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 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 12 16 17
Rank change year-on-year +4 +1 -4
Contract jobs citing DevOps 263 173 227
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.60% 7.98% 8.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.99% 9.23% 9.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 94 161
10th Percentile £328 £352 £425
25th Percentile £400 £413 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -3.67% -5.22%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £625
90th Percentile £660 £654 £669
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 5 19
10th Percentile £44.27 - -
25th Percentile - £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -28.73% +38.12% -2.78%
75th Percentile - £77.50 -
90th Percentile £51.52 £83.50 £47.34
England median hourly rate £56.00 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% +7.69% -0.92%

All Process and 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 2,193 1,874 2,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.39% 86.48% 89.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,432 1,055 1,596
10th Percentile £213 £265 £295
25th Percentile £358 £390 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £567 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £656 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £544
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.49% -1.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 108 157
10th Percentile £16.67 £16.00 £15.75
25th Percentile £20.87 £21.20 £18.00
Median hourly rate £31.75 £31.25 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.60% -11.97% +33.81%
75th Percentile £52.13 £51.91 £46.88
90th Percentile £69.83 £68.65 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.70%

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025. 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 -1 136 £500 -9.09% 153
Cheshire +14 77 £445 +25.00% 60
Lancashire +5 32 £600 +14.29% 67
Merseyside -5 11 £510 +2.00% 18
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 17 (6.46%) Confluence
2 14 (5.32%) JBoss
3 12 (4.56%) Apache
4 11 (4.18%) IIS
5 10 (3.80%) WebSphere
6 9 (3.42%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.42%) iPlanet
6 9 (3.42%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (1.52%) CICS
7 4 (1.52%) OpenStack
8 3 (1.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.76%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.76%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.38%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.38%) Mule
10 1 (0.38%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.38%) nginx
10 1 (0.38%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.38%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.90%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.38%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 138 (52.47%) AWS
2 105 (39.92%) Azure
3 46 (17.49%) Azure DevOps
4 35 (13.31%) Serverless
5 34 (12.93%) GitHub
6 31 (11.79%) GCP
7 29 (11.03%) AWS CloudFormation
8 20 (7.60%) AWS Lambda
8 20 (7.60%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (7.60%) OpenShift
9 15 (5.70%) Power Platform
10 13 (4.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 13 (4.94%) Amazon S3
11 12 (4.56%) Amazon ECS
11 12 (4.56%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (3.80%) Amazon SQS
13 9 (3.42%) Datadog
13 9 (3.42%) Figma
14 8 (3.04%) Azure AKS
14 8 (3.04%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 17 (6.46%) Firewall
2 9 (3.42%) Kerberos
3 5 (1.90%) HTTPS
4 4 (1.52%) SSL
4 4 (1.52%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.52%) VPN
5 3 (1.14%) DNS
6 2 (0.76%) DHCP
6 2 (0.76%) Network Security
7 1 (0.38%) NetScaler
7 1 (0.38%) VLAN
7 1 (0.38%) VoIP
7 1 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.56%) DynamoDB
1 12 (4.56%) Relational Database
2 11 (4.18%) MongoDB
2 11 (4.18%) NoSQL
3 10 (3.80%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.80%) RDBMS
3 10 (3.80%) SQL Server
4 9 (3.42%) Data Lake
4 9 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.42%) Power BI
5 8 (3.04%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (2.66%) Tableau
7 5 (1.90%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (1.90%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (1.52%) DocumentDB
9 3 (1.14%) Metadata
9 3 (1.14%) MySQL
10 2 (0.76%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.76%) Redis
Development Applications
1 49 (18.63%) JIRA
2 47 (17.87%) Git
3 43 (16.35%) GitLab
4 41 (15.59%) Jenkins
5 15 (5.70%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (4.56%) Bitbucket Server
6 12 (4.56%) CA Release Automation
7 8 (3.04%) JUnit
8 7 (2.66%) Selenium
8 7 (2.66%) SonarQube
9 6 (2.28%) Bitbucket
9 6 (2.28%) Gradle
9 6 (2.28%) Storybook
9 6 (2.28%) Xcode
10 5 (1.90%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.90%) Cypress.io
10 5 (1.90%) Postman
11 4 (1.52%) Cucumber
12 3 (1.14%) Jasmine
12 3 (1.14%) Rational DOORS
General
1 59 (22.43%) Finance
1 59 (22.43%) Social Skills
2 45 (17.11%) Public Sector
3 31 (11.79%) Banking
4 21 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.52%) Games
7 3 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.14%) Law
7 3 (1.14%) Military
8 2 (0.76%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.76%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (0.76%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.38%) Electronics
9 1 (0.38%) Legal
9 1 (0.38%) Publishing
9 1 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 55 (20.91%) Developer
2 44 (16.73%) DevOps Engineer
3 37 (14.07%) Senior
4 34 (12.93%) Lead
5 21 (7.98%) Platform Engineer
6 20 (7.60%) AWS Engineer
7 19 (7.22%) AWS DevOps
8 16 (6.08%) Software Engineer
9 15 (5.70%) AWS DevOps Engineer
10 14 (5.32%) Java Developer
11 13 (4.94%) Architect
12 10 (3.80%) Analyst
12 10 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.80%) Senior Developer
13 9 (3.42%) Senior DevOps
13 9 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
14 8 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (3.04%) Business Analyst
14 8 (3.04%) DBA
15 7 (2.66%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (12.55%) Spring Boot
2 31 (11.79%) REST
3 28 (10.65%) Spring
4 27 (10.27%) JSON
5 26 (9.89%) OAuth
6 23 (8.75%) React
7 20 (7.60%) Node.js
8 19 (7.22%) XML
9 18 (6.84%) Kafka
10 17 (6.46%) HTML
10 17 (6.46%) RESTful
11 16 (6.08%) AngularJS
12 15 (5.70%) .NET
13 14 (5.32%) JMS
14 12 (4.56%) SOAP
15 10 (3.80%) Elastic Stack
15 10 (3.80%) OpenID
15 10 (3.80%) SAML
16 9 (3.42%) CSS
16 9 (3.42%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 27 (10.27%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.70%) Virtual Team
3 13 (4.94%) Product Ownership
4 11 (4.18%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 10 (3.80%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.42%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.66%) Mobile App
8 6 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.90%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.52%) Low-Code
10 4 (1.52%) Mainframe
10 4 (1.52%) VSAM
11 3 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.14%) IBM Mainframe
11 3 (1.14%) Synthetic Data
11 3 (1.14%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
12 2 (0.76%) PKI
12 2 (0.76%) Private Cloud
12 2 (0.76%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 39 (14.83%) Linux
2 19 (7.22%) Windows
3 9 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 8 (3.04%) Unix
5 6 (2.28%) Android
5 6 (2.28%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.52%) zOS
7 1 (0.38%) VMS
7 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (56.27%) CI/CD
2 105 (39.92%) Agile
3 61 (23.19%) Containerisation
3 61 (23.19%) Infrastructure as Code
4 46 (17.49%) Microservices
5 43 (16.35%) Problem-Solving
6 37 (14.07%) Continuous Improvement
6 37 (14.07%) Test Automation
7 30 (11.41%) Observability
7 30 (11.41%) Stakeholder Management
8 28 (10.65%) ITIL
9 27 (10.27%) Change Management
9 27 (10.27%) Project Delivery
9 27 (10.27%) SDLC
10 24 (9.13%) Cloud Security
10 24 (9.13%) Infrastructure Automation
11 23 (8.75%) Software Engineering
12 22 (8.37%) Full-Stack Development
12 22 (8.37%) Mentoring
13 20 (7.60%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 57 (21.67%) Python
2 52 (19.77%) Java
3 47 (17.87%) SQL
4 27 (10.27%) TypeScript
5 24 (9.13%) Bash
6 18 (6.84%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.32%) C#
8 12 (4.56%) Groovy
9 11 (4.18%) Shell Script
10 9 (3.42%) Go
11 8 (3.04%) Perl
11 8 (3.04%) PowerShell
12 5 (1.90%) Bicep
12 5 (1.90%) C++
13 4 (1.52%) CLIST
13 4 (1.52%) JCL
13 4 (1.52%) REXX
13 4 (1.52%) Ruby
13 4 (1.52%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.76%) Scala
Qualifications
1 51 (19.39%) Security Cleared
2 38 (14.45%) SC Cleared
3 29 (11.03%) Degree
4 15 (5.70%) AWS Certification
4 15 (5.70%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 11 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (3.80%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (2.28%) CISSP
9 5 (1.90%) CISM
10 3 (1.14%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
12 1 (0.38%) ISEB
12 1 (0.38%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
12 1 (0.38%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (10.27%) QA
2 21 (7.98%) Accessibility
3 15 (5.70%) PSD2
4 12 (4.56%) ISO 20022
5 11 (4.18%) SEPA
6 7 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (2.66%) NIST
7 5 (1.90%) GDPR
8 4 (1.52%) PCI DSS
9 3 (1.14%) WCAG
10 2 (0.76%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.38%) GRC
11 1 (0.38%) HL7
11 1 (0.38%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 76 (28.90%) Docker
2 14 (5.32%) Active Directory
3 9 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (3.42%) vSphere
4 8 (3.04%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 4 (1.52%) Time Sharing Option
6 3 (1.14%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 74 (28.14%) Kubernetes
2 72 (27.38%) Terraform
3 20 (7.60%) Ansible
4 16 (6.08%) Progress Chef
5 13 (4.94%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.80%) CA Single Sign-On
6 10 (3.80%) Grafana
7 9 (3.42%) CA Wily
8 8 (3.04%) Tivoli
9 7 (2.66%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.52%) Fluentd
10 4 (1.52%) OMEGAMON
11 3 (1.14%) CA Endevor
11 3 (1.14%) Kibana
11 3 (1.14%) Packer
11 3 (1.14%) Podman
11 3 (1.14%) SELinux
12 2 (0.76%) SCCM
13 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
13 1 (0.38%) Puppet
Vendors
1 44 (16.73%) Microsoft
2 32 (12.17%) Oracle
3 26 (9.89%) Splunk
4 18 (6.84%) IBM
5 13 (4.94%) AppDynamics
6 10 (3.80%) Broadcom
6 10 (3.80%) ServiceNow
6 10 (3.80%) VMware
7 8 (3.04%) SAP
8 7 (2.66%) F5
9 6 (2.28%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.28%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.90%) Axway
10 5 (1.90%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.52%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.52%) Databricks
12 3 (1.14%) Adobe
12 3 (1.14%) MuleSoft
12 3 (1.14%) Software AG
12 3 (1.14%) Veracode