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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 16 15
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 323 184 241
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.09% 9.02% 8.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.87% 10.17% 10.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 143 168
10th Percentile £390 £342 £413
25th Percentile £413 £400 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -7.62% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £645
90th Percentile £675 £648 £833
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 2 3
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £42.69 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -48.26% +79.82% +13.28%
75th Percentile £75.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £84.50 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £68.75 £70.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -1.79% - +6.70%

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 2,971 1,809 2,331
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.64% 88.72% 84.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,738 1,201 1,423
10th Percentile £300 £300 £305
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £455 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.51% -8.18% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £565 £585
90th Percentile £675 £665 £675
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 111 265
10th Percentile £17.25 £12.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £19.13 £14.22
Median hourly rate £50.00 £31.76 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.43% +5.87% -1.77%
75th Percentile £76.00 £61.50 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.00 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.23 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.32% -33.83% +1.65%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 +7 206 £500 -1.38% 103
Cheshire -3 69 £481 +19.71% 7
Lancashire +5 28 £608 +10.45% 28
Merseyside -11 13 £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 27 (8.36%) Confluence
2 9 (2.79%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.55%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.93%) SAS
5 2 (0.62%) Apache
6 1 (0.31%) Camunda
6 1 (0.31%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.31%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.31%) nginx
6 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 7 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.86%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.93%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.62%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.62%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.24%) 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
1 180 (55.73%) Azure
2 140 (43.34%) AWS
3 79 (24.46%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (17.03%) GCP
5 43 (13.31%) Serverless
6 40 (12.38%) GitHub
7 25 (7.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 23 (7.12%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (6.81%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (6.81%) Azure AKS
10 15 (4.64%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (4.64%) Amazon S3
10 15 (4.64%) Dynamics 365
10 15 (4.64%) Power Platform
10 15 (4.64%) SaaS
10 15 (4.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (3.72%) Entra ID
12 11 (3.41%) Amazon EKS
12 11 (3.41%) OCI
13 10 (3.10%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 34 (10.53%) Firewall
2 10 (3.10%) BGP
2 10 (3.10%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.10%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.10%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.10%) OSPF
2 10 (3.10%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.10%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.10%) WAN
3 9 (2.79%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.79%) WLAN
4 8 (2.48%) DNS
5 7 (2.17%) Network Security
6 5 (1.55%) SSL
7 4 (1.24%) DHCP
8 3 (0.93%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.93%) VPN
9 2 (0.62%) NetScaler
10 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (8.05%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.43%) MongoDB
3 20 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (6.19%) Relational Database
4 14 (4.33%) NoSQL
5 12 (3.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 10 (3.10%) RDBMS
7 9 (2.79%) DocumentDB
7 9 (2.79%) DynamoDB
8 8 (2.48%) Data Lake
8 8 (2.48%) MySQL
8 8 (2.48%) Oracle Database
9 7 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
9 7 (2.17%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (2.17%) Power BI
10 6 (1.86%) BigQuery
10 6 (1.86%) Tableau
11 4 (1.24%) Data Vault
11 4 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 58 (17.96%) GitLab
2 45 (13.93%) Jenkins
3 44 (13.62%) Git
4 41 (12.69%) JIRA
5 14 (4.33%) Selenium
6 10 (3.10%) REST Assured
7 9 (2.79%) Postman
8 8 (2.48%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.48%) Gatling
8 8 (2.48%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.17%) JUnit
10 6 (1.86%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (1.55%) Claude Code
11 5 (1.55%) Gradle
11 5 (1.55%) Mocha
11 5 (1.55%) Serenity BDD
12 4 (1.24%) Cypress.io
13 3 (0.93%) CircleCI
13 3 (0.93%) ClearCase
13 3 (0.93%) Maven
General
1 66 (20.43%) Finance
2 59 (18.27%) Social Skills
3 55 (17.03%) Public Sector
4 30 (9.29%) Banking
5 21 (6.50%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (2.48%) Retail
7 6 (1.86%) Military
8 4 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.93%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.93%) Local Government
9 3 (0.93%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.62%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.62%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.62%) Publishing
11 1 (0.31%) Advertising
11 1 (0.31%) Law
11 1 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.31%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 56 (17.34%) Developer
2 54 (16.72%) DevOps Engineer
3 48 (14.86%) Senior
4 46 (14.24%) Lead
5 36 (11.15%) Architect
6 19 (5.88%) Solutions Architect
7 18 (5.57%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.57%) Software Engineer
8 17 (5.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (4.64%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.64%) Lead Developer
9 15 (4.64%) Security Engineer
9 15 (4.64%) Software Developer
10 14 (4.33%) Analyst
11 13 (4.02%) Cloud Engineer
11 13 (4.02%) DBA
11 13 (4.02%) Senior Developer
12 11 (3.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 11 (3.41%) Platform Engineer
13 10 (3.10%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (13.93%) Spring
2 44 (13.62%) Spring Boot
3 30 (9.29%) Kafka
4 27 (8.36%) REST
5 24 (7.43%) Node.js
5 24 (7.43%) React
6 17 (5.26%) .NET
6 17 (5.26%) Playwright
7 15 (4.64%) JSON
8 13 (4.02%) XML
9 11 (3.41%) AngularJS
9 11 (3.41%) PySpark
10 9 (2.79%) RESTful
11 8 (2.48%) GraphQL
12 7 (2.17%) ARM Templates
13 5 (1.55%) Jest
13 5 (1.55%) LangChain
13 5 (1.55%) OAuth
13 5 (1.55%) Spring Cloud
14 4 (1.24%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 73 (22.60%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.12%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.95%) Security Posture
4 15 (4.64%) Management Information System
5 14 (4.33%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.72%) Data Centre
7 10 (3.10%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.10%) Replication
8 9 (2.79%) Public Cloud
9 8 (2.48%) Clustering
9 8 (2.48%) Onboarding
9 8 (2.48%) Private Cloud
10 7 (2.17%) AI Agents
10 7 (2.17%) Data Structures
11 6 (1.86%) Algorithms
12 5 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (1.55%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.55%) Mainframe
12 5 (1.55%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.22%) Linux
2 22 (6.81%) Windows
3 13 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.86%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.24%) VMS
6 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.31%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (59.75%) CI/CD
2 119 (36.84%) Agile
3 79 (24.46%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (19.81%) Microservices
5 55 (17.03%) Observability
5 55 (17.03%) Test Automation
6 51 (15.79%) Containerisation
7 44 (13.62%) Continuous Improvement
8 39 (12.07%) AI
9 37 (11.46%) Problem-Solving
10 35 (10.84%) Mentoring
11 34 (10.53%) Software Engineering
12 33 (10.22%) Scrum
13 32 (9.91%) Migration
13 32 (9.91%) SDLC
14 31 (9.60%) Platform Engineering
15 30 (9.29%) Stakeholder Management
15 30 (9.29%) Technical Leadership
16 29 (8.98%) Machine Learning
17 28 (8.67%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 90 (27.86%) Python
2 88 (27.24%) Java
3 48 (14.86%) SQL
4 47 (14.55%) PowerShell
5 29 (8.98%) Bash
6 25 (7.74%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.50%) C#
7 21 (6.50%) TypeScript
8 10 (3.10%) T-SQL
9 9 (2.79%) Bicep
10 7 (2.17%) Rust
11 6 (1.86%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.93%) Go
12 3 (0.93%) VB
12 3 (0.93%) VB6
13 2 (0.62%) C++
13 2 (0.62%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.62%) PROC SQL
14 1 (0.31%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 75 (23.22%) Security Cleared
2 54 (16.72%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.53%) Degree
4 29 (8.98%) AWS Certification
5 27 (8.36%) Azure Certification
6 20 (6.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (5.26%) CISSP
8 12 (3.72%) DV Cleared
9 10 (3.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (2.48%) ITIL Certification
10 8 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (0.93%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 3 (0.93%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 3 (0.93%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.62%) CCIE
13 2 (0.62%) CCNP
13 2 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.62%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.62%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (6.19%) QA
2 17 (5.26%) Accessibility
3 13 (4.02%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.79%) GDPR
5 5 (1.55%) NIST
6 4 (1.24%) ISO 20022
6 4 (1.24%) PSD2
6 4 (1.24%) SEPA
6 4 (1.24%) SLA
6 4 (1.24%) WCAG
7 3 (0.93%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.93%) GRC
7 3 (0.93%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.31%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
9 1 (0.31%) Solvency II
System Software
1 80 (24.77%) Docker
2 10 (3.10%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (2.17%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.93%) vSphere
6 2 (0.62%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.31%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 110 (34.06%) Terraform
2 88 (27.24%) Kubernetes
3 34 (10.53%) Ansible
4 21 (6.50%) Grafana
5 16 (4.95%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.41%) Progress Chef
7 9 (2.79%) Argo
7 9 (2.79%) Istio
8 4 (1.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.24%) SCOM
8 4 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.62%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.62%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.62%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.62%) linkerd
9 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.62%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.62%) Packer
9 2 (0.62%) SCCM
10 1 (0.31%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 65 (20.12%) Microsoft
2 30 (9.29%) Google
3 21 (6.50%) Oracle
4 16 (4.95%) Splunk
5 14 (4.33%) Red Hat
5 14 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 13 (4.02%) F5
7 10 (3.10%) Aruba
7 10 (3.10%) Palo Alto
8 9 (2.79%) Arista
8 9 (2.79%) OpenAI
9 8 (2.48%) Databricks
10 7 (2.17%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.86%) SAP
12 5 (1.55%) IBM
13 4 (1.24%) CyberArk
13 4 (1.24%) VMware
14 3 (0.93%) Atlassian
14 3 (0.93%) Foundry
14 3 (0.93%) Veeam