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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 11 18 16
Rank change year-on-year +7 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 267 189 233
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.85% 8.10% 8.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.31% 9.56% 9.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 101 169
10th Percentile £317 £356 £413
25th Percentile £387 £413 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -13.71% -3.67% -5.22%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £625
90th Percentile £654 £656 £670
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 19
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -28.73% +38.12% -12.87%
75th Percentile - £77.50 -
90th Percentile £56.98 £83.50 £47.34
England median hourly rate £61.25 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% +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 2,169 1,977 2,373
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.13% 84.78% 88.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,447 1,068 1,627
10th Percentile £213 £294 £270
25th Percentile £358 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £670 £656 £675
England median daily rate £501 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.53% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 121 156
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £16.13
25th Percentile £19.23 £23.48 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £35.00 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year -15.43% -0.71% +46.88%
75th Percentile £45.88 £51.91 £46.35
90th Percentile £71.06 £69.75 £64.38
England median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +19.85%

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 November 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DevOps in the North West over the 6 months to 28 November 2025.

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 November 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 -3 134 £500 -9.09% 66
Cheshire +16 85 £430 +20.79% 23
Lancashire +2 31 £575 +9.52% 46
Merseyside -1 10 £510 +2.00% 5
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 21 (7.87%) Confluence
2 16 (5.99%) JBoss
3 15 (5.62%) Apache
4 12 (4.49%) IIS
5 11 (4.12%) WebSphere
6 9 (3.37%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.37%) iPlanet
6 9 (3.37%) WebSphere Application Server
7 7 (2.62%) CICS
8 4 (1.50%) OpenStack
9 3 (1.12%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.75%) NetWeaver
10 2 (0.75%) nginx
10 2 (0.75%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.37%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.37%) Mule
11 1 (0.37%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.75%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.37%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.87%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.37%) Maximo
2 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 136 (50.94%) AWS
2 105 (39.33%) Azure
3 48 (17.98%) Azure DevOps
4 33 (12.36%) Serverless
5 32 (11.99%) GitHub
6 30 (11.24%) GCP
7 29 (10.86%) AWS CloudFormation
8 22 (8.24%) OpenShift
9 19 (7.12%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (7.12%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (5.62%) Power Platform
11 12 (4.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (4.49%) Amazon ECS
12 11 (4.12%) Amazon EKS
13 10 (3.75%) Amazon S3
13 10 (3.75%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (3.75%) SaaS
14 9 (3.37%) Figma
15 8 (3.00%) Kong
15 8 (3.00%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 16 (5.99%) Firewall
2 9 (3.37%) Kerberos
3 5 (1.87%) HTTPS
4 4 (1.50%) SSL
4 4 (1.50%) VPN
5 3 (1.12%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.75%) DNS
6 2 (0.75%) Network Security
7 1 (0.37%) DHCP
7 1 (0.37%) VLAN
7 1 (0.37%) VoIP
7 1 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (4.87%) Relational Database
2 12 (4.49%) SQL Server
3 11 (4.12%) MongoDB
3 11 (4.12%) NoSQL
3 11 (4.12%) Oracle Database
4 10 (3.75%) RDBMS
5 9 (3.37%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (3.37%) Data Lake
5 9 (3.37%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (3.37%) Power BI
6 7 (2.62%) Tableau
7 5 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (1.87%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (1.50%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (1.50%) DocumentDB
9 3 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.12%) Metadata
9 3 (1.12%) MySQL
10 2 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 55 (20.60%) JIRA
2 49 (18.35%) Git
3 48 (17.98%) Jenkins
4 40 (14.98%) GitLab
5 18 (6.74%) Sonatype Nexus
6 13 (4.87%) Bitbucket Server
6 13 (4.87%) CA Release Automation
7 9 (3.37%) JUnit
7 9 (3.37%) Selenium
7 9 (3.37%) SonarQube
8 8 (3.00%) Bitbucket
9 7 (2.62%) Gradle
10 6 (2.25%) Cucumber
10 6 (2.25%) Storybook
10 6 (2.25%) Xcode
11 5 (1.87%) Maven
11 5 (1.87%) Postman
12 4 (1.50%) TeamCity
13 3 (1.12%) Cypress.io
13 3 (1.12%) Mockito
General
1 61 (22.85%) Social Skills
2 58 (21.72%) Finance
3 42 (15.73%) Public Sector
4 31 (11.61%) Banking
5 23 (8.61%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.87%) Publishing
9 4 (1.50%) Games
10 3 (1.12%) Military
10 3 (1.12%) Retail
11 2 (0.75%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.75%) Law
11 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.37%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (0.37%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 55 (20.60%) Developer
2 40 (14.98%) DevOps Engineer
3 35 (13.11%) Lead
3 35 (13.11%) Senior
4 22 (8.24%) Platform Engineer
5 20 (7.49%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (7.12%) AWS DevOps
7 16 (5.99%) Java Developer
8 15 (5.62%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 15 (5.62%) Software Engineer
9 13 (4.87%) Architect
10 11 (4.12%) Analyst
11 10 (3.75%) Cloud Engineer
12 9 (3.37%) Business Analyst
12 9 (3.37%) Senior Developer
12 9 (3.37%) Senior DevOps
13 8 (3.00%) Azure Engineer
13 8 (3.00%) DBA
13 8 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
14 7 (2.62%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (11.99%) Spring Boot
2 30 (11.24%) REST
3 28 (10.49%) JSON
4 26 (9.74%) OAuth
5 25 (9.36%) Spring
6 19 (7.12%) Kafka
6 19 (7.12%) React
6 19 (7.12%) XML
7 16 (5.99%) Node.js
8 15 (5.62%) .NET
8 15 (5.62%) HTML
8 15 (5.62%) RESTful
9 14 (5.24%) JMS
9 14 (5.24%) SOAP
10 11 (4.12%) Elastic Stack
11 10 (3.75%) AngularJS
11 10 (3.75%) OpenID
11 10 (3.75%) SAML
12 9 (3.37%) LDAP
13 8 (3.00%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 28 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.62%) Virtual Team
3 11 (4.12%) Product Ownership
3 11 (4.12%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 9 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
5 8 (3.00%) Mobile App
6 7 (2.62%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.62%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.62%) VSAM
7 5 (1.87%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.87%) IBM Mainframe
7 5 (1.87%) Management Information System
8 4 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (1.50%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.12%) Synthetic Data
9 3 (1.12%) Taxonomies
10 2 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.75%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 41 (15.36%) Linux
2 20 (7.49%) Windows
3 9 (3.37%) Unix
3 9 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 6 (2.25%) Android
4 6 (2.25%) Apple iOS
4 6 (2.25%) zOS
5 5 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (54.68%) CI/CD
2 104 (38.95%) Agile
3 60 (22.47%) Infrastructure as Code
4 55 (20.60%) Containerisation
5 41 (15.36%) Microservices
6 39 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
7 36 (13.48%) Continuous Improvement
7 36 (13.48%) Test Automation
8 35 (13.11%) Stakeholder Management
9 32 (11.99%) Change Management
9 32 (11.99%) ITIL
10 30 (11.24%) Observability
10 30 (11.24%) Project Delivery
11 27 (10.11%) SDLC
12 25 (9.36%) Cloud Security
13 24 (8.99%) Infrastructure Automation
14 22 (8.24%) Service Delivery
14 22 (8.24%) Software Engineering
15 21 (7.87%) Mentoring
15 21 (7.87%) Release Management
Programming Languages
1 59 (22.10%) Python
2 49 (18.35%) SQL
3 48 (17.98%) Java
4 24 (8.99%) Bash
5 20 (7.49%) TypeScript
6 17 (6.37%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.24%) C#
8 12 (4.49%) Groovy
8 12 (4.49%) Shell Script
9 9 (3.37%) Go
9 9 (3.37%) Perl
10 7 (2.62%) JCL
10 7 (2.62%) PowerShell
11 6 (2.25%) CLIST
11 6 (2.25%) REXX
12 4 (1.50%) Bicep
12 4 (1.50%) C++
12 4 (1.50%) Ruby
12 4 (1.50%) T-SQL
13 3 (1.12%) Scala
Qualifications
1 49 (18.35%) Security Cleared
2 38 (14.23%) SC Cleared
3 30 (11.24%) Degree
4 15 (5.62%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 14 (5.24%) AWS Certification
6 11 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (3.37%) Azure Certification
8 8 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (2.62%) CISSP
9 7 (2.62%) ITIL Certification
10 6 (2.25%) CISM
11 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
12 1 (0.37%) ISEB
12 1 (0.37%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.37%) SAFe Agilist
12 1 (0.37%) Tableau Certification
12 1 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (10.11%) QA
2 19 (7.12%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.24%) PSD2
4 12 (4.49%) SEPA
5 11 (4.12%) ISO 20022
6 8 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (3.00%) NIST
7 4 (1.50%) PCI DSS
8 3 (1.12%) Data Quality
8 3 (1.12%) GDPR
9 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.37%) GRC
9 1 (0.37%) HL7
9 1 (0.37%) SOC 1
9 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.37%) WCAG
System Software
1 72 (26.97%) Docker
2 14 (5.24%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.00%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 8 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.00%) vSphere
4 6 (2.25%) Time Sharing Option
5 2 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.75%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.37%) ISA Server
6 1 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 75 (28.09%) Kubernetes
2 72 (26.97%) Terraform
3 21 (7.87%) Ansible
4 17 (6.37%) Progress Chef
5 12 (4.49%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.75%) CA Single Sign-On
7 9 (3.37%) CA Wily
7 9 (3.37%) Grafana
8 8 (3.00%) Tivoli
9 7 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (2.25%) OMEGAMON
11 5 (1.87%) CA Endevor
12 4 (1.50%) Fluentd
12 4 (1.50%) Kibana
13 3 (1.12%) Packer
13 3 (1.12%) Podman
13 3 (1.12%) SELinux
14 1 (0.37%) Puppet
14 1 (0.37%) SCCM
14 1 (0.37%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 51 (19.10%) Microsoft
2 32 (11.99%) Oracle
3 26 (9.74%) Splunk
4 21 (7.87%) IBM
5 14 (5.24%) AppDynamics
5 14 (5.24%) ServiceNow
6 10 (3.75%) Broadcom
7 9 (3.37%) VMware
8 8 (3.00%) SAP
9 6 (2.25%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.25%) Dynatrace
9 6 (2.25%) F5
9 6 (2.25%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.87%) Axway
10 5 (1.87%) Cloudera
10 5 (1.87%) Databricks
11 4 (1.50%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.50%) Red Hat
11 4 (1.50%) Veracode
12 3 (1.12%) Software AG