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 23 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 20 16
Rank change year-on-year +4 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 283 173 252
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.89% 8.86% 9.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.62% 9.80% 10.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 125 181
10th Percentile £371 £385 £413
25th Percentile £420 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £530
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -3.02% -3.64%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £606
90th Percentile £650 £668 £800
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 2 3
10th Percentile £25.38 £68.00 -
25th Percentile £39.53 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £72.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -37.30% +58.02% +7.06%
75th Percentile £46.32 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.00 -
England median hourly rate £63.73 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.96% +7.69% -0.76%

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 2,664 1,765 2,397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.64% 90.42% 86.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,650 1,137 1,556
10th Percentile £263 £300 £306
25th Percentile £375 £393 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £652 £665 £689
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 111 244
10th Percentile £20.84 £16.25 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.72 £13.20
Median hourly rate £50.50 £32.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.81% +52.38% -40.00%
75th Percentile £73.44 £60.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.41 £52.78
England median hourly rate £42.50 £31.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.10% -11.43% -6.67%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 -1 159 £500 -4.76% 129
Cheshire +3 79 £481 +12.19% 12
Lancashire -2 24 £500 -13.04% 52
Merseyside -9 17 £510 -2.86% 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 30 (10.60%) Confluence
2 8 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.77%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.06%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.35%) Apache
5 1 (0.35%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (4.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (4.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.77%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.71%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.71%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.71%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.35%) Dynamics AX
Cloud Services
1 139 (49.12%) Azure
2 132 (46.64%) AWS
3 63 (22.26%) Azure DevOps
4 46 (16.25%) Serverless
5 42 (14.84%) GitHub
6 41 (14.49%) GCP
7 29 (10.25%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (6.01%) Amazon EKS
8 17 (6.01%) AWS CloudFormation
9 16 (5.65%) Amazon S3
9 16 (5.65%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (4.95%) Azure AKS
10 14 (4.95%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 13 (4.59%) Dynamics 365
12 12 (4.24%) Amazon EC2
13 11 (3.89%) Amazon ECS
13 11 (3.89%) Entra ID
13 11 (3.89%) Microsoft 365
14 10 (3.53%) Power Platform
15 8 (2.83%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 15 (5.30%) Firewall
2 8 (2.83%) DNS
3 6 (2.12%) DHCP
4 5 (1.77%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.41%) NetScaler
5 4 (1.41%) Network Security
6 2 (0.71%) VPN
7 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
7 1 (0.35%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
7 1 (0.35%) NAS
7 1 (0.35%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.35%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (8.13%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (6.71%) NoSQL
3 18 (6.36%) MongoDB
4 15 (5.30%) Relational Database
5 14 (4.95%) DynamoDB
6 13 (4.59%) Tableau
7 12 (4.24%) RDBMS
8 11 (3.89%) SQL Server
9 9 (3.18%) Oracle Reports
10 8 (2.83%) DocumentDB
11 7 (2.47%) Elasticsearch
12 6 (2.12%) Amazon RDS
13 5 (1.77%) Data Lake
13 5 (1.77%) Oracle Database
14 3 (1.06%) Data Vault
14 3 (1.06%) Metadata
14 3 (1.06%) MySQL
14 3 (1.06%) Power BI
15 2 (0.71%) Spark SQL
15 2 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 50 (17.67%) JIRA
2 41 (14.49%) GitLab
3 35 (12.37%) Git
4 29 (10.25%) Jenkins
5 8 (2.83%) CircleCI
5 8 (2.83%) Cypress.io
5 8 (2.83%) Mocha
6 7 (2.47%) JUnit
7 4 (1.41%) Selenium
7 4 (1.41%) SonarQube
8 3 (1.06%) Gradle
8 3 (1.06%) Jasmine
8 3 (1.06%) Maven
8 3 (1.06%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.71%) Flyway
9 2 (0.71%) Gatling
9 2 (0.71%) Liquibase
9 2 (0.71%) Serenity BDD
10 1 (0.35%) Robot Framework
General
1 66 (23.32%) Social Skills
2 58 (20.49%) Finance
3 57 (20.14%) Public Sector
4 29 (10.25%) Banking
5 22 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.41%) Law
6 4 (1.41%) Retail
7 3 (1.06%) Financial Institution
7 3 (1.06%) Local Government
7 3 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (0.71%) Health Technology
8 2 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.71%) Military
8 2 (0.71%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.35%) Corporate Banking
9 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 56 (19.79%) Developer
2 46 (16.25%) Lead
3 37 (13.07%) DevOps Engineer
4 32 (11.31%) Architect
4 32 (11.31%) Senior
5 20 (7.07%) Solutions Architect
6 17 (6.01%) Java Developer
7 16 (5.65%) Azure Engineer
7 16 (5.65%) Software Engineer
8 15 (5.30%) Full-Stack Developer
9 14 (4.95%) Analyst
9 14 (4.95%) Security Engineer
10 12 (4.24%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.89%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.89%) Lead Developer
12 10 (3.53%) DBA
12 10 (3.53%) Senior Developer
12 10 (3.53%) Software Developer
13 9 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (14.84%) Spring
2 41 (14.49%) Spring Boot
3 38 (13.43%) REST
4 27 (9.54%) React
5 26 (9.19%) Node.js
6 21 (7.42%) XML
7 20 (7.07%) Kafka
8 18 (6.36%) AngularJS
9 17 (6.01%) .NET
9 17 (6.01%) RESTful
10 16 (5.65%) JSON
11 13 (4.59%) Jest
11 13 (4.59%) Playwright
12 12 (4.24%) OAuth
13 8 (2.83%) ARM Templates
13 8 (2.83%) GraphQL
13 8 (2.83%) HTML
13 8 (2.83%) JWT
13 8 (2.83%) Spring MVC
14 7 (2.47%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 49 (17.31%) Cloud Native
2 26 (9.19%) Product Ownership
3 20 (7.07%) Virtual Team
4 13 (4.59%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.89%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (3.53%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.47%) Public Cloud
7 7 (2.47%) Security Posture
7 7 (2.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 6 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
9 5 (1.77%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.77%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.77%) Replication
10 4 (1.41%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.41%) NHS
11 3 (1.06%) Data Centre
11 3 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
11 3 (1.06%) IoT
11 3 (1.06%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 24 (8.48%) Linux
2 10 (3.53%) Windows
3 6 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.71%) VMS
6 1 (0.35%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (53.36%) CI/CD
2 129 (45.58%) Agile
3 66 (23.32%) Microservices
4 61 (21.55%) Infrastructure as Code
5 60 (21.20%) Containerisation
6 52 (18.37%) Continuous Improvement
7 46 (16.25%) Test Automation
8 44 (15.55%) Observability
9 43 (15.19%) Mentoring
10 41 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
11 37 (13.07%) Stakeholder Management
12 35 (12.37%) Project Delivery
13 27 (9.54%) Full-Stack Development
13 27 (9.54%) SDLC
14 26 (9.19%) ITIL
15 25 (8.83%) Change Management
15 25 (8.83%) Software Engineering
16 24 (8.48%) Technical Leadership
17 23 (8.13%) AI
17 23 (8.13%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 70 (24.73%) Java
2 66 (23.32%) Python
3 38 (13.43%) SQL
4 32 (11.31%) TypeScript
5 27 (9.54%) JavaScript
6 26 (9.19%) PowerShell
7 20 (7.07%) Bash
8 15 (5.30%) C#
9 10 (3.53%) Bicep
10 7 (2.47%) Rust
11 5 (1.77%) Go
11 5 (1.77%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.41%) C++
13 3 (1.06%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.06%) Ruby
14 1 (0.35%) C
14 1 (0.35%) PHP
14 1 (0.35%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.35%) VB
14 1 (0.35%) VB6
Qualifications
1 54 (19.08%) Security Cleared
2 38 (13.43%) Degree
3 31 (10.95%) SC Cleared
4 24 (8.48%) AWS Certification
5 20 (7.07%) Azure Certification
6 19 (6.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (4.95%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 11 (3.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 11 (3.89%) CISSP
9 9 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
10 8 (2.83%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (1.77%) DV Cleared
12 4 (1.41%) CISM
12 4 (1.41%) IBM Certification
13 3 (1.06%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (1.06%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.71%) CCIE
14 2 (0.71%) CCNP
14 2 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
14 2 (0.71%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (7.07%) QA
2 17 (6.01%) Accessibility
3 8 (2.83%) ISO 20022
3 8 (2.83%) NIST
3 8 (2.83%) PSD2
3 8 (2.83%) WCAG
4 7 (2.47%) GDPR
4 7 (2.47%) SEPA
5 5 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.41%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.06%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (1.06%) GRC
7 3 (1.06%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.06%) SLA
8 1 (0.35%) HL7
8 1 (0.35%) NEBOSH
8 1 (0.35%) PMO
8 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.35%) Solvency II
System Software
1 77 (27.21%) Docker
2 9 (3.18%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.12%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.77%) vSphere
5 3 (1.06%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.35%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 83 (29.33%) Terraform
2 79 (27.92%) Kubernetes
3 17 (6.01%) Ansible
4 15 (5.30%) Grafana
5 14 (4.95%) Prometheus
6 7 (2.47%) Argo
7 6 (2.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 6 (2.12%) Istio
8 5 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.41%) Progress Chef
9 4 (1.41%) SCCM
10 2 (0.71%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.71%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.71%) Fluentd
10 2 (0.71%) linkerd
10 2 (0.71%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.35%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.35%) vRealize
11 1 (0.35%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 45 (15.90%) Microsoft
2 27 (9.54%) Oracle
3 18 (6.36%) Google
4 15 (5.30%) Splunk
5 7 (2.47%) Databricks
5 7 (2.47%) MuleSoft
5 7 (2.47%) Red Hat
6 6 (2.12%) IBM
6 6 (2.12%) VMware
7 5 (1.77%) F5
7 5 (1.77%) OpenAI
7 5 (1.77%) Veeam
8 4 (1.41%) CyberArk
8 4 (1.41%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.06%) Adobe
9 3 (1.06%) Foundry
10 2 (0.71%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.71%) Fortinet
10 2 (0.71%) NEC
10 2 (0.71%) SAP