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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 16 16
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 327 193 240
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.94% 9.03% 8.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.68% 10.23% 10.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 152 166
10th Percentile £390 £333 £413
25th Percentile £413 £393 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.37% -9.52% -
75th Percentile £613 £577 £648
90th Percentile £687 £649 £838
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 2 3
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £44.74 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -45.77% +79.82% +5.86%
75th Percentile £75.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £86.25 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £68.75 £66.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +3.38% -5.00% +6.78%

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 3,063 1,886 2,337
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.76% 88.21% 84.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,811 1,240 1,426
10th Percentile £298 £280 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £570 £585
90th Percentile £675 £669 £675
England median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 118 265
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.30 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £19.02 £15.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £29.90 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.22% +6.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £76.00 £60.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.00 £67.14
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.07%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 +8 213 £500 -3.75% 150
Cheshire -10 66 £487 +21.02% 8
Lancashire +5 27 £608 +10.45% 32
Merseyside -10 12 £510 -2.63% 9
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 24 (7.34%) Confluence
2 10 (3.06%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.53%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.22%) SAS
5 3 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.61%) Apache
7 1 (0.31%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.31%) Camunda
7 1 (0.31%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.31%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.31%) nginx
7 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 6 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.61%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.61%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.31%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.31%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.31%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.31%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 182 (55.66%) Azure
2 143 (43.73%) AWS
3 81 (24.77%) Azure DevOps
4 54 (16.51%) GCP
5 45 (13.76%) GitHub
6 43 (13.15%) Serverless
7 26 (7.95%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (7.34%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 22 (6.73%) AWS Lambda
10 21 (6.42%) Azure AKS
11 16 (4.89%) Amazon S3
11 16 (4.89%) SaaS
12 15 (4.59%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (4.59%) Dynamics 365
12 15 (4.59%) Power Platform
12 15 (4.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 12 (3.67%) Entra ID
14 11 (3.36%) Amazon EKS
14 11 (3.36%) dbt
14 11 (3.36%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 34 (10.40%) Firewall
2 10 (3.06%) BGP
2 10 (3.06%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.06%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.06%) OSPF
2 10 (3.06%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.06%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.06%) WAN
3 9 (2.75%) DNS
3 9 (2.75%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.75%) WLAN
4 7 (2.14%) Network Security
5 6 (1.83%) SSL
6 4 (1.22%) DHCP
7 3 (0.92%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.92%) VPN
8 2 (0.61%) NetScaler
9 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.31%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.26%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.34%) MongoDB
3 20 (6.12%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (6.12%) Relational Database
4 14 (4.28%) NoSQL
5 13 (3.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 10 (3.06%) RDBMS
7 9 (2.75%) DocumentDB
7 9 (2.75%) DynamoDB
8 8 (2.45%) Data Lake
8 8 (2.45%) MySQL
8 8 (2.45%) Oracle Database
9 7 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
9 7 (2.14%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (2.14%) Power BI
10 6 (1.83%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.53%) Data Vault
12 4 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
12 4 (1.22%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 57 (17.43%) GitLab
2 46 (14.07%) Git
3 45 (13.76%) Jenkins
4 40 (12.23%) JIRA
5 14 (4.28%) Selenium
6 10 (3.06%) REST Assured
7 9 (2.75%) Postman
8 8 (2.45%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.45%) Gatling
8 8 (2.45%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.14%) JUnit
10 6 (1.83%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (1.53%) Claude Code
11 5 (1.53%) Gradle
11 5 (1.53%) Mocha
11 5 (1.53%) Serenity BDD
12 4 (1.22%) Cypress.io
13 3 (0.92%) CircleCI
13 3 (0.92%) ClearCase
13 3 (0.92%) Maven
General
1 67 (20.49%) Finance
2 59 (18.04%) Social Skills
3 55 (16.82%) Public Sector
4 28 (8.56%) Banking
5 20 (6.12%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (2.75%) Retail
7 7 (2.14%) Military
8 4 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.92%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.92%) Local Government
9 3 (0.92%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.61%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.61%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.61%) Publishing
11 1 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.31%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 57 (17.43%) Developer
2 56 (17.13%) DevOps Engineer
3 52 (15.90%) Senior
4 48 (14.68%) Lead
5 34 (10.40%) Architect
6 19 (5.81%) Software Engineer
7 18 (5.50%) Java Developer
8 17 (5.20%) Solutions Architect
9 16 (4.89%) Azure Engineer
9 16 (4.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (4.89%) Lead Developer
10 15 (4.59%) Security Engineer
10 15 (4.59%) Software Developer
11 14 (4.28%) Cloud Engineer
12 13 (3.98%) Analyst
12 13 (3.98%) DBA
12 13 (3.98%) Senior Developer
13 12 (3.67%) Platform Engineer
14 11 (3.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 9 (2.75%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (13.76%) Spring
2 44 (13.46%) Spring Boot
3 31 (9.48%) Kafka
4 27 (8.26%) REST
5 26 (7.95%) Node.js
6 24 (7.34%) React
7 17 (5.20%) .NET
7 17 (5.20%) Playwright
8 15 (4.59%) JSON
9 12 (3.67%) PySpark
9 12 (3.67%) XML
10 11 (3.36%) AngularJS
11 9 (2.75%) RESTful
12 8 (2.45%) GraphQL
13 7 (2.14%) ARM Templates
14 5 (1.53%) Jest
14 5 (1.53%) LangChain
14 5 (1.53%) OAuth
14 5 (1.53%) Spring Cloud
15 4 (1.22%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 74 (22.63%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.42%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.89%) Security Posture
4 15 (4.59%) Management Information System
5 14 (4.28%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.67%) Data Centre
7 11 (3.36%) Replication
8 10 (3.06%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (3.06%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (2.75%) Onboarding
10 8 (2.45%) Clustering
10 8 (2.45%) Public Cloud
11 7 (2.14%) AI Agents
11 7 (2.14%) Data Structures
11 7 (2.14%) Private Cloud
12 6 (1.83%) Algorithms
13 5 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
13 5 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (1.53%) Mainframe
13 5 (1.53%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.09%) Linux
2 23 (7.03%) Windows
3 13 (3.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.83%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.22%) VMS
6 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.31%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (59.94%) CI/CD
2 120 (36.70%) Agile
3 82 (25.08%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (19.57%) Microservices
5 58 (17.74%) Observability
6 56 (17.13%) Test Automation
7 54 (16.51%) Containerisation
8 46 (14.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 41 (12.54%) AI
10 37 (11.31%) Problem-Solving
11 36 (11.01%) Software Engineering
12 35 (10.70%) Mentoring
13 34 (10.40%) Migration
13 34 (10.40%) Platform Engineering
14 33 (10.09%) Scrum
15 32 (9.79%) SDLC
16 30 (9.17%) Machine Learning
16 30 (9.17%) Stakeholder Management
17 29 (8.87%) Cloud Security
17 29 (8.87%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 94 (28.75%) Python
2 89 (27.22%) Java
3 48 (14.68%) SQL
4 47 (14.37%) PowerShell
5 32 (9.79%) Bash
6 26 (7.95%) JavaScript
7 22 (6.73%) C#
8 21 (6.42%) TypeScript
9 11 (3.36%) Bicep
10 10 (3.06%) T-SQL
11 7 (2.14%) Rust
12 6 (1.83%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.92%) Go
13 3 (0.92%) VB
13 3 (0.92%) VB6
14 2 (0.61%) C++
14 2 (0.61%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.61%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.61%) Scala
15 1 (0.31%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 75 (22.94%) Security Cleared
2 54 (16.51%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.40%) Degree
4 28 (8.56%) AWS Certification
5 27 (8.26%) Azure Certification
6 20 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (5.20%) CISSP
8 12 (3.67%) DV Cleared
9 10 (3.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (2.14%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (0.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 3 (0.92%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.61%) CCIE
14 2 (0.61%) CCNP
14 2 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
14 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.61%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.34%) QA
2 18 (5.50%) Accessibility
3 14 (4.28%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.75%) GDPR
5 5 (1.53%) NIST
6 4 (1.22%) ISO 20022
6 4 (1.22%) PSD2
6 4 (1.22%) SEPA
6 4 (1.22%) SLA
6 4 (1.22%) WCAG
7 3 (0.92%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.92%) GRC
7 3 (0.92%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.31%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
9 1 (0.31%) Solvency II
System Software
1 81 (24.77%) Docker
2 10 (3.06%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (2.14%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.92%) vSphere
6 2 (0.61%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.61%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 115 (35.17%) Terraform
2 89 (27.22%) Kubernetes
3 34 (10.40%) Ansible
4 22 (6.73%) Grafana
5 17 (5.20%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.36%) Progress Chef
7 10 (3.06%) Argo
8 8 (2.45%) Istio
9 4 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.22%) SCOM
9 4 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.61%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.61%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.61%) linkerd
10 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.61%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.61%) Packer
10 2 (0.61%) SCCM
11 1 (0.31%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 66 (20.18%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.56%) Google
3 21 (6.42%) Oracle
4 16 (4.89%) Splunk
5 14 (4.28%) Red Hat
5 14 (4.28%) ServiceNow
6 13 (3.98%) F5
7 10 (3.06%) Aruba
7 10 (3.06%) Palo Alto
8 9 (2.75%) Arista
8 9 (2.75%) Databricks
8 9 (2.75%) OpenAI
9 8 (2.45%) Dynatrace
10 7 (2.14%) SAP
11 4 (1.22%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.22%) IBM
11 4 (1.22%) VMware
12 3 (0.92%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.92%) Foundry
12 3 (0.92%) Veeam