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 1 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 15
Rank change year-on-year -3 +2 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 334 198 221
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.88% 9.09% 9.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.69% 10.31% 10.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 160 144
10th Percentile £387 £331 £413
25th Percentile £413 £393 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +10.11% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £634 £575 £650
90th Percentile £705 £673 £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 £67.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -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 3,123 1,920 2,037
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.06% 88.15% 84.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,821 1,232 1,246
10th Percentile £278 £278 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £461 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -7.75% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £671 £675
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 125 187
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.43 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.87% -12.52% +6.04%
75th Percentile £74.26 £58.27 £51.91
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.50 £70.90
England median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.03
% change year-on-year +78.93% -40.16% -1.11%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 +7 222 £500 -4.76% 150
Cheshire -7 64 £500 +24.38% 24
Lancashire +5 29 £640 +38.38% 21
Merseyside -14 12 £510 +8.80% 6
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 (6.89%) 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%) 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
1 176 (52.69%) Azure
2 156 (46.71%) AWS
3 86 (25.75%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (16.47%) GCP
5 52 (15.57%) GitHub
6 36 (10.78%) Serverless
7 32 (9.58%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (8.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 20 (5.99%) Azure AKS
10 18 (5.39%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (4.79%) Amazon EKS
12 15 (4.49%) Azure Monitor
12 15 (4.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 14 (4.19%) OCI
13 14 (4.19%) Power Platform
13 14 (4.19%) SaaS
14 13 (3.89%) Dynamics 365
14 13 (3.89%) Entra ID
15 12 (3.59%) Amazon ECS
15 12 (3.59%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 37 (11.08%) Firewall
2 11 (3.29%) BGP
2 11 (3.29%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.29%) OSPF
2 11 (3.29%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.29%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.29%) WAN
3 10 (2.99%) BIG-IP
3 10 (2.99%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.69%) WLAN
5 8 (2.40%) SSL
6 7 (2.10%) DNS
6 7 (2.10%) Network Security
7 5 (1.50%) VPN
8 2 (0.60%) DHCP
8 2 (0.60%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.30%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.30%) MPLS
9 1 (0.30%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (8.98%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.19%) MongoDB
3 21 (6.29%) Relational Database
4 20 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
5 15 (4.49%) NoSQL
5 15 (4.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 14 (4.19%) MySQL
6 14 (4.19%) RDBMS
7 9 (2.69%) Elasticsearch
7 9 (2.69%) Oracle Database
7 9 (2.69%) Power BI
8 8 (2.40%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.10%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.10%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.50%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.50%) Data Vault
11 4 (1.20%) Oracle Exadata
11 4 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (0.90%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 50 (14.97%) GitLab
2 42 (12.57%) Jenkins
3 41 (12.28%) Git
4 33 (9.88%) JIRA
5 14 (4.19%) Claude Code
6 12 (3.59%) Selenium
7 11 (3.29%) Postman
8 8 (2.40%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.40%) REST Assured
8 8 (2.40%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.10%) JUnit
9 7 (2.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (1.80%) Gatling
11 4 (1.20%) Mockito
12 3 (0.90%) ClearCase
12 3 (0.90%) LoadRunner
12 3 (0.90%) Serenity BDD
12 3 (0.90%) TestRail
12 3 (0.90%) Zephyr
13 2 (0.60%) Flyway
General
1 70 (20.96%) Finance
2 55 (16.47%) Social Skills
3 43 (12.87%) Public Sector
4 28 (8.38%) Banking
5 21 (6.29%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (5.09%) 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 64 (19.16%) Senior
2 62 (18.56%) DevOps Engineer
3 48 (14.37%) Lead
4 47 (14.07%) Developer
5 27 (8.08%) Architect
6 23 (6.89%) Software Engineer
7 19 (5.69%) Cloud Engineer
7 19 (5.69%) Security Engineer
8 16 (4.79%) Senior DevOps
8 16 (4.79%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.49%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.49%) DBA
9 15 (4.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (4.49%) Senior Developer
9 15 (4.49%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 14 (4.19%) Analyst
10 14 (4.19%) AWS Engineer
11 13 (3.89%) Java Developer
12 12 (3.59%) Lead Developer
12 12 (3.59%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (9.58%) Kafka
2 31 (9.28%) Spring
3 30 (8.98%) Spring Boot
4 28 (8.38%) REST
5 27 (8.08%) React
6 23 (6.89%) Node.js
7 18 (5.39%) .NET
7 18 (5.39%) JSON
8 14 (4.19%) Playwright
9 12 (3.59%) PySpark
9 12 (3.59%) RESTful
10 11 (3.29%) AngularJS
10 11 (3.29%) XML
11 8 (2.40%) ARM Templates
11 8 (2.40%) Next.js
12 5 (1.50%) Langfuse
12 5 (1.50%) Spring MVC
12 5 (1.50%) YAML
13 4 (1.20%) Entity Framework
13 4 (1.20%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 78 (23.35%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.99%) Security Posture
3 18 (5.39%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.79%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.79%) Management Information System
5 15 (4.49%) Replication
6 12 (3.59%) Data Centre
7 11 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (2.99%) Clustering
8 10 (2.99%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (2.99%) Distributed Systems
9 9 (2.69%) Data Structures
10 8 (2.40%) Algorithms
11 7 (2.10%) AI Agents
12 6 (1.80%) Onboarding
13 5 (1.50%) Cloud Security Posture
13 5 (1.50%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (1.50%) Mainframe
13 5 (1.50%) Public Cloud
14 4 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 39 (11.68%) Linux
2 28 (8.38%) Windows
3 17 (5.09%) 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%) Android
7 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (59.88%) CI/CD
2 124 (37.13%) Agile
3 92 (27.54%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (20.66%) Observability
5 61 (18.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 60 (17.96%) Microservices
7 55 (16.47%) Test Automation
8 53 (15.87%) Containerisation
9 52 (15.57%) AI
10 51 (15.27%) Software Engineering
11 43 (12.87%) Mentoring
12 39 (11.68%) Scrum
13 37 (11.08%) Event-Driven
13 37 (11.08%) Migration
13 37 (11.08%) Platform Engineering
14 36 (10.78%) Cloud Security
14 36 (10.78%) Problem-Solving
14 36 (10.78%) SDLC
14 36 (10.78%) Technical Leadership
15 35 (10.48%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 106 (31.74%) Python
2 80 (23.95%) Java
3 53 (15.87%) PowerShell
4 51 (15.27%) SQL
5 42 (12.57%) Bash
6 27 (8.08%) JavaScript
7 23 (6.89%) C#
8 22 (6.59%) TypeScript
9 16 (4.79%) Bicep
10 12 (3.59%) T-SQL
11 9 (2.69%) Rust
12 5 (1.50%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.90%) Go
13 3 (0.90%) VB
13 3 (0.90%) VB6
14 2 (0.60%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.60%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.60%) Scala
15 1 (0.30%) C++
15 1 (0.30%) PHP
Qualifications
1 78 (23.35%) Security Cleared
2 61 (18.26%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.18%) Degree
4 32 (9.58%) Azure Certification
5 31 (9.28%) AWS Certification
6 21 (6.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 20 (5.99%) CISSP
8 12 (3.59%) DV Cleared
9 11 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
10 10 (2.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (1.80%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (1.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 3 (0.90%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (0.90%) CCIE
13 3 (0.90%) CCNP
13 3 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.90%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.60%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (9.28%) QA
2 14 (4.19%) Data Quality
3 12 (3.59%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.69%) 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 77 (23.05%) Docker
2 11 (3.29%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.80%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.20%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.60%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.30%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 132 (39.52%) Terraform
2 95 (28.44%) Kubernetes
3 40 (11.98%) Ansible
4 20 (5.99%) Grafana
5 16 (4.79%) Prometheus
6 15 (4.49%) Progress Chef
7 11 (3.29%) Argo
8 8 (2.40%) Istio
9 6 (1.80%) SCOM
10 4 (1.20%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.20%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.60%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.60%) linkerd
12 2 (0.60%) Packer
13 1 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
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 65 (19.46%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.38%) Google
3 19 (5.69%) Oracle
4 18 (5.39%) Red Hat
5 17 (5.09%) ServiceNow
6 16 (4.79%) Splunk
7 12 (3.59%) Palo Alto
8 11 (3.29%) F5
9 10 (2.99%) Aruba
10 9 (2.69%) Arista
10 9 (2.69%) Dynatrace
10 9 (2.69%) SAP
11 7 (2.10%) Databricks
11 7 (2.10%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.50%) Salesforce
13 4 (1.20%) Atlassian
13 4 (1.20%) CyberArk
14 3 (0.90%) AppDynamics
14 3 (0.90%) Fortinet
14 3 (0.90%) IBM