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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 15 17
Rank change year-on-year +1 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 309 181 240
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.96% 9.08% 8.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.74% 10.13% 10.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 137 171
10th Percentile £393 £358 £413
25th Percentile £413 £402 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £584 £650
90th Percentile £675 £643 £825
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 2 3
10th Percentile £25.38 £70.25 -
25th Percentile £28.35 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £42.69 £82.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -48.26% +79.82% +13.28%
75th Percentile £74.50 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £82.75 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £68.75 £65.50
% change year-on-year -1.82% +4.96% -0.08%

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 2,877 1,787 2,342
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.39% 89.62% 84.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,722 1,182 1,434
10th Percentile £300 £306 £311
25th Percentile £400 £385 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% -7.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £557 £588
90th Percentile £675 £665 £675
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 98 275
10th Percentile £17.13 £13.30 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £19.85 £14.13
Median hourly rate £55.00 £31.88 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.52% +13.86% -8.32%
75th Percentile £75.75 £63.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.74 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +69.64% -25.33% +5.63%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +10 194 £518 +0.68% 106
Cheshire -5 69 £468 +14.92% 12
Lancashire +4 26 £608 +8.00% 37
Merseyside -12 15 £510 -2.63% 10
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 25 (8.09%) Confluence
2 9 (2.91%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.62%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.65%) Apache
5 2 (0.65%) 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 (3.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.97%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.65%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.65%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.29%) 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
1 168 (54.37%) Azure
2 140 (45.31%) AWS
3 70 (22.65%) Azure DevOps
4 53 (17.15%) GCP
5 44 (14.24%) Serverless
6 38 (12.30%) GitHub
7 24 (7.77%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 23 (7.44%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (7.12%) Azure AKS
9 22 (7.12%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (4.85%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (4.85%) SaaS
11 14 (4.53%) Amazon S3
11 14 (4.53%) Dynamics 365
11 14 (4.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 13 (4.21%) Amazon EKS
13 11 (3.56%) Entra ID
13 11 (3.56%) Microsoft 365
13 11 (3.56%) OCI
14 10 (3.24%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.71%) Firewall
2 10 (3.24%) BGP
2 10 (3.24%) BIG-IP
2 10 (3.24%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (3.24%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 10 (3.24%) OSPF
2 10 (3.24%) SD-WAN
2 10 (3.24%) VXLAN
2 10 (3.24%) WAN
3 9 (2.91%) Wi-Fi
3 9 (2.91%) WLAN
4 8 (2.59%) DNS
5 7 (2.27%) Network Security
6 5 (1.62%) DHCP
7 4 (1.29%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.97%) NetScaler
9 2 (0.65%) VPN
10 1 (0.32%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
10 1 (0.32%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (5.50%) MongoDB
3 16 (5.18%) Relational Database
3 16 (5.18%) SQL Server
4 14 (4.53%) NoSQL
5 9 (2.91%) DocumentDB
5 9 (2.91%) DynamoDB
5 9 (2.91%) Tableau
6 8 (2.59%) Data Lake
6 8 (2.59%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.59%) RDBMS
7 7 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (2.27%) Ataccama
7 7 (2.27%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (2.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.94%) BigQuery
9 5 (1.62%) MySQL
10 4 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (18.45%) GitLab
2 42 (13.59%) JIRA
3 37 (11.97%) Git
4 35 (11.33%) Jenkins
5 13 (4.21%) Selenium
6 9 (2.91%) REST Assured
7 8 (2.59%) JUnit
8 7 (2.27%) Cucumber
8 7 (2.27%) Gatling
8 7 (2.27%) Mocha
9 6 (1.94%) Cypress.io
9 6 (1.94%) Postman
9 6 (1.94%) SonarQube
10 5 (1.62%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.62%) Serenity BDD
11 4 (1.29%) Gradle
11 4 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
12 3 (0.97%) ClearCase
12 3 (0.97%) Maven
13 2 (0.65%) Liquibase
General
1 64 (20.71%) Finance
2 59 (19.09%) Public Sector
3 58 (18.77%) Social Skills
4 29 (9.39%) Banking
5 20 (6.47%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.27%) Retail
7 5 (1.62%) Military
8 3 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.97%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (0.97%) Local Government
8 3 (0.97%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.65%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.65%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.65%) 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 55 (17.80%) DevOps Engineer
2 52 (16.83%) Developer
3 47 (15.21%) Senior
4 42 (13.59%) Lead
5 34 (11.00%) Architect
6 21 (6.80%) Solutions Architect
7 20 (6.47%) Java Developer
8 19 (6.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 18 (5.83%) Software Engineer
10 17 (5.50%) Analyst
11 15 (4.85%) Azure Engineer
11 15 (4.85%) Security Engineer
11 15 (4.85%) Software Developer
12 14 (4.53%) Lead Developer
13 13 (4.21%) Cloud Engineer
14 12 (3.88%) Senior Developer
15 11 (3.56%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 11 (3.56%) Platform Engineer
15 11 (3.56%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 10 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (14.56%) Spring
2 44 (14.24%) Spring Boot
3 29 (9.39%) REST
4 28 (9.06%) React
5 24 (7.77%) Node.js
6 21 (6.80%) Kafka
7 17 (5.50%) .NET
8 16 (5.18%) Playwright
9 15 (4.85%) XML
10 14 (4.53%) AngularJS
11 10 (3.24%) JSON
11 10 (3.24%) PySpark
12 8 (2.59%) GraphQL
12 8 (2.59%) RESTful
13 7 (2.27%) ARM Templates
13 7 (2.27%) Jest
13 7 (2.27%) OAuth
14 5 (1.62%) Spring Cloud
15 4 (1.29%) .NET Core
15 4 (1.29%) Nunjucks
Miscellaneous
1 68 (22.01%) Cloud Native
2 26 (8.41%) Product Ownership
3 13 (4.21%) Hybrid Cloud
3 13 (4.21%) Security Posture
4 12 (3.88%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.56%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.56%) Management Information System
5 11 (3.56%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.24%) Public Cloud
7 9 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.91%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.27%) AI Agents
9 6 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.94%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.62%) e-Learning
10 5 (1.62%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.62%) NHS
10 5 (1.62%) Replication
11 4 (1.29%) Clustering
11 4 (1.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 31 (10.03%) Linux
2 18 (5.83%) Windows
3 12 (3.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.97%) VMS
4 3 (0.97%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2012
4 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (60.19%) CI/CD
2 115 (37.22%) Agile
3 78 (25.24%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (21.36%) Microservices
5 53 (17.15%) Observability
6 52 (16.83%) Test Automation
7 51 (16.50%) Containerisation
8 43 (13.92%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (11.97%) Mentoring
9 37 (11.97%) Problem-Solving
10 33 (10.68%) Stakeholder Management
11 32 (10.36%) Software Engineering
12 31 (10.03%) AI
12 31 (10.03%) Technical Leadership
13 30 (9.71%) Migration
13 30 (9.71%) Scrum
14 29 (9.39%) Platform Engineering
15 27 (8.74%) Cloud Security
15 27 (8.74%) Event-Driven
15 27 (8.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 87 (28.16%) Java
2 84 (27.18%) Python
3 37 (11.97%) SQL
4 35 (11.33%) PowerShell
5 27 (8.74%) Bash
6 26 (8.41%) JavaScript
7 23 (7.44%) TypeScript
8 13 (4.21%) C#
9 8 (2.59%) Bicep
10 7 (2.27%) Rust
11 6 (1.94%) Shell Script
11 6 (1.94%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.29%) Go
13 3 (0.97%) VB
13 3 (0.97%) VB6
14 2 (0.65%) C++
14 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.65%) PROC SQL
15 1 (0.32%) ActionScript
15 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 68 (22.01%) Security Cleared
2 46 (14.89%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.71%) Degree
4 29 (9.39%) AWS Certification
5 25 (8.09%) Azure Certification
6 20 (6.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (4.85%) CISSP
8 11 (3.56%) DV Cleared
9 10 (3.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 10 (3.24%) ITIL Certification
10 7 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (1.29%) IBM Certification
12 3 (0.97%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 3 (0.97%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.65%) CCIE
13 2 (0.65%) CCNP
13 2 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.65%) CISM
13 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.65%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (6.15%) Accessibility
2 18 (5.83%) QA
3 10 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.24%) GDPR
4 6 (1.94%) NIST
4 6 (1.94%) WCAG
5 5 (1.62%) ISO 20022
5 5 (1.62%) PSD2
6 4 (1.29%) SEPA
6 4 (1.29%) SLA
7 3 (0.97%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.97%) GRC
7 3 (0.97%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.32%) NEBOSH
8 1 (0.32%) PMO
8 1 (0.32%) Solvency II
System Software
1 77 (24.92%) Docker
2 8 (2.59%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.94%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.62%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (1.29%) vSphere
6 2 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 107 (34.63%) Terraform
2 85 (27.51%) Kubernetes
3 27 (8.74%) Ansible
4 17 (5.50%) Grafana
5 14 (4.53%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.24%) Progress Chef
7 8 (2.59%) Argo
7 8 (2.59%) Istio
8 5 (1.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (0.97%) SCCM
11 2 (0.65%) CA Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.65%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.65%) linkerd
11 2 (0.65%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.65%) Packer
12 1 (0.32%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 54 (17.48%) Microsoft
2 28 (9.06%) Google
3 21 (6.80%) Oracle
4 14 (4.53%) F5
4 14 (4.53%) Splunk
5 13 (4.21%) Red Hat
6 10 (3.24%) Aruba
6 10 (3.24%) Palo Alto
7 9 (2.91%) Arista
7 9 (2.91%) OpenAI
8 8 (2.59%) ServiceNow
9 7 (2.27%) Databricks
10 5 (1.62%) IBM
10 5 (1.62%) SAP
10 5 (1.62%) VMware
11 4 (1.29%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.29%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.29%) Veeam
12 3 (0.97%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.97%) Foundry