Operations Engineer Contract Job Trends in the North West

Operations Engineer
England > North West

The median Operations Engineer daily rate in the North West is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 115 115 133
Rank change year-on-year 0 +18 +20
Contract jobs requiring an Operations Engineer 16 10 12
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.74% 0.42% 0.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.80% 0.44% 0.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 5 4
10th Percentile - £455 £395
25th Percentile - £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £643 £513
Median % change year-on-year -30.02% +25.46% +13.89%
75th Percentile - £688 £560
90th Percentile - - £600
England median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - -14.24%

All DemandTrendContract IT Job Vacancies
North West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North West. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the North West with a recognized job title 2,000 2,276 2,593
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 95.07% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,296 1,343 1,778
10th Percentile £268 £275 £285
25th Percentile £365 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.72% -1.40% +3.09%
75th Percentile £556 £588 £588
90th Percentile £658 £675 £673
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 187 157
10th Percentile £13.00 £12.86 £15.90
25th Percentile £17.30 £16.58 £17.75
Median hourly rate £24.88 £35.00 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year -28.91% +14.60% +32.47%
75th Percentile £49.28 £54.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.77 £70.90 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year -44.11% +2.86% +66.10%

Operations Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings that featured Operations Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Operations Engineer in the North West

Operations Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Operations Engineer job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Operations Engineer job vacancies in the North West

Operations Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Operations Engineer job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Operations Engineer job vacancies in the North West

Operations Engineer
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 Operations Engineer within the North West region over the 6 months to 3 September 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
Cheshire - 8 - -
Merseyside +5 7 £450 - 1
Manchester +1 1 - -
Operations Engineer
England

Operations Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 3 September 2025, Operations Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the North West region featuring Operations Engineer in the job title.

1 14 (87.50%) Management Information System
2 8 (50.00%) Softphone
2 8 (50.00%) SQL
2 8 (50.00%) ITIL
2 8 (50.00%) Linux
2 8 (50.00%) B2B
2 8 (50.00%) Cisco
2 8 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 8 (50.00%) Active Directory
2 8 (50.00%) ITIL Certification
2 8 (50.00%) Red Hat
2 8 (50.00%) XMPP
2 8 (50.00%) Problem Management
2 8 (50.00%) SCOM
2 8 (50.00%) PowerShell
2 8 (50.00%) Skype for Business
2 8 (50.00%) Unified Communications
2 8 (50.00%) Splunk
2 8 (50.00%) Skype
2 8 (50.00%) WebEx
2 8 (50.00%) Procure-to-Pay
2 8 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (50.00%) Mattermost
2 8 (50.00%) Social Skills
3 7 (43.75%) DNS
4 6 (37.50%) Banking
4 6 (37.50%) Investment Banking
4 6 (37.50%) VMware
4 6 (37.50%) DMZ
4 6 (37.50%) Network Security

Operations Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 8 (50.00%) Mattermost
1 8 (50.00%) Skype for Business
Cloud Services
1 1 (6.25%) AWS
1 1 (6.25%) Azure
1 1 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
1 1 (6.25%) Azure Logic Apps
1 1 (6.25%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 8 (50.00%) Skype
1 8 (50.00%) Softphone
1 8 (50.00%) Unified Communications
1 8 (50.00%) WebEx
2 7 (43.75%) DNS
3 6 (37.50%) DMZ
3 6 (37.50%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
3 6 (37.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 6 (37.50%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (6.25%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (6.25%) GitLab
General
1 8 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 6 (37.50%) Banking
2 6 (37.50%) Investment Banking
3 1 (6.25%) Military
3 1 (6.25%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (50.00%) XMPP
2 1 (6.25%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (87.50%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 8 (50.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (50.00%) B2B
1 8 (50.00%) ITIL
1 8 (50.00%) Problem Management
1 8 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
1 8 (50.00%) Procure-to-Pay
2 6 (37.50%) Business Strategy
2 6 (37.50%) Design Patterns
2 6 (37.50%) Load Balancing
3 2 (12.50%) DevOps
4 1 (6.25%) CI/CD
4 1 (6.25%) Containerisation
4 1 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1 (6.25%) Mentoring
4 1 (6.25%) Platform Engineering
4 1 (6.25%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 8 (50.00%) PowerShell
1 8 (50.00%) SQL
2 1 (6.25%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 8 (50.00%) ITIL Certification
2 1 (6.25%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 8 (50.00%) Active Directory
2 6 (37.50%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 8 (50.00%) SCOM
2 1 (6.25%) Ansible
2 1 (6.25%) Kubernetes
2 1 (6.25%) Terraform
Vendors
1 8 (50.00%) Cisco
1 8 (50.00%) Microsoft
1 8 (50.00%) Red Hat
1 8 (50.00%) Splunk
2 6 (37.50%) F5
2 6 (37.50%) VMware