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

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 18 21
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -7
Contract jobs citing DevOps 280 174 215
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.33% 8.29% 7.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.89% 9.36% 8.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 101 154
10th Percentile £358 £356 £425
25th Percentile £401 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £523 £533
Median % change year-on-year -9.47% -1.97% -6.16%
75th Percentile £556 £588 £585
90th Percentile £650 £638 £650
England median daily rate £525 £575 £570
% change year-on-year -8.70% +0.88% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 3 13
10th Percentile £39.53 £62.01 £45.88
25th Percentile - £65.95 -
Median hourly rate £45.46 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -39.39% +62.41% -2.78%
75th Percentile £45.84 £82.50 -
90th Percentile £82.75 £85.50 -
England median hourly rate £50.00 £67.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -25.93% +3.85% -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 2,355 1,859 2,439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 86.87% 88.61% 87.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,534 1,108 1,617
10th Percentile £215 £265 £306
25th Percentile £358 £380 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £570 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 201 100 217
10th Percentile £16.35 £16.06 £12.50
25th Percentile £23.00 £22.35 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.69 £31.51 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.46% +5.03% -20.00%
75th Percentile £61.25 £53.19 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.03 £53.75
England median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -26.37% - -

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -1 154 £500 - 130
Cheshire +11 78 £447 +25.56% 14
Lancashire +2 28 £670 +16.52% 50
Merseyside -14 12 £500 -4.31% 12
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 27 (9.64%) Confluence
2 8 (2.86%) Apache
2 8 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.50%) IIS
3 7 (2.50%) JBoss
4 6 (2.14%) iPlanet
4 6 (2.14%) WebSphere
4 6 (2.14%) WebSphere Application Server
5 4 (1.43%) OpenStack
6 3 (1.07%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (1.07%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.71%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.36%) CICS
8 1 (0.36%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (5.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.71%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.71%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 148 (52.86%) AWS
2 114 (40.71%) Azure
3 46 (16.43%) Azure DevOps
4 44 (15.71%) Serverless
5 43 (15.36%) GitHub
6 35 (12.50%) GCP
7 32 (11.43%) AWS CloudFormation
8 28 (10.00%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (9.29%) AWS Lambda
10 18 (6.43%) Amazon S3
10 18 (6.43%) Power Platform
11 17 (6.07%) Amazon EKS
12 16 (5.71%) Amazon ECS
13 15 (5.36%) Amazon EC2
14 13 (4.64%) Amazon SQS
14 13 (4.64%) OpenShift
15 12 (4.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 10 (3.57%) Azure AKS
17 9 (3.21%) Power Automate
17 9 (3.21%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (7.14%) Firewall
2 6 (2.14%) DNS
2 6 (2.14%) Kerberos
2 6 (2.14%) TCP/IP
3 5 (1.79%) DHCP
3 5 (1.79%) HTTPS
3 5 (1.79%) Network Security
3 5 (1.79%) VPN
4 4 (1.43%) NetScaler
4 4 (1.43%) SSL
5 1 (0.36%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.36%) VLAN
5 1 (0.36%) VoIP
5 1 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.43%) DynamoDB
2 15 (5.36%) NoSQL
3 13 (4.64%) MongoDB
3 13 (4.64%) Tableau
4 12 (4.29%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (3.93%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (3.93%) DocumentDB
6 10 (3.57%) Relational Database
7 8 (2.86%) Data Lake
7 8 (2.86%) Oracle Database
7 8 (2.86%) Power BI
8 6 (2.14%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.79%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (1.79%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (1.79%) SQL Server
10 4 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (1.07%) MySQL
12 2 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
12 2 (0.71%) Metadata
13 1 (0.36%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 54 (19.29%) GitLab
2 52 (18.57%) JIRA
3 48 (17.14%) Git
4 37 (13.21%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.57%) CircleCI
6 8 (2.86%) Cypress.io
6 8 (2.86%) JUnit
6 8 (2.86%) Mocha
6 8 (2.86%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (2.50%) Gradle
8 6 (2.14%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (2.14%) CA Release Automation
9 4 (1.43%) Selenium
9 4 (1.43%) Storybook
9 4 (1.43%) Xcode
10 3 (1.07%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.07%) Jasmine
10 3 (1.07%) Maven
11 2 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.71%) SonarQube
General
1 61 (21.79%) Social Skills
2 58 (20.71%) Public Sector
3 56 (20.00%) Finance
4 37 (13.21%) Banking
5 26 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (1.43%) Games
6 4 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (1.43%) Law
7 3 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.07%) Military
7 3 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.07%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.71%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.36%) Advertising
9 1 (0.36%) Electronics
9 1 (0.36%) Legal
9 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.36%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 65 (23.21%) Developer
2 45 (16.07%) DevOps Engineer
3 40 (14.29%) Lead
4 36 (12.86%) Senior
5 26 (9.29%) Architect
6 20 (7.14%) Platform Engineer
7 18 (6.43%) AWS Engineer
8 17 (6.07%) AWS DevOps
8 17 (6.07%) Software Engineer
8 17 (6.07%) Solutions Architect
9 16 (5.71%) Java Developer
10 14 (5.00%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.64%) Analyst
11 13 (4.64%) Full-Stack Developer
12 10 (3.57%) Business Analyst
12 10 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 7 (2.50%) Lead Developer
13 7 (2.50%) Security Engineer
13 7 (2.50%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 7 (2.50%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (15.71%) Spring
1 44 (15.71%) Spring Boot
2 43 (15.36%) REST
3 26 (9.29%) React
4 24 (8.57%) JSON
4 24 (8.57%) Node.js
5 23 (8.21%) OAuth
6 21 (7.50%) Kafka
6 21 (7.50%) XML
7 15 (5.36%) .NET
7 15 (5.36%) JMS
8 14 (5.00%) HTML
8 14 (5.00%) RESTful
8 14 (5.00%) SOAP
9 13 (4.64%) AngularJS
9 13 (4.64%) Jest
9 13 (4.64%) Playwright
10 9 (3.21%) Elastic Stack
11 8 (2.86%) JWT
11 8 (2.86%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.57%) Cloud Native
2 22 (7.86%) Product Ownership
3 21 (7.50%) Virtual Team
4 14 (5.00%) Onboarding
5 12 (4.29%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (4.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 11 (3.93%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.50%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.79%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.79%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.79%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.43%) Low-Code
11 3 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.07%) NHS
11 3 (1.07%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.71%) Enterprise Software
12 2 (0.71%) IoT
13 1 (0.36%) IBM XIV
Operating Systems
1 37 (13.21%) Linux
2 15 (5.36%) Windows
3 8 (2.86%) Windows Server
4 6 (2.14%) Unix
5 4 (1.43%) Android
5 4 (1.43%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.43%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (1.43%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.36%) VMS
6 1 (0.36%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (59.64%) CI/CD
2 118 (42.14%) Agile
3 66 (23.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 65 (23.21%) Containerisation
5 60 (21.43%) Microservices
6 53 (18.93%) Problem-Solving
7 44 (15.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 42 (15.00%) Test Automation
9 41 (14.64%) Observability
10 39 (13.93%) Mentoring
11 37 (13.21%) Project Delivery
12 34 (12.14%) Stakeholder Management
13 27 (9.64%) Full-Stack Development
14 26 (9.29%) ITIL
14 26 (9.29%) Software Engineering
15 23 (8.21%) Cloud Security
16 22 (7.86%) SDLC
17 21 (7.50%) Change Management
18 20 (7.14%) Infrastructure Automation
19 19 (6.79%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 63 (22.50%) Java
2 56 (20.00%) Python
3 45 (16.07%) SQL
4 37 (13.21%) TypeScript
5 27 (9.64%) JavaScript
6 22 (7.86%) Bash
7 14 (5.00%) C#
8 12 (4.29%) PowerShell
9 10 (3.57%) Go
10 8 (2.86%) Groovy
10 8 (2.86%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.79%) Ruby
12 4 (1.43%) Bicep
12 4 (1.43%) Rust
13 3 (1.07%) C++
13 3 (1.07%) Perl
14 2 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.36%) ActionScript
15 1 (0.36%) PHP
15 1 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 54 (19.29%) Security Cleared
2 32 (11.43%) SC Cleared
3 31 (11.07%) Degree
4 21 (7.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (7.14%) AWS Certification
6 15 (5.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 9 (3.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 9 (3.21%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (2.14%) CISM
8 6 (2.14%) CISSP
8 6 (2.14%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (1.43%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.43%) IBM Certification
10 2 (0.71%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.36%) ISEB
11 1 (0.36%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.36%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (8.57%) Accessibility
2 22 (7.86%) QA
3 16 (5.71%) PSD2
4 13 (4.64%) ISO 20022
5 12 (4.29%) SEPA
6 7 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (2.50%) NIST
6 7 (2.50%) WCAG
7 5 (1.79%) GDPR
8 3 (1.07%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.36%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.36%) HL7
9 1 (0.36%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.36%) PMO
9 1 (0.36%) SLA
9 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 85 (30.36%) Docker
2 12 (4.29%) Active Directory
2 12 (4.29%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (4.29%) vSphere
3 6 (2.14%) Tivoli Directory Server
4 4 (1.43%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (1.07%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.71%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.36%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 86 (30.71%) Terraform
2 82 (29.29%) Kubernetes
3 17 (6.07%) Ansible
4 15 (5.36%) Grafana
4 15 (5.36%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.57%) Progress Chef
6 8 (2.86%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (2.50%) CA Single Sign-On
8 6 (2.14%) CA Wily
8 6 (2.14%) Tivoli
9 5 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (1.79%) SCCM
10 4 (1.43%) Fluentd
10 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
11 3 (1.07%) Istio
12 1 (0.36%) Argo
12 1 (0.36%) CA Endevor
12 1 (0.36%) OMEGAMON
12 1 (0.36%) Packer
12 1 (0.36%) Puppet
Vendors
1 43 (15.36%) Microsoft
2 30 (10.71%) Oracle
3 18 (6.43%) Splunk
4 16 (5.71%) IBM
5 12 (4.29%) VMware
6 11 (3.93%) F5
7 10 (3.57%) Google
8 7 (2.50%) Databricks
9 6 (2.14%) AppDynamics
9 6 (2.14%) Broadcom
9 6 (2.14%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.14%) MuleSoft
9 6 (2.14%) Palo Alto
9 6 (2.14%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.79%) OpenAI
11 4 (1.43%) SAP
11 4 (1.43%) Veeam
12 3 (1.07%) Adobe
12 3 (1.07%) Software AG
12 3 (1.07%) webMethods