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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 14 14
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 333 195 221
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.98% 9.03% 9.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.83% 10.25% 10.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 154 145
10th Percentile £391 £325 £413
25th Percentile £413 £395 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +9.70% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £575 £650
90th Percentile £700 £650 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 2 2
10th Percentile - £70.25 £45.91
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 £45.96
Median hourly rate £39.50 £82.50 £46.03
Median % change year-on-year -52.12% +79.23% -0.32%
75th Percentile £73.00 £89.38 £46.11
90th Percentile £74.60 £92.75 £46.15
England median hourly rate £67.50 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +0.75% -4.29% +7.28%

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 3,075 1,902 2,075
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.93% 88.10% 84.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,797 1,228 1,268
10th Percentile £281 £274 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £460 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.96% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £671 £675
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 123 194
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.75 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.91% -10.16% +4.78%
75th Percentile £75.00 £56.88 £51.91
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.75 £70.90
England median hourly rate £46.62 £25.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +85.35% -39.40% -2.35%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +6 221 £500 -4.76% 142
Cheshire -9 64 £500 +24.38% 26
Lancashire +7 29 £640 +21.90% 35
Merseyside -15 12 £568 +21.07% 7
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 23 (6.91%) Confluence
2 8 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.50%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.20%) SAS
5 3 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.60%) Apache
7 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.30%) Camunda
7 1 (0.30%) CMS
7 1 (0.30%) Drupal
7 1 (0.30%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.30%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.30%) nginx
7 1 (0.30%) SharePoint 2013
7 1 (0.30%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.30%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.60%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.60%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.60%) Trello
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.30%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.30%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.30%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.30%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.30%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 175 (52.55%) Azure
2 156 (46.85%) AWS
3 84 (25.23%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (16.52%) GCP
5 49 (14.71%) GitHub
6 37 (11.11%) Serverless
7 30 (9.01%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (8.11%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 20 (6.01%) Azure AKS
10 19 (5.71%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.50%) Amazon EKS
11 15 (4.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 14 (4.20%) Azure Monitor
12 14 (4.20%) OCI
12 14 (4.20%) SaaS
13 13 (3.90%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (3.90%) Entra ID
13 13 (3.90%) Power Platform
14 11 (3.30%) Amazon ECS
14 11 (3.30%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 38 (11.41%) Firewall
2 11 (3.30%) BGP
2 11 (3.30%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.30%) OSPF
2 11 (3.30%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.30%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.30%) WAN
3 10 (3.00%) BIG-IP
3 10 (3.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.70%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.70%) WLAN
5 8 (2.40%) DNS
6 7 (2.10%) Network Security
6 7 (2.10%) SSL
7 5 (1.50%) VPN
8 3 (0.90%) DHCP
8 3 (0.90%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.30%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.30%) MPLS
9 1 (0.30%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (8.71%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.21%) MongoDB
3 22 (6.61%) Relational Database
4 20 (6.01%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (4.20%) NoSQL
5 14 (4.20%) RDBMS
5 14 (4.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 12 (3.60%) MySQL
7 9 (2.70%) Elasticsearch
7 9 (2.70%) Oracle Database
8 8 (2.40%) Data Lake
8 8 (2.40%) Power BI
9 7 (2.10%) Ataccama
10 6 (1.80%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.50%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.50%) Data Vault
11 5 (1.50%) DocumentDB
12 4 (1.20%) Oracle Exadata
12 4 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
13 3 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 53 (15.92%) GitLab
2 42 (12.61%) Jenkins
3 41 (12.31%) Git
4 33 (9.91%) JIRA
5 13 (3.90%) Claude Code
6 12 (3.60%) Selenium
7 10 (3.00%) Postman
8 8 (2.40%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.40%) REST Assured
8 8 (2.40%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (1.80%) Gatling
10 6 (1.80%) JUnit
11 3 (0.90%) ClearCase
11 3 (0.90%) LoadRunner
11 3 (0.90%) Mockito
11 3 (0.90%) Serenity BDD
11 3 (0.90%) TestRail
11 3 (0.90%) Zephyr
12 2 (0.60%) Flyway
General
1 71 (21.32%) Finance
2 55 (16.52%) Social Skills
3 45 (13.51%) Public Sector
4 28 (8.41%) Banking
5 22 (6.61%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.50%) Retail
7 8 (2.40%) Military
8 3 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.90%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.90%) Local Government
8 3 (0.90%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.60%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.60%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.60%) Publishing
10 1 (0.30%) Corporate Banking
10 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.30%) Law
10 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 62 (18.62%) Senior
2 61 (18.32%) DevOps Engineer
3 48 (14.41%) Developer
3 48 (14.41%) Lead
4 27 (8.11%) Architect
5 22 (6.61%) Software Engineer
6 19 (5.71%) Cloud Engineer
6 19 (5.71%) Security Engineer
7 16 (4.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 16 (4.80%) Solutions Architect
8 15 (4.50%) Azure Engineer
8 15 (4.50%) Senior Developer
8 15 (4.50%) Senior DevOps
9 14 (4.20%) Analyst
9 14 (4.20%) DBA
9 14 (4.20%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 13 (3.90%) AWS Engineer
10 13 (3.90%) Java Developer
10 13 (3.90%) Lead Developer
11 12 (3.60%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (9.31%) Kafka
2 30 (9.01%) Spring
3 29 (8.71%) Spring Boot
4 26 (7.81%) React
4 26 (7.81%) REST
5 24 (7.21%) Node.js
6 18 (5.41%) .NET
6 18 (5.41%) JSON
7 13 (3.90%) Playwright
8 12 (3.60%) PySpark
9 11 (3.30%) AngularJS
9 11 (3.30%) RESTful
9 11 (3.30%) XML
10 8 (2.40%) ARM Templates
11 7 (2.10%) Next.js
12 5 (1.50%) LangChain
12 5 (1.50%) Langfuse
12 5 (1.50%) YAML
13 4 (1.20%) Entity Framework
13 4 (1.20%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 78 (23.42%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.01%) Product Ownership
2 20 (6.01%) Security Posture
3 16 (4.80%) Hybrid Cloud
3 16 (4.80%) Management Information System
4 14 (4.20%) Replication
5 12 (3.60%) Data Centre
6 11 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (2.70%) Clustering
8 9 (2.70%) Data Structures
8 9 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
9 8 (2.40%) Algorithms
10 7 (2.10%) AI Agents
10 7 (2.10%) Onboarding
11 6 (1.80%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.50%) Cloud Security Posture
12 5 (1.50%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.50%) Mainframe
12 5 (1.50%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 40 (12.01%) Linux
2 28 (8.41%) Windows
3 17 (5.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (2.10%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.90%) VMS
6 2 (0.60%) AIX
6 2 (0.60%) Unix
7 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (59.76%) CI/CD
2 122 (36.64%) Agile
3 92 (27.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (19.82%) Observability
5 59 (17.72%) Continuous Improvement
6 58 (17.42%) Microservices
7 53 (15.92%) Containerisation
7 53 (15.92%) Test Automation
8 51 (15.32%) AI
9 49 (14.71%) Software Engineering
10 45 (13.51%) Mentoring
11 39 (11.71%) Scrum
12 38 (11.41%) Platform Engineering
12 38 (11.41%) Problem-Solving
13 36 (10.81%) Migration
13 36 (10.81%) SDLC
13 36 (10.81%) Technical Leadership
14 35 (10.51%) Cloud Security
14 35 (10.51%) Event-Driven
15 34 (10.21%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 106 (31.83%) Python
2 79 (23.72%) Java
3 53 (15.92%) PowerShell
4 49 (14.71%) SQL
5 42 (12.61%) Bash
6 27 (8.11%) JavaScript
7 23 (6.91%) C#
7 23 (6.91%) TypeScript
8 16 (4.80%) Bicep
9 11 (3.30%) T-SQL
10 9 (2.70%) Rust
11 6 (1.80%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.90%) Go
12 3 (0.90%) VB
12 3 (0.90%) VB6
13 2 (0.60%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.60%) PROC SQL
13 2 (0.60%) Scala
14 1 (0.30%) C++
14 1 (0.30%) PHP
Qualifications
1 78 (23.42%) Security Cleared
2 60 (18.02%) SC Cleared
3 33 (9.91%) Degree
4 31 (9.31%) AWS Certification
4 31 (9.31%) Azure Certification
5 20 (6.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (6.01%) CISSP
6 12 (3.60%) DV Cleared
7 10 (3.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 10 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.80%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (1.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 3 (0.90%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.90%) CCIE
10 3 (0.90%) CCNP
10 3 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.90%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.60%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (8.71%) QA
2 14 (4.20%) Data Quality
3 12 (3.60%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.70%) GDPR
5 5 (1.50%) NIST
6 3 (0.90%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.90%) GRC
6 3 (0.90%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.90%) SLA
7 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.60%) WCAG
8 1 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.30%) PSD2
8 1 (0.30%) SEPA
8 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
8 1 (0.30%) Solvency II
System Software
1 79 (23.72%) Docker
2 11 (3.30%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (2.10%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.20%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.60%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 2 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.60%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.60%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 132 (39.64%) Terraform
2 96 (28.83%) Kubernetes
3 40 (12.01%) Ansible
4 20 (6.01%) Grafana
5 16 (4.80%) Prometheus
6 15 (4.50%) Progress Chef
7 11 (3.30%) Argo
8 8 (2.40%) Istio
9 5 (1.50%) SCOM
10 4 (1.20%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.20%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 2 (0.60%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.60%) linkerd
12 2 (0.60%) Packer
13 1 (0.30%) HP Fortify
13 1 (0.30%) vCenter Server
13 1 (0.30%) vRealize
13 1 (0.30%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 64 (19.22%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.41%) Google
3 19 (5.71%) Oracle
4 18 (5.41%) Red Hat
5 16 (4.80%) ServiceNow
5 16 (4.80%) Splunk
6 12 (3.60%) F5
6 12 (3.60%) Palo Alto
7 10 (3.00%) Aruba
8 9 (2.70%) Arista
8 9 (2.70%) Dynatrace
8 9 (2.70%) SAP
9 7 (2.10%) Databricks
9 7 (2.10%) OpenAI
10 5 (1.50%) Salesforce
11 4 (1.20%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.20%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.20%) VMware
12 3 (0.90%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.90%) Fortinet