Games Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Gaming
England > North of England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Games in contract job vacancies in the North of England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Games over the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 198 150 178
Rank change year-on-year -48 +28 +18
Contract jobs citing Games 14 14 10
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.29% 0.40% 0.22%
As % of the General category 0.49% 0.69% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 6 4
10th Percentile £457 £290 £160
25th Percentile £463 - £186
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £380 £313
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% +21.60% -43.18%
75th Percentile - £395 £497
90th Percentile - £638 £604
England median daily rate £465 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +16.25% -11.11% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £10.42
England median hourly rate £50.00 £42.75 £38.75
% change year-on-year +16.96% +10.32% +3.33%

All General Skills
North of England

Games falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills in the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 2,841 2,026 2,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 59.71% 57.52% 54.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,896 1,102 1,622
10th Percentile £213 £254 £255
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.13% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £597
90th Percentile £638 £675 £690
England median daily rate £500 £535 £550
% change year-on-year -6.54% -2.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 128 145
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.00 £13.05
25th Percentile £17.48 £17.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.08 £24.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +2.35% +17.96% +3.85%
75th Percentile £45.46 £35.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £67.78 £61.50 £52.47
England median hourly rate £23.54 £30.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -21.54% -9.09% +28.35%

Games
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Games relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Games job vacancy trend in the North of England

Games
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Games.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Games

Games
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Games in the North of England over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Games in the North of England

Games
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Games.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Games

Games
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Games within the North of England region over the 6 months to 31 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
North West -15 14 £600 +57.89% 153
Games
England

Games
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 1 (7.14%) Apache
1 1 (7.14%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (7.14%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (7.14%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 4 (28.57%) AWS
1 4 (28.57%) AWS CloudFormation
1 4 (28.57%) Azure
1 4 (28.57%) Datadog
1 4 (28.57%) GCP
1 4 (28.57%) GitHub
1 4 (28.57%) GitHub Actions
1 4 (28.57%) Pulumi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (21.43%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (21.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 4 (28.57%) GitLab
1 4 (28.57%) Jenkins
General
1 5 (35.71%) Banking
Job Titles
1 4 (28.57%) Platform Engineer
2 3 (21.43%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
2 3 (21.43%) Games Engineer
2 3 (21.43%) Integration Engineer
2 3 (21.43%) Software Engineer
2 3 (21.43%) Software Integration Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) Product Owner
4 1 (7.14%) Administrator
4 1 (7.14%) Data Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Senior
4 1 (7.14%) Senior Data Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Technology Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (42.86%) REST
2 4 (28.57%) Elastic Stack
3 3 (21.43%) GraphQL
3 3 (21.43%) Next.js
3 3 (21.43%) Node.js
3 3 (21.43%) OAuth
3 3 (21.43%) OAuth2
3 3 (21.43%) OpenID
3 3 (21.43%) React
3 3 (21.43%) Redux
3 3 (21.43%) WebSockets
3 3 (21.43%) Zustand
Miscellaneous
1 2 (14.29%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 4 (28.57%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (50.00%) Observability
2 4 (28.57%) CI/CD
2 4 (28.57%) Containerisation
2 4 (28.57%) DevOps
2 4 (28.57%) Infrastructure as Code
2 4 (28.57%) Platform Engineering
2 4 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
2 4 (28.57%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 4 (28.57%) Task Automation
3 3 (21.43%) Configuration Management
3 3 (21.43%) Cross-Browser Compatibility
3 3 (21.43%) Data Modelling
3 3 (21.43%) Data Pipeline
3 3 (21.43%) Secrets Management
3 3 (21.43%) Secure Coding
3 3 (21.43%) Software Architecture
3 3 (21.43%) Software Engineering
3 3 (21.43%) User Experience
3 3 (21.43%) Webhook
4 2 (14.29%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 4 (28.57%) Bash
1 4 (28.57%) Go
1 4 (28.57%) Python
2 3 (21.43%) TypeScript
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (21.43%) Accessibility
System Software
1 4 (28.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (28.57%) Grafana
1 4 (28.57%) Kubernetes
1 4 (28.57%) Prometheus
1 4 (28.57%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (7.14%) Databricks
1 1 (7.14%) Microsoft
1 1 (7.14%) SYSPRO