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

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 12 17 16
Rank change year-on-year +5 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing DevOps 265 182 229
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 10.79% 8.39% 8.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.17% 9.73% 9.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 99 165
10th Percentile £318 £355 £425
25th Percentile £400 £419 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £452 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -14.00% -3.67% -5.22%
75th Percentile £575 £597 £614
90th Percentile £657 £660 £663
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 £57.25 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -18.21% +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 2,177 1,870 2,360
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.60% 86.25% 89.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,423 1,054 1,607
10th Percentile £213 £275 £287
25th Percentile £358 £390 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £656 £656 £681
England median daily rate £506 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.62% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 108 152
10th Percentile £16.38 £16.00 £16.03
25th Percentile £20.44 £21.20 £18.00
Median hourly rate £34.50 £32.01 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.78% -9.83% +37.54%
75th Percentile £55.00 £51.91 £46.35
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.65 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.25
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.90% +18.63%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -1 138 £500 -9.09% 165
Cheshire +9 76 £445 +25.00% 70
Lancashire +6 33 £575 +9.52% 62
Merseyside +1 11 £510 +2.00% 28
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 18 (6.79%) Confluence
2 14 (5.28%) JBoss
3 13 (4.91%) Apache
4 12 (4.53%) IIS
5 11 (4.15%) WebSphere
6 9 (3.40%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (3.40%) iPlanet
6 9 (3.40%) WebSphere Application Server
7 6 (2.26%) CICS
8 4 (1.51%) OpenStack
9 3 (1.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.75%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.75%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.38%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.38%) Mule
11 1 (0.38%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.38%) nginx
11 1 (0.38%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.75%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.38%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.38%) Maximo
2 1 (0.38%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 137 (51.70%) AWS
2 105 (39.62%) Azure
3 47 (17.74%) Azure DevOps
4 34 (12.83%) GitHub
4 34 (12.83%) Serverless
5 30 (11.32%) GCP
6 29 (10.94%) AWS CloudFormation
7 20 (7.55%) GitHub Actions
7 20 (7.55%) OpenShift
8 19 (7.17%) AWS Lambda
9 15 (5.66%) Power Platform
10 13 (4.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 13 (4.91%) Amazon S3
11 12 (4.53%) Amazon ECS
11 12 (4.53%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (3.77%) Amazon SQS
13 9 (3.40%) Datadog
13 9 (3.40%) Figma
14 8 (3.02%) Azure AKS
14 8 (3.02%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 17 (6.42%) Firewall
2 9 (3.40%) Kerberos
3 5 (1.89%) HTTPS
4 4 (1.51%) SSL
4 4 (1.51%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.51%) VPN
5 3 (1.13%) DNS
6 2 (0.75%) DHCP
6 2 (0.75%) 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 (4.53%) DynamoDB
1 12 (4.53%) Relational Database
2 11 (4.15%) MongoDB
2 11 (4.15%) NoSQL
2 11 (4.15%) SQL Server
3 10 (3.77%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.77%) RDBMS
4 9 (3.40%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (3.40%) Data Lake
4 9 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.40%) Power BI
5 7 (2.64%) Tableau
6 5 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (1.89%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.51%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (1.51%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.13%) Metadata
8 3 (1.13%) MySQL
9 2 (0.75%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.75%) Redis
Development Applications
1 50 (18.87%) JIRA
2 47 (17.74%) Git
3 43 (16.23%) GitLab
4 41 (15.47%) Jenkins
5 15 (5.66%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (4.53%) Bitbucket Server
6 12 (4.53%) CA Release Automation
7 8 (3.02%) JUnit
8 7 (2.64%) Selenium
8 7 (2.64%) SonarQube
9 6 (2.26%) Bitbucket
9 6 (2.26%) Gradle
9 6 (2.26%) Storybook
9 6 (2.26%) Xcode
10 5 (1.89%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.89%) Cypress.io
10 5 (1.89%) Postman
11 4 (1.51%) Cucumber
12 3 (1.13%) Jasmine
12 3 (1.13%) Rational DOORS
General
1 59 (22.26%) Social Skills
2 58 (21.89%) Finance
3 45 (16.98%) Public Sector
4 30 (11.32%) Banking
5 20 (7.55%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.51%) Games
8 3 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.13%) Law
8 3 (1.13%) Military
9 2 (0.75%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.38%) Electronics
10 1 (0.38%) Legal
10 1 (0.38%) Publishing
10 1 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 55 (20.75%) Developer
2 43 (16.23%) DevOps Engineer
3 37 (13.96%) Senior
4 34 (12.83%) Lead
5 23 (8.68%) Platform Engineer
6 20 (7.55%) AWS Engineer
7 19 (7.17%) AWS DevOps
8 15 (5.66%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 15 (5.66%) Software Engineer
9 14 (5.28%) Java Developer
10 12 (4.53%) Architect
11 11 (4.15%) Analyst
12 10 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.77%) Senior Developer
13 9 (3.40%) Business Analyst
13 9 (3.40%) Senior DevOps
14 8 (3.02%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (3.02%) DBA
14 8 (3.02%) Solutions Architect
15 7 (2.64%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (12.45%) Spring Boot
2 31 (11.70%) REST
3 28 (10.57%) Spring
4 27 (10.19%) JSON
5 26 (9.81%) OAuth
6 21 (7.92%) React
7 20 (7.55%) Node.js
7 20 (7.55%) XML
8 18 (6.79%) Kafka
9 17 (6.42%) HTML
9 17 (6.42%) RESTful
10 14 (5.28%) .NET
10 14 (5.28%) AngularJS
10 14 (5.28%) JMS
11 13 (4.91%) SOAP
12 10 (3.77%) Elastic Stack
12 10 (3.77%) OpenID
12 10 (3.77%) SAML
13 9 (3.40%) CSS
13 9 (3.40%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 27 (10.19%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.66%) Virtual Team
3 13 (4.91%) Product Ownership
4 11 (4.15%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 10 (3.77%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.40%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.64%) Mobile App
8 6 (2.26%) Mainframe
8 6 (2.26%) VSAM
9 5 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.89%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.89%) IBM Mainframe
10 4 (1.51%) Low-Code
11 3 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.13%) Synthetic Data
11 3 (1.13%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
12 2 (0.75%) PKI
12 2 (0.75%) Private Cloud
12 2 (0.75%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 39 (14.72%) Linux
2 20 (7.55%) Windows
3 10 (3.77%) Windows Server
4 8 (3.02%) Unix
5 6 (2.26%) Android
5 6 (2.26%) Apple iOS
5 6 (2.26%) zOS
6 4 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.38%) VMS
7 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (55.47%) CI/CD
2 105 (39.62%) Agile
3 61 (23.02%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (22.64%) Containerisation
5 44 (16.60%) Microservices
6 42 (15.85%) Problem-Solving
7 38 (14.34%) Continuous Improvement
8 37 (13.96%) Test Automation
9 30 (11.32%) Observability
9 30 (11.32%) Stakeholder Management
10 28 (10.57%) ITIL
10 28 (10.57%) SDLC
11 27 (10.19%) Change Management
11 27 (10.19%) Project Delivery
12 24 (9.06%) Cloud Security
12 24 (9.06%) Infrastructure Automation
13 22 (8.30%) Mentoring
13 22 (8.30%) Software Engineering
14 21 (7.92%) Full-Stack Development
14 21 (7.92%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 57 (21.51%) Python
2 50 (18.87%) Java
3 48 (18.11%) SQL
4 26 (9.81%) TypeScript
5 24 (9.06%) Bash
6 17 (6.42%) JavaScript
7 13 (4.91%) C#
8 12 (4.53%) Groovy
9 11 (4.15%) Shell Script
10 9 (3.40%) Go
11 8 (3.02%) Perl
11 8 (3.02%) PowerShell
12 6 (2.26%) CLIST
12 6 (2.26%) JCL
12 6 (2.26%) REXX
13 5 (1.89%) Bicep
13 5 (1.89%) C++
14 4 (1.51%) Ruby
14 4 (1.51%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.75%) PHP
Qualifications
1 52 (19.62%) Security Cleared
2 39 (14.72%) SC Cleared
3 28 (10.57%) Degree
4 15 (5.66%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
5 14 (5.28%) AWS Certification
6 11 (4.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (3.40%) Azure Certification
8 8 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (2.26%) CISSP
10 5 (1.89%) CISM
11 3 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.38%) ISEB
13 1 (0.38%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
13 1 (0.38%) Tableau Certification
13 1 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (10.57%) QA
2 21 (7.92%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.28%) PSD2
4 11 (4.15%) ISO 20022
4 11 (4.15%) SEPA
5 7 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (2.64%) NIST
6 4 (1.51%) GDPR
6 4 (1.51%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.13%) WCAG
8 2 (0.75%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.38%) GRC
9 1 (0.38%) HL7
9 1 (0.38%) SOC 1
9 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 75 (28.30%) Docker
2 14 (5.28%) Active Directory
3 9 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (3.40%) vSphere
4 8 (3.02%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 6 (2.26%) Time Sharing Option
6 3 (1.13%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.75%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 73 (27.55%) Kubernetes
2 72 (27.17%) Terraform
3 20 (7.55%) Ansible
4 16 (6.04%) Progress Chef
5 13 (4.91%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.77%) CA Single Sign-On
6 10 (3.77%) Grafana
7 9 (3.40%) CA Wily
8 8 (3.02%) Tivoli
9 7 (2.64%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (2.26%) OMEGAMON
11 5 (1.89%) CA Endevor
12 4 (1.51%) Fluentd
13 3 (1.13%) Kibana
13 3 (1.13%) Packer
13 3 (1.13%) Podman
13 3 (1.13%) SELinux
14 2 (0.75%) SCCM
15 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.38%) Puppet
Vendors
1 45 (16.98%) Microsoft
2 32 (12.08%) Oracle
3 26 (9.81%) Splunk
4 21 (7.92%) IBM
5 13 (4.91%) AppDynamics
6 10 (3.77%) Broadcom
6 10 (3.77%) ServiceNow
6 10 (3.77%) VMware
7 8 (3.02%) SAP
8 7 (2.64%) F5
9 6 (2.26%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.26%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.89%) Axway
10 5 (1.89%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.51%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.51%) Databricks
11 4 (1.51%) MuleSoft
12 3 (1.13%) Adobe
12 3 (1.13%) Software AG
12 3 (1.13%) Veracode