4.11%) MySQL
6 11 (3.48%) Oracle Database
6 11 (3.48%) RDBMS
7 10 (3.16%) NoSQL
7 10 (3.16%) Power BI
8 7 (2.22%) Ataccama
8 7 (2.22%) Data Lake
9 6 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.58%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.58%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.58%) Oracle Exadata
11 4 (1.27%) Data Vault
11 4 (1.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 3 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
12 3 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 54 (17.09%) GitLab
2 44 (13.92%) Git
3 42 (13.29%) Jenkins
4 31 (9.81%) JIRA
5 14 (4.43%) Claude Code
6 13 (4.11%) Selenium
7 12 (3.80%) JUnit
7 12 (3.80%) REST Assured
8 11 (3.48%) Postman
8 11 (3.48%) SonarQube
9 10 (3.16%) Sonatype Nexus
10 9 (2.85%) Cucumber
11 8 (2.53%) Mockito
12 6 (1.90%) Gatling
12 6 (1.90%) Gradle
13 5 (1.58%) Maven
14 3 (0.95%) ClearCase
14 3 (0.95%) LoadRunner
14 3 (0.95%) TestRail
14 3 (0.95%) Zephyr
General
1 62 (19.62%) Finance
2 53 (16.77%) Social Skills
3 40 (12.66%) Public Sector
4 29 (9.18%) Banking
5 22 (6.96%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.75%) Retail
7 8 (2.53%) Military
8 4 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.95%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.95%) Local Government
9 3 (0.95%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.63%) 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 65 (20.57%) DevOps Engineer
2 62 (19.62%) Senior
3 44 (13.92%) Lead
4 43 (13.61%) Developer
5 28 (8.86%) Architect
6 20 (6.33%) Cloud Engineer
7 17 (5.38%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.06%) Analyst
8 16 (5.06%) Azure Engineer
8 16 (5.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.06%) Senior DevOps
8 16 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.75%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 14 (4.43%) AWS Engineer
10 14 (4.43%) Security Engineer
11 13 (4.11%) Java Developer
11 13 (4.11%) Senior Developer
12 12 (3.80%) Consultant
12 12 (3.80%) DBA
12 12 (3.80%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (37.97%) Terraform
2 35 (11.08%) Spring Boot
3 33 (10.44%) Spring
4 29 (9.18%) Kafka
4 29 (9.18%) REST
5 27 (8.54%) React
6 23 (7.28%) Node.js
7 18 (5.70%) JSON
8 15 (4.75%) Playwright
9 14 (4.43%) .NET
10 10 (3.16%) PySpark
10 10 (3.16%) RESTful
11 9 (2.85%) AngularJS
11 9 (2.85%) XML
12 8 (2.53%) HTML
12 8 (2.53%) Next.js
13 7 (2.22%) ARM Templates
14 6 (1.90%) CSS
14 6 (1.90%) Spring MVC
15 5 (1.58%) Langfuse
Miscellaneous
1 71 (22.47%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.38%) Security Posture
3 16 (5.06%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.06%) Replication
4 14 (4.43%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.43%) Management Information System
5 12 (3.80%) Data Structures
6 11 (3.48%) Data Centre
7 10 (3.16%) Clustering
8 9 (2.85%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (2.85%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.85%) Onboarding
9 8 (2.53%) Algorithms
9 8 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.90%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.58%) Cloud Security Posture
11 5 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.58%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.58%) Public Cloud
12 4 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.44%) Linux
2 29 (9.18%) Windows
3 15 (4.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.85%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.95%) AIX
5 3 (0.95%) Unix
5 3 (0.95%) VMS
6 1 (0.32%) Android
6 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 191 (60.44%) CI/CD
2 111 (35.13%) Agile
3 96 (30.38%) Infrastructure as Code
4 65 (20.57%) Observability
5 60 (18.99%) Test Automation
6 58 (18.35%) Microservices
7 54 (17.09%) Continuous Improvement
8 51 (16.14%) Containerisation
9 48 (15.19%) AI
10 47 (14.87%) Migration
11 44 (13.92%) Software Engineering
12 37 (11.71%) Platform Engineering
12 37 (11.71%) Scrum
12 37 (11.71%) Technical Leadership
13 36 (11.39%) SDLC
14 34 (10.76%) Event-Driven
15 33 (10.44%) Mentoring
15 33 (10.44%) Problem-Solving
16 31 (9.81%) Cloud Security
16 31 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 89 (28.16%) Python
2 76 (24.05%) Java
3 51 (16.14%) SQL
4 47 (14.87%) PowerShell
5 37 (11.71%) Bash
6 24 (7.59%) JavaScript
7 19 (6.01%) C#
8 18 (5.70%) Bicep
9 17 (5.38%) TypeScript
10 13 (4.11%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.27%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.95%) Rust
12 3 (0.95%) VB
12 3 (0.95%) VB6
13 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.63%) PROC SQL
13 2 (0.63%) Scala
13 2 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
14 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.32%) PHP
Qualifications
1 77 (24.37%) Security Cleared
2 65 (20.57%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.76%) Degree
4 27 (8.54%) Azure Certification
5 21 (6.65%) AWS Certification
5 21 (6.65%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (4.75%) CISSP
7 12 (3.80%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 4 (1.27%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.95%) CCIE
11 3 (0.95%) CCNP
11 3 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.32%) OCP
13 1 (0.32%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (10.13%) QA
2 16 (5.06%) Data Quality
3 13 (4.11%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.90%) GDPR
5 3 (0.95%) GRC
5 3 (0.95%) NIST
5 3 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.95%) SLA
5 3 (0.95%) WCAG
6 2 (0.63%) 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 76 (24.05%) Docker
2 10 (3.16%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.90%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.58%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.63%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 95 (30.06%) Kubernetes
2 40 (12.66%) Ansible
3 17 (5.38%) Grafana
4 14 (4.43%) Progress Chef
4 14 (4.43%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.85%) Argo
6 6 (1.90%) Istio
6 6 (1.90%) SCOM
7 5 (1.58%) Data Guard
7 5 (1.58%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.27%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.63%) Packer
9 2 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.32%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.32%) Puppet
10 1 (0.32%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.32%) vRealize
10 1 (0.32%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 54 (17.09%) Microsoft
2 24 (7.59%) Google
3 18 (5.70%) Oracle
4 17 (5.38%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.06%) ServiceNow
5 16 (5.06%) Splunk
6 12 (3.80%) Palo Alto
7 11 (3.48%) F5
8 10 (3.16%) Aruba
8 10 (3.16%) SAP
9 9 (2.85%) Arista
9 9 (2.85%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.90%) OpenAI
11 5 (1.58%) IBM
11 5 (1.58%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.27%) Databricks
12 4 (1.27%) Veracode
12 4 (1.27%) VMware
13 3 (0.95%) MuleSoft
13 3 (0.95%) Zscaler