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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 0
Contract jobs citing DevOps 295 172 255
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 9.27% 8.88% 9.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.02% 9.79% 10.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 202 123 185
10th Percentile £369 £386 £422
25th Percentile £416 £447 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £575 £615 £606
90th Percentile £650 £675 £750
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 3 4
10th Percentile £25.38 £61.01 -
25th Percentile £39.53 £63.45 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £70.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -35.06% +52.57% +7.06%
75th Percentile £45.84 £75.00 £45.96
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.50 £46.09
England median hourly rate £63.73 £68.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -7.30% +5.77% -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 2,678 1,756 2,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 84.13% 90.66% 86.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,673 1,146 1,561
10th Percentile £258 £300 £311
25th Percentile £375 £391 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £662 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 111 251
10th Percentile £19.52 £16.25 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.72 £13.41
Median hourly rate £45.46 £31.52 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +44.23% +34.13% -34.72%
75th Percentile £71.91 £60.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.59 £51.91
England median hourly rate £40.00 £32.50 £34.00
% change year-on-year +23.08% -4.41% -9.33%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +1 168 £500 -5.66% 114
Cheshire +7 80 £470 +5.62% 21
Lancashire -5 24 £500 -13.04% 38
Merseyside -12 17 £510 -2.86% 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 30 (10.17%) Confluence
2 8 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.69%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (1.36%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.02%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.34%) Apache
6 1 (0.34%) CICS
6 1 (0.34%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (4.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (4.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.69%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (1.02%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.68%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.68%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.68%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 143 (48.47%) Azure
2 141 (47.80%) AWS
3 64 (21.69%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (16.61%) Serverless
5 45 (15.25%) GCP
6 44 (14.92%) GitHub
7 32 (10.85%) GitHub Actions
8 22 (7.46%) AWS CloudFormation
9 18 (6.10%) Amazon EKS
9 18 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
10 17 (5.76%) Amazon S3
11 15 (5.08%) Dynamics 365
12 14 (4.75%) Azure AKS
12 14 (4.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 13 (4.41%) Amazon EC2
13 13 (4.41%) Power Platform
14 12 (4.07%) Amazon ECS
15 11 (3.73%) Entra ID
15 11 (3.73%) Microsoft 365
16 9 (3.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 21 (7.12%) Firewall
2 7 (2.37%) DNS
3 6 (2.03%) DHCP
4 4 (1.36%) NetScaler
4 4 (1.36%) Network Security
4 4 (1.36%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.68%) VPN
6 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (0.34%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.34%) NAS
6 1 (0.34%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.34%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (7.80%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (6.10%) MongoDB
2 18 (6.10%) NoSQL
3 15 (5.08%) DynamoDB
3 15 (5.08%) Relational Database
4 12 (4.07%) Tableau
5 11 (3.73%) RDBMS
6 9 (3.05%) DocumentDB
6 9 (3.05%) Oracle Reports
6 9 (3.05%) SQL Server
7 8 (2.71%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (2.37%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (2.03%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.36%) Oracle Database
11 3 (1.02%) Metadata
11 3 (1.02%) MySQL
12 2 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.68%) Data Vault
12 2 (0.68%) Power BI
12 2 (0.68%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 51 (17.29%) JIRA
2 45 (15.25%) GitLab
3 34 (11.53%) Git
4 29 (9.83%) Jenkins
5 8 (2.71%) CircleCI
5 8 (2.71%) Mocha
6 7 (2.37%) Cypress.io
6 7 (2.37%) JUnit
7 4 (1.36%) Selenium
7 4 (1.36%) SonarQube
8 3 (1.02%) Gradle
8 3 (1.02%) Jasmine
8 3 (1.02%) Maven
8 3 (1.02%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.68%) Flyway
9 2 (0.68%) Gatling
9 2 (0.68%) Liquibase
9 2 (0.68%) Serenity BDD
10 1 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 67 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 62 (21.02%) Public Sector
3 60 (20.34%) Finance
4 30 (10.17%) Banking
5 24 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.36%) Law
7 4 (1.36%) Retail
8 3 (1.02%) Financial Institution
8 3 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.02%) Local Government
8 3 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (0.68%) Military
9 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.34%) Advertising
10 1 (0.34%) Electronics
10 1 (0.34%) Games
10 1 (0.34%) Legal
10 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.34%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 61 (20.68%) Developer
2 51 (17.29%) Lead
3 35 (11.86%) DevOps Engineer
4 33 (11.19%) Senior
5 30 (10.17%) Architect
6 18 (6.10%) Solutions Architect
7 17 (5.76%) Java Developer
8 16 (5.42%) Platform Engineer
8 16 (5.42%) Software Engineer
9 15 (5.08%) Full-Stack Developer
10 14 (4.75%) Azure Engineer
10 14 (4.75%) Security Engineer
11 13 (4.41%) Analyst
12 11 (3.73%) Lead Developer
13 10 (3.39%) AWS DevOps
13 10 (3.39%) AWS Engineer
13 10 (3.39%) DBA
13 10 (3.39%) Senior Developer
14 9 (3.05%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 9 (3.05%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (14.58%) Spring
2 42 (14.24%) Spring Boot
3 41 (13.90%) REST
4 27 (9.15%) React
5 26 (8.81%) Node.js
6 21 (7.12%) Kafka
6 21 (7.12%) XML
7 19 (6.44%) JSON
8 18 (6.10%) AngularJS
9 17 (5.76%) .NET
9 17 (5.76%) RESTful
10 13 (4.41%) Jest
10 13 (4.41%) Playwright
11 12 (4.07%) OAuth
12 9 (3.05%) HTML
12 9 (3.05%) SOAP
13 8 (2.71%) ARM Templates
13 8 (2.71%) JMS
13 8 (2.71%) JWT
13 8 (2.71%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 46 (15.59%) Cloud Native
2 26 (8.81%) Product Ownership
3 20 (6.78%) Virtual Team
4 12 (4.07%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 11 (3.73%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (2.71%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 7 (2.37%) Public Cloud
9 6 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.03%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.69%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.69%) e-Learning
10 5 (1.69%) Replication
11 4 (1.36%) NHS
12 3 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
12 3 (1.02%) IoT
12 3 (1.02%) Mainframe
12 3 (1.02%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.02%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 31 (10.51%) Linux
2 12 (4.07%) Windows
3 6 (2.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.36%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.68%) VMS
6 1 (0.34%) Unix
6 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (55.93%) CI/CD
2 132 (44.75%) Agile
3 69 (23.39%) Infrastructure as Code
4 68 (23.05%) Containerisation
5 65 (22.03%) Microservices
6 55 (18.64%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (15.93%) Observability
8 46 (15.59%) Problem-Solving
9 45 (15.25%) Mentoring
9 45 (15.25%) Test Automation
10 40 (13.56%) Stakeholder Management
11 36 (12.20%) Project Delivery
12 28 (9.49%) SDLC
13 27 (9.15%) Full-Stack Development
14 26 (8.81%) ITIL
15 25 (8.47%) Change Management
15 25 (8.47%) Technical Leadership
16 24 (8.14%) Software Engineering
17 23 (7.80%) Scrum
18 22 (7.46%) AI
Programming Languages
1 71 (24.07%) Java
2 69 (23.39%) Python
3 39 (13.22%) SQL
4 32 (10.85%) TypeScript
5 29 (9.83%) JavaScript
6 26 (8.81%) Bash
7 24 (8.14%) PowerShell
8 17 (5.76%) C#
9 10 (3.39%) Bicep
10 7 (2.37%) Rust
11 6 (2.03%) Go
12 4 (1.36%) C++
12 4 (1.36%) Shell Script
13 3 (1.02%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.02%) Ruby
14 2 (0.68%) Groovy
14 2 (0.68%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.34%) ActionScript
15 1 (0.34%) CLIST
15 1 (0.34%) Scala
Qualifications
1 53 (17.97%) Security Cleared
2 37 (12.54%) Degree
3 29 (9.83%) SC Cleared
4 25 (8.47%) AWS Certification
5 21 (7.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (6.10%) Azure Certification
7 15 (5.08%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 12 (4.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 11 (3.73%) CISSP
10 9 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (2.37%) ITIL Certification
12 5 (1.69%) CISM
12 5 (1.69%) DV Cleared
13 4 (1.36%) IBM Certification
14 3 (1.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (1.02%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.68%) CCIE
15 2 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
15 2 (0.68%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.12%) QA
2 18 (6.10%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.05%) ISO 20022
3 9 (3.05%) PSD2
4 8 (2.71%) NIST
4 8 (2.71%) SEPA
4 8 (2.71%) WCAG
5 6 (2.03%) GDPR
5 6 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (1.02%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.02%) GRC
7 2 (0.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.68%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.68%) SLA
8 1 (0.34%) HL7
8 1 (0.34%) NEBOSH
8 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.34%) Solvency II
System Software
1 85 (28.81%) Docker
2 11 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (3.73%) vSphere
3 9 (3.05%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.03%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.69%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (1.02%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.34%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.34%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 93 (31.53%) Terraform
2 85 (28.81%) Kubernetes
3 16 (5.42%) Ansible
3 16 (5.42%) Grafana
4 15 (5.08%) Prometheus
5 7 (2.37%) Argo
6 6 (2.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 6 (2.03%) Istio
6 6 (2.03%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.69%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.36%) SCCM
9 2 (0.68%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.68%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.68%) Fluentd
9 2 (0.68%) linkerd
9 2 (0.68%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.34%) CA Endevor
10 1 (0.34%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.34%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 47 (15.93%) Microsoft
2 26 (8.81%) Oracle
3 17 (5.76%) Google
3 17 (5.76%) Splunk
4 11 (3.73%) VMware
5 9 (3.05%) F5
6 7 (2.37%) Databricks
6 7 (2.37%) IBM
7 6 (2.03%) MuleSoft
7 6 (2.03%) Red Hat
8 5 (1.69%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.69%) Veeam
9 4 (1.36%) Cribl.io
9 4 (1.36%) Palo Alto
10 3 (1.02%) Adobe
10 3 (1.02%) CyberArk
10 3 (1.02%) Foundry
11 2 (0.68%) Fortinet
11 2 (0.68%) NEC
11 2 (0.68%) SAP