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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 13 15
Rank change year-on-year -2 +2 -1
Contract jobs citing DevOps 327 211 210
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 8.63% 9.56% 8.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.43% 10.77% 10.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 175 133
10th Percentile £386 £319 £410
25th Percentile £413 £393 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £470 £550
Median % change year-on-year +11.70% -14.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £575 £675
90th Percentile £710 £675 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 2 2
10th Percentile - £70.25 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £74.38 -
Median hourly rate £43.15 £82.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -47.70% +78.65% -
75th Percentile £73.00 £89.38 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £92.75 -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -4.29% +6.87%

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 3,134 1,959 2,011
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.73% 88.72% 84.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,825 1,273 1,207
10th Percentile £276 £282 £309
25th Percentile £400 £375 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £454 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.25% -9.30% -
75th Percentile £599 £575 £588
90th Percentile £676 £665 £675
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 124 170
10th Percentile £16.01 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £24.72 £18.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.25 £27.00 £34.61
Median % change year-on-year +67.59% -21.98% -1.13%
75th Percentile £72.73 £53.25 £51.91
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.63 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.24%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 +2 213 £525 - 236
Cheshire -10 64 £500 +23.92% 34
Lancashire +5 30 £640 +34.74% 35
Merseyside -16 12 £510 - 8
Cumbria - 1 - -
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 22 (6.73%) Confluence
2 8 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.53%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.22%) SAS
5 3 (0.92%) Apache
5 3 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.31%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.31%) Camunda
6 1 (0.31%) CMS
6 1 (0.31%) Drupal
6 1 (0.31%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.31%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.31%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.31%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.61%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.61%) Trello
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.31%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.31%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.31%) SAP QM
2 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 173 (52.91%) Azure
2 156 (47.71%) AWS
3 85 (25.99%) Azure DevOps
4 58 (17.74%) GCP
5 52 (15.90%) GitHub
6 35 (10.70%) Serverless
7 32 (9.79%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (8.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 19 (5.81%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (5.81%) Azure AKS
10 15 (4.59%) Amazon EKS
10 15 (4.59%) OCI
11 14 (4.28%) Amazon ECS
11 14 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
11 14 (4.28%) SaaS
11 14 (4.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 13 (3.98%) Azure Monitor
12 13 (3.98%) Entra ID
12 13 (3.98%) Power Platform
13 11 (3.36%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 36 (11.01%) Firewall
2 11 (3.36%) BGP
2 11 (3.36%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (3.36%) OSPF
2 11 (3.36%) SD-WAN
2 11 (3.36%) VXLAN
2 11 (3.36%) WAN
3 10 (3.06%) BIG-IP
3 10 (3.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 9 (2.75%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.75%) WLAN
5 8 (2.45%) DNS
5 8 (2.45%) SSL
6 7 (2.14%) Network Security
7 5 (1.53%) VPN
8 3 (0.92%) DHCP
9 2 (0.61%) TCP/IP
10 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.31%) MPLS
10 1 (0.31%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (9.79%) SQL Server
2 23 (7.03%) MongoDB
2 23 (7.03%) Relational Database
3 19 (5.81%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (4.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 15 (4.59%) RDBMS
6 13 (3.98%) MySQL
6 13 (3.98%) NoSQL
7 10 (3.06%) Oracle Database
8 9 (2.75%) Power BI
9 8 (2.45%) Data Lake
10 7 (2.14%) Ataccama
11 6 (1.83%) DynamoDB
11 6 (1.83%) Elasticsearch
12 5 (1.53%) BigQuery
12 5 (1.53%) Data Vault
12 5 (1.53%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.53%) Oracle Exadata
13 4 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
13 4 (1.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 49 (14.98%) GitLab
2 43 (13.15%) Git
3 40 (12.23%) Jenkins
4 32 (9.79%) JIRA
5 14 (4.28%) Claude Code
6 12 (3.67%) Selenium
7 11 (3.36%) Postman
8 9 (2.75%) SonarQube
9 8 (2.45%) Cucumber
9 8 (2.45%) REST Assured
10 7 (2.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (1.83%) Gatling
11 6 (1.83%) JUnit
12 3 (0.92%) ClearCase
12 3 (0.92%) LoadRunner
12 3 (0.92%) Mockito
12 3 (0.92%) Serenity BDD
12 3 (0.92%) TestRail
12 3 (0.92%) Zephyr
13 2 (0.61%) Flyway
General
1 71 (21.71%) Finance
2 56 (17.13%) Social Skills
3 40 (12.23%) Public Sector
4 29 (8.87%) Banking
5 23 (7.03%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (5.20%) Retail
7 8 (2.45%) Military
8 3 (0.92%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.92%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.92%) Local Government
8 3 (0.92%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.61%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.61%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.61%) Publishing
10 1 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
10 1 (0.31%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.31%) Legal
10 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 66 (20.18%) Senior
2 61 (18.65%) DevOps Engineer
3 44 (13.46%) Lead
4 41 (12.54%) Developer
5 27 (8.26%) Architect
6 22 (6.73%) Cloud Engineer
7 21 (6.42%) Security Engineer
7 21 (6.42%) Software Engineer
8 17 (5.20%) Senior DevOps
9 16 (4.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (4.89%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 16 (4.89%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (4.59%) DBA
10 15 (4.59%) Senior Developer
11 14 (4.28%) Analyst
11 14 (4.28%) AWS Engineer
11 14 (4.28%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.67%) Principal Engineer
13 11 (3.36%) Java Developer
14 10 (3.06%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (9.48%) Spring
2 30 (9.17%) Kafka
2 30 (9.17%) Spring Boot
3 28 (8.56%) REST
4 27 (8.26%) React
5 24 (7.34%) Node.js
6 20 (6.12%) JSON
7 16 (4.89%) .NET
8 14 (4.28%) Playwright
9 11 (3.36%) AngularJS
9 11 (3.36%) XML
10 10 (3.06%) PySpark
10 10 (3.06%) RESTful
11 8 (2.45%) Next.js
12 7 (2.14%) ARM Templates
13 6 (1.83%) Spring MVC
14 5 (1.53%) Langfuse
14 5 (1.53%) YAML
15 4 (1.22%) LangChain
15 4 (1.22%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 79 (24.16%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.42%) Security Posture
3 18 (5.50%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.89%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.89%) Management Information System
4 16 (4.89%) Replication
5 11 (3.36%) Data Centre
6 10 (3.06%) Clustering
6 10 (3.06%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (2.75%) Data Structures
7 9 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.45%) Algorithms
9 7 (2.14%) AI Agents
9 7 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.83%) Cloud Security Posture
10 6 (1.83%) Onboarding
11 5 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.53%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.53%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 38 (11.62%) Linux
2 31 (9.48%) Windows
3 18 (5.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.75%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.92%) AIX
5 3 (0.92%) VMS
6 2 (0.61%) Unix
7 1 (0.31%) Android
7 1 (0.31%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (59.63%) CI/CD
2 120 (36.70%) Agile
3 94 (28.75%) Infrastructure as Code
4 67 (20.49%) Observability
5 61 (18.65%) Continuous Improvement
6 56 (17.13%) Microservices
7 55 (16.82%) Test Automation
8 51 (15.60%) AI
9 48 (14.68%) Containerisation
9 48 (14.68%) Software Engineering
10 41 (12.54%) Migration
11 40 (12.23%) Mentoring
12 39 (11.93%) Scrum
13 38 (11.62%) Cloud Security
14 36 (11.01%) Platform Engineering
14 36 (11.01%) Problem-Solving
14 36 (11.01%) SDLC
14 36 (11.01%) Technical Leadership
15 35 (10.70%) Event-Driven
15 35 (10.70%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 103 (31.50%) Python
2 75 (22.94%) Java
3 56 (17.13%) PowerShell
4 49 (14.98%) SQL
5 43 (13.15%) Bash
6 24 (7.34%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.42%) C#
8 19 (5.81%) TypeScript
9 17 (5.20%) Bicep
10 13 (3.98%) T-SQL
11 6 (1.83%) Rust
12 5 (1.53%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.92%) VB
13 3 (0.92%) VB6
14 2 (0.61%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.61%) PROC SQL
14 2 (0.61%) Scala
15 1 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.31%) Go
15 1 (0.31%) PHP
Qualifications
1 74 (22.63%) Security Cleared
2 60 (18.35%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.09%) Azure Certification
3 33 (10.09%) Degree
4 28 (8.56%) AWS Certification
5 21 (6.42%) CISSP
6 20 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (2.75%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (1.83%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (1.53%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 3 (0.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.92%) CCIE
11 3 (0.92%) CCNP
11 3 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.61%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (9.48%) QA
2 15 (4.59%) Data Quality
3 11 (3.36%) Accessibility
4 8 (2.45%) GDPR
5 5 (1.53%) NIST
6 3 (0.92%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.92%) GRC
6 3 (0.92%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.92%) SLA
7 2 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.61%) WCAG
8 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.31%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.31%) PSD2
8 1 (0.31%) SEPA
8 1 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
8 1 (0.31%) Solvency II
System Software
1 75 (22.94%) Docker
2 11 (3.36%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (2.14%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.53%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.61%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.61%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 128 (39.14%) Terraform
2 93 (28.44%) Kubernetes
3 40 (12.23%) Ansible
4 19 (5.81%) Grafana
5 16 (4.89%) Progress Chef
5 16 (4.89%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.36%) Argo
7 8 (2.45%) Istio
8 6 (1.83%) SCOM
9 5 (1.53%) Data Guard
9 5 (1.53%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.61%) linkerd
11 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.61%) Packer
12 1 (0.31%) CA Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.31%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.31%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.31%) Puppet
Vendors
1 62 (18.96%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.56%) Google
3 20 (6.12%) Oracle
4 19 (5.81%) Red Hat
5 17 (5.20%) ServiceNow
6 16 (4.89%) Splunk
7 12 (3.67%) Palo Alto
8 11 (3.36%) F5
9 10 (3.06%) Aruba
9 10 (3.06%) SAP
10 9 (2.75%) Arista
10 9 (2.75%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.83%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.53%) Databricks
12 5 (1.53%) Salesforce
13 4 (1.22%) CyberArk
13 4 (1.22%) VMware
14 3 (0.92%) AppDynamics
14 3 (0.92%) Atlassian
14 3 (0.92%) Fortinet