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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 16 15
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 314 184 245
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.98% 9.25% 8.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.79% 10.32% 10.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 222 141 173
10th Percentile £393 £358 £413
25th Percentile £413 £402 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -6.29% -
75th Percentile £590 £575 £650
90th Percentile £675 £638 £820
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 £66.50
% change year-on-year -1.79% +5.26% +1.36%

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 2,911 1,783 2,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.27% 89.64% 83.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,715 1,186 1,451
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £455 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.45% -8.13% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £553 £585
90th Percentile £675 £664 £675
England median daily rate £520 £518 £525
% change year-on-year +0.48% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 101 270
10th Percentile £17.33 £12.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £27.14 £19.25 £14.15
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.88% +6.67% -1.77%
75th Percentile £76.00 £63.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.41 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.00 £27.13 £37.63
% change year-on-year +73.27% -27.91% +5.54%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +6 197 £500 -1.38% 128
Cheshire -2 72 £455 +11.72% 7
Lancashire +2 25 £608 +10.45% 37
Merseyside -6 15 £510 -2.63% 8
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 28 (8.92%) Confluence
2 9 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.59%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.64%) Apache
5 2 (0.64%) SAS
6 1 (0.32%) Camunda
6 1 (0.32%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.32%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 10 (3.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.96%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.64%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.64%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.32%) NEC Housing
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
1 171 (54.46%) Azure
2 139 (44.27%) AWS
3 72 (22.93%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (17.52%) GCP
5 43 (13.69%) Serverless
6 39 (12.42%) GitHub
7 26 (8.28%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 22 (7.01%) AWS Lambda
9 21 (6.69%) Azure AKS
9 21 (6.69%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (4.78%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
10 15 (4.78%) SaaS
10 15 (4.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (4.46%) Amazon S3
12 12 (3.82%) Amazon EKS
13 11 (3.50%) Entra ID
13 11 (3.50%) OCI
13 11 (3.50%) Power Platform
14 10 (3.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 32 (10.19%) Firewall
2 10 (3.18%) BGP
2 10 (3.18%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.18%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.18%) OSPF
2 10 (3.18%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.18%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.18%) WAN
3 9 (2.87%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.87%) WLAN
4 7 (2.23%) DNS
4 7 (2.23%) Network Security
5 4 (1.27%) DHCP
6 3 (0.96%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.64%) NetScaler
7 2 (0.64%) VPN
8 1 (0.32%) iSCSI
8 1 (0.32%) NAS
8 1 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.37%) MongoDB
1 20 (6.37%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (6.05%) Relational Database
2 19 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 14 (4.46%) NoSQL
4 10 (3.18%) RDBMS
5 9 (2.87%) DocumentDB
5 9 (2.87%) DynamoDB
5 9 (2.87%) Tableau
6 8 (2.55%) Data Lake
6 8 (2.55%) Oracle Database
7 7 (2.23%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (2.23%) Ataccama
7 7 (2.23%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (2.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.91%) BigQuery
9 5 (1.59%) MySQL
10 4 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (18.15%) GitLab
2 42 (13.38%) JIRA
3 41 (13.06%) Git
4 40 (12.74%) Jenkins
5 14 (4.46%) Selenium
6 10 (3.18%) REST Assured
7 9 (2.87%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.55%) Gatling
8 8 (2.55%) JUnit
8 8 (2.55%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.23%) Postman
10 6 (1.91%) Mocha
10 6 (1.91%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (1.59%) Cypress.io
11 5 (1.59%) Gradle
11 5 (1.59%) Serenity BDD
12 4 (1.27%) CircleCI
12 4 (1.27%) Claude Code
13 3 (0.96%) ClearCase
13 3 (0.96%) Maven
General
1 65 (20.70%) Finance
2 59 (18.79%) Social Skills
3 58 (18.47%) Public Sector
4 31 (9.87%) Banking
5 20 (6.37%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.23%) Retail
7 6 (1.91%) Military
8 3 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.96%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (0.96%) Local Government
8 3 (0.96%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.64%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.64%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.64%) Publishing
10 1 (0.32%) Advertising
10 1 (0.32%) Law
10 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 54 (17.20%) Developer
1 54 (17.20%) DevOps Engineer
2 49 (15.61%) Senior
3 43 (13.69%) Lead
4 35 (11.15%) Architect
5 20 (6.37%) Solutions Architect
6 19 (6.05%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 18 (5.73%) Software Engineer
8 17 (5.41%) Analyst
9 15 (4.78%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.78%) Lead Developer
9 15 (4.78%) Security Engineer
9 15 (4.78%) Software Developer
10 13 (4.14%) Cloud Engineer
10 13 (4.14%) Senior Developer
11 11 (3.50%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.50%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 10 (3.18%) Platform Engineer
13 9 (2.87%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (14.65%) Spring
2 45 (14.33%) Spring Boot
3 29 (9.24%) REST
4 26 (8.28%) React
5 25 (7.96%) Kafka
5 25 (7.96%) Node.js
6 16 (5.10%) .NET
6 16 (5.10%) Playwright
7 15 (4.78%) XML
8 13 (4.14%) JSON
9 12 (3.82%) AngularJS
10 10 (3.18%) PySpark
11 8 (2.55%) GraphQL
11 8 (2.55%) RESTful
12 7 (2.23%) ARM Templates
12 7 (2.23%) OAuth
13 6 (1.91%) Jest
14 5 (1.59%) Spring Cloud
15 4 (1.27%) .NET Core
15 4 (1.27%) Nunjucks
Miscellaneous
1 71 (22.61%) Cloud Native
2 26 (8.28%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.78%) Security Posture
4 13 (4.14%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (4.14%) Management Information System
5 12 (3.82%) Data Centre
6 11 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.18%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (3.18%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.18%) Public Cloud
8 9 (2.87%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.23%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.91%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.59%) e-Learning
11 5 (1.59%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.59%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.59%) NHS
11 5 (1.59%) Replication
12 4 (1.27%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 33 (10.51%) Linux
2 18 (5.73%) Windows
3 13 (4.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.96%) VMS
5 2 (0.64%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (61.15%) CI/CD
2 118 (37.58%) Agile
3 79 (25.16%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (21.02%) Microservices
5 55 (17.52%) Observability
6 53 (16.88%) Test Automation
7 51 (16.24%) Containerisation
8 44 (14.01%) Continuous Improvement
9 38 (12.10%) Mentoring
10 37 (11.78%) Problem-Solving
11 34 (10.83%) AI
12 32 (10.19%) Scrum
12 32 (10.19%) Software Engineering
12 32 (10.19%) Stakeholder Management
13 31 (9.87%) Migration
13 31 (9.87%) Technical Leadership
14 29 (9.24%) Platform Engineering
15 28 (8.92%) SDLC
16 27 (8.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 27 (8.60%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 89 (28.34%) Java
1 89 (28.34%) Python
2 41 (13.06%) SQL
3 39 (12.42%) PowerShell
4 29 (9.24%) Bash
5 25 (7.96%) JavaScript
6 21 (6.69%) TypeScript
7 17 (5.41%) C#
8 8 (2.55%) Bicep
9 7 (2.23%) Rust
10 6 (1.91%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.91%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.27%) Go
12 3 (0.96%) VB
12 3 (0.96%) VB6
13 2 (0.64%) C++
13 2 (0.64%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.64%) PROC SQL
14 1 (0.32%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 70 (22.29%) Security Cleared
2 47 (14.97%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.55%) AWS Certification
3 30 (9.55%) Degree
4 25 (7.96%) Azure Certification
5 20 (6.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (5.10%) CISSP
7 11 (3.50%) DV Cleared
8 10 (3.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 10 (3.18%) ITIL Certification
9 6 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.27%) IBM Certification
11 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.96%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.64%) CCIE
12 2 (0.64%) CCNP
12 2 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.64%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (5.73%) Accessibility
1 18 (5.73%) QA
2 11 (3.50%) Data Quality
3 9 (2.87%) GDPR
4 5 (1.59%) NIST
4 5 (1.59%) WCAG
5 4 (1.27%) ISO 20022
5 4 (1.27%) PSD2
5 4 (1.27%) SEPA
5 4 (1.27%) SLA
6 3 (0.96%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.96%) GRC
6 3 (0.96%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.32%) NEBOSH
8 1 (0.32%) PMO
8 1 (0.32%) Solvency II
System Software
1 80 (25.48%) Docker
2 7 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.96%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.96%) vSphere
6 2 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 109 (34.71%) Terraform
2 88 (28.03%) Kubernetes
3 31 (9.87%) Ansible
4 19 (6.05%) Grafana
5 15 (4.78%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.50%) Progress Chef
7 10 (3.18%) Istio
8 8 (2.55%) Argo
9 4 (1.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.64%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.64%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.64%) linkerd
10 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.64%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.64%) Packer
10 2 (0.64%) SCCM
11 1 (0.32%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.32%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 57 (18.15%) Microsoft
2 30 (9.55%) Google
3 21 (6.69%) Oracle
4 15 (4.78%) Splunk
5 14 (4.46%) Red Hat
6 13 (4.14%) F5
7 10 (3.18%) Aruba
7 10 (3.18%) Palo Alto
8 9 (2.87%) Arista
8 9 (2.87%) OpenAI
8 9 (2.87%) ServiceNow
9 7 (2.23%) Databricks
10 6 (1.91%) IBM
11 5 (1.59%) Dynatrace
11 5 (1.59%) SAP
12 4 (1.27%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.27%) MuleSoft
12 4 (1.27%) VMware
13 3 (0.96%) Foundry
13 3 (0.96%) Veeam