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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 15 16
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 302 209 194
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 7.74% 9.65% 8.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.38% 10.91% 9.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 179 108
10th Percentile £395 £317 £356
25th Percentile £413 £385 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £453 £550
Median % change year-on-year +16.45% -17.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £640 £575 £606
90th Percentile £713 £654 £716
England median daily rate £525 £525 £555
% change year-on-year - -5.41% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 1 3
10th Percentile £37.25 - -
25th Percentile £46.80 - -
Median hourly rate £66.66 £95.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -29.83% +105.72% -
75th Percentile £73.00 - £66.84
90th Percentile £73.40 - £79.24
England median hourly rate £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +2.61% -4.29% +7.69%

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 3,221 1,916 1,991
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.57% 88.46% 83.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,843 1,273 1,117
10th Percentile £295 £287 £294
25th Percentile £402 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £490
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -7.14% -2.00%
75th Percentile £598 £575 £585
90th Percentile £675 £678 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 132 108
10th Percentile £14.99 £13.54 £16.43
25th Percentile £24.00 £17.30 £29.25
Median hourly rate £46.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +86.76% -40.84% +28.79%
75th Percentile £71.91 £45.37 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.25 £72.40
England median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.39%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 +2 208 £528 +5.50% 317
Cheshire -20 43 £474 +13.53% 50
Lancashire +1 34 £640 +16.36% 38
Merseyside -19 8 £625 +23.76% 20
Cumbria - 1 - - 2
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 21 (6.95%) Confluence
2 7 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.66%) SAS
4 4 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (1.32%) Camunda
5 2 (0.66%) Apache
5 2 (0.66%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.33%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.33%) CMS
6 1 (0.33%) Drupal
6 1 (0.33%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.33%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.33%) nginx
6 1 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.33%) Traefik
6 1 (0.33%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.33%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (1.99%) MS Visio
2 4 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.33%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.33%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.33%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 152 (50.33%) Azure
2 140 (46.36%) AWS
3 78 (25.83%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (16.23%) GCP
5 43 (14.24%) GitHub
6 27 (8.94%) Power Platform
7 25 (8.28%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (8.28%) Serverless
8 21 (6.95%) AWS Lambda
8 21 (6.95%) Azure AKS
8 21 (6.95%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 18 (5.96%) Azure Monitor
10 17 (5.63%) Amazon ECS
11 15 (4.97%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (4.97%) OCI
12 14 (4.64%) Amazon EKS
13 13 (4.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (4.30%) Entra ID
14 12 (3.97%) SaaS
15 11 (3.64%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.93%) Firewall
2 12 (3.97%) SSL
3 11 (3.64%) BGP
3 11 (3.64%) Ethernet VPN
3 11 (3.64%) OSPF
3 11 (3.64%) SD-WAN
3 11 (3.64%) VXLAN
3 11 (3.64%) WAN
4 10 (3.31%) BIG-IP
4 10 (3.31%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 9 (2.98%) Network Security
5 9 (2.98%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (2.98%) WLAN
6 8 (2.65%) DNS
7 5 (1.66%) VPN
8 3 (0.99%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.66%) DHCP
10 1 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
10 1 (0.33%) HTTP
10 1 (0.33%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (11.59%) SQL Server
2 20 (6.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 18 (5.96%) MongoDB
3 18 (5.96%) Relational Database
4 17 (5.63%) Power BI
5 16 (5.30%) MySQL
6 11 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (3.31%) Oracle Database
7 10 (3.31%) RDBMS
8 8 (2.65%) NoSQL
9 7 (2.32%) Ataccama
9 7 (2.32%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.66%) BigQuery
11 4 (1.32%) Azure SQL Database
11 4 (1.32%) DynamoDB
11 4 (1.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 3 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
12 3 (0.99%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 55 (18.21%) GitLab
2 41 (13.58%) Git
2 41 (13.58%) Jenkins
3 25 (8.28%) JIRA
4 14 (4.64%) Claude Code
4 14 (4.64%) Selenium
5 13 (4.30%) JUnit
5 13 (4.30%) REST Assured
6 11 (3.64%) Postman
6 11 (3.64%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (3.31%) Cucumber
7 10 (3.31%) SonarQube
8 8 (2.65%) Mockito
9 6 (1.99%) Gatling
9 6 (1.99%) Gradle
9 6 (1.99%) Maven
10 4 (1.32%) ClearCase
11 3 (0.99%) LoadRunner
11 3 (0.99%) TestRail
11 3 (0.99%) Zephyr
General
1 62 (20.53%) Finance
2 45 (14.90%) Social Skills
3 35 (11.59%) Public Sector
4 25 (8.28%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (7.95%) Banking
6 15 (4.97%) Retail
7 10 (3.31%) Military
8 4 (1.32%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.99%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.66%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.66%) Publishing
11 1 (0.33%) Billing
11 1 (0.33%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.33%) iGaming
11 1 (0.33%) Law
11 1 (0.33%) Legal
11 1 (0.33%) Police
11 1 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 63 (20.86%) DevOps Engineer
1 63 (20.86%) Senior
2 42 (13.91%) Developer
3 41 (13.58%) Lead
4 28 (9.27%) Architect
5 23 (7.62%) Cloud Engineer
6 18 (5.96%) Software Engineer
7 17 (5.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 17 (5.63%) Senior DevOps
8 16 (5.30%) AWS Engineer
8 16 (5.30%) Security Engineer
8 16 (5.30%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 14 (4.64%) Analyst
9 14 (4.64%) DBA
10 13 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (3.97%) Azure Engineer
11 12 (3.97%) Consultant
11 12 (3.97%) SQL DBA
12 10 (3.31%) Lead DevOps
12 10 (3.31%) Lead DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (36.75%) Terraform
2 30 (9.93%) REST
2 30 (9.93%) Spring Boot
3 28 (9.27%) Spring
4 27 (8.94%) Kafka
5 25 (8.28%) React
6 22 (7.28%) Node.js
7 17 (5.63%) JSON
8 16 (5.30%) Playwright
9 13 (4.30%) .NET
10 10 (3.31%) PySpark
10 10 (3.31%) RESTful
11 9 (2.98%) XML
12 8 (2.65%) HTML
12 8 (2.65%) Next.js
13 7 (2.32%) AngularJS
14 6 (1.99%) ARM Templates
14 6 (1.99%) CSS
15 5 (1.66%) Azure Blueprints
15 5 (1.66%) Langfuse
Miscellaneous
1 73 (24.17%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.96%) Security Posture
3 16 (5.30%) Replication
4 15 (4.97%) Management Information System
5 13 (4.30%) Clustering
5 13 (4.30%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.30%) Onboarding
6 12 (3.97%) Data Structures
6 12 (3.97%) Product Ownership
7 11 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
8 10 (3.31%) Data Centre
9 9 (2.98%) Legacy Systems
10 8 (2.65%) Algorithms
11 6 (1.99%) Cloud Security Posture
11 6 (1.99%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.66%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.66%) Enterprise Cloud
12 5 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (1.32%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 40 (13.25%) Linux
2 34 (11.26%) Windows
3 18 (5.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (4.30%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.99%) AIX
5 3 (0.99%) Unix
6 2 (0.66%) VMS
7 1 (0.33%) Android
7 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.33%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (62.58%) CI/CD
2 106 (35.10%) Agile
3 91 (30.13%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (22.85%) Observability
5 56 (18.54%) Test Automation
6 53 (17.55%) Microservices
7 52 (17.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 51 (16.89%) Containerisation
9 49 (16.23%) Software Engineering
10 48 (15.89%) AI
11 43 (14.24%) Migration
12 37 (12.25%) Platform Engineering
13 36 (11.92%) Technical Leadership
14 34 (11.26%) Cloud Security
14 34 (11.26%) Scrum
15 33 (10.93%) Infrastructure Automation
15 33 (10.93%) Roadmaps
16 32 (10.60%) Event-Driven
16 32 (10.60%) SDLC
17 31 (10.26%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 85 (28.15%) Python
2 73 (24.17%) Java
3 53 (17.55%) SQL
4 48 (15.89%) PowerShell
5 34 (11.26%) Bash
6 26 (8.61%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.95%) C#
8 19 (6.29%) TypeScript
9 18 (5.96%) Bicep
10 17 (5.63%) T-SQL
11 6 (1.99%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (1.32%) VB
12 4 (1.32%) VB6
13 3 (0.99%) Rust
13 3 (0.99%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.66%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.66%) Scala
15 1 (0.33%) ABAP
15 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.33%) Go
Qualifications
1 85 (28.15%) Security Cleared
2 74 (24.50%) SC Cleared
3 36 (11.92%) Degree
4 31 (10.26%) Azure Certification
5 27 (8.94%) BPSS Clearance
6 24 (7.95%) AWS Certification
7 17 (5.63%) CISSP
7 17 (5.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (2.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (2.32%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (1.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.66%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 1 (0.33%) CCIE
14 1 (0.33%) CCNP
14 1 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
14 1 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (9.60%) QA
2 17 (5.63%) Data Quality
3 11 (3.64%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.99%) GDPR
5 2 (0.66%) PMO
5 2 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.66%) SLA
5 2 (0.66%) WCAG
6 1 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.33%) NCSC
6 1 (0.33%) NIST
6 1 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 73 (24.17%) Docker
2 11 (3.64%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.99%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.99%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.66%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 90 (29.80%) Kubernetes
2 34 (11.26%) Ansible
3 17 (5.63%) Grafana
4 15 (4.97%) Progress Chef
5 14 (4.64%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.31%) SCOM
7 6 (1.99%) Istio
7 6 (1.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.32%) Argo
9 3 (0.99%) Data Guard
9 3 (0.99%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.99%) Packer
10 2 (0.66%) Failover Clustering
11 1 (0.33%) Consul
11 1 (0.33%) linkerd
11 1 (0.33%) Puppet
11 1 (0.33%) Rancher
11 1 (0.33%) vRealize
11 1 (0.33%) vRealize Orchestrator
11 1 (0.33%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 53 (17.55%) Microsoft
2 25 (8.28%) Google
3 20 (6.62%) ServiceNow
4 17 (5.63%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.30%) Splunk
6 14 (4.64%) Oracle
7 12 (3.97%) Palo Alto
8 11 (3.64%) F5
8 11 (3.64%) SAP
9 10 (3.31%) Aruba
10 9 (2.98%) Arista
11 8 (2.65%) Dynatrace
12 6 (1.99%) OpenAI
13 5 (1.66%) Atlassian
13 5 (1.66%) IBM
13 5 (1.66%) Salesforce
14 4 (1.32%) Databricks
14 4 (1.32%) Veracode
15 3 (0.99%) Informatica
15 3 (0.99%) VMware