Backend Developer Contract Job Trends in the North West

Backend Developer
England > North West

The median Backend Developer daily rate in the North West is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 October 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 128 119 135
Rank change year-on-year -9 +16 +31
Contract jobs requiring a Backend Developer 5 1 9
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.23% 0.041% 0.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.25% 0.044% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 1 7
10th Percentile £415 - £320
25th Percentile £418 £275 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £300 £325
Median % change year-on-year +41.67% -7.69% -38.10%
75th Percentile £453 £325 £528
90th Percentile £549 - £605
England median daily rate £540 £430 £600
% change year-on-year +25.58% -28.33% +2.78%

All Contract 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 2,029 2,271 2,623
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.36% 93.84% 92.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,340 1,213 1,814
10th Percentile £250 £269 £271
25th Percentile £363 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +3.63%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £595
90th Percentile £681 £650 £674
England median daily rate £510 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 160 178
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.61 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £18.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £24.88 £35.00 £31.77
Median % change year-on-year -28.91% +10.17% +39.65%
75th Percentile £46.54 £55.25 £46.18
90th Percentile £70.08 £73.64 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -41.51% -6.89% +66.53%

Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Backend Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Backend Developer job vacancy trend in the North West

Backend Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the North West

Backend Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Backend Developer in the North West over the 6 months to 15 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Backend Developer in the North West

Backend Developer
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 Backend Developer within the North West region over the 6 months to 15 October 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 - 4 £423 - 11
Merseyside +4 1 £435 +45.00%
Backend Developer
England

Backend Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 15 October 2025, Backend Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the North West region featuring Backend Developer in the job title.

1 4 (80.00%) Docker
1 4 (80.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (60.00%) Java
2 3 (60.00%) Node.js
2 3 (60.00%) Redis
3 2 (40.00%) REST
3 2 (40.00%) Azure
3 2 (40.00%) WCAG
3 2 (40.00%) YAML
3 2 (40.00%) Cypress.io
3 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 2 (40.00%) Agile
3 2 (40.00%) Microservices
3 2 (40.00%) Express.js
3 2 (40.00%) GitLab
3 2 (40.00%) npm
3 2 (40.00%) Nunjucks
3 2 (40.00%) Jest
3 2 (40.00%) Public Sector
3 2 (40.00%) Accessibility
3 2 (40.00%) Full-Stack Development
3 2 (40.00%) End-to-End Testing
3 2 (40.00%) Middleware
4 1 (20.00%) Business Strategy
4 1 (20.00%) Roadmaps
4 1 (20.00%) Architectural Patterns
4 1 (20.00%) Product Ownership
4 1 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (20.00%) Clean Code
4 1 (20.00%) Argo

Backend Developer Skill Set
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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) Azure
1 2 (40.00%) npm
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon EC2
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon S3
2 1 (20.00%) AWS
2 1 (20.00%) GCP
2 1 (20.00%) GitHub
2 1 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
2 1 (20.00%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (60.00%) Redis
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (20.00%) MySQL
2 1 (20.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (40.00%) Cypress.io
1 2 (40.00%) GitLab
2 1 (20.00%) Git
2 1 (20.00%) Gradle
2 1 (20.00%) Jenkins
General
1 2 (40.00%) Public Sector
2 1 (20.00%) Banking
2 1 (20.00%) Finance
2 1 (20.00%) Manufacturing
2 1 (20.00%) Private Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (60.00%) Node.js
2 2 (40.00%) Express.js
2 2 (40.00%) Jest
2 2 (40.00%) Middleware
2 2 (40.00%) Nunjucks
2 2 (40.00%) REST
2 2 (40.00%) YAML
3 1 (20.00%) .NET
3 1 (20.00%) .NET Framework
3 1 (20.00%) ASP.NET
3 1 (20.00%) ASP.NET Core
3 1 (20.00%) Bootstrap
3 1 (20.00%) Entity Framework
3 1 (20.00%) HTML
3 1 (20.00%) Laravel
3 1 (20.00%) RabbitMQ
3 1 (20.00%) Spring Boot
3 1 (20.00%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Data Protection Act
1 1 (20.00%) Greenfield Project
1 1 (20.00%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (80.00%) CI/CD
2 2 (40.00%) Agile
2 2 (40.00%) End-to-End Testing
2 2 (40.00%) Full-Stack Development
2 2 (40.00%) Microservices
3 1 (20.00%) API Development
3 1 (20.00%) Architectural Design
3 1 (20.00%) Architectural Patterns
3 1 (20.00%) Business Strategy
3 1 (20.00%) Clean Code
3 1 (20.00%) Continuous Deployment
3 1 (20.00%) Continuous Integration
3 1 (20.00%) Data Protection
3 1 (20.00%) DevOps
3 1 (20.00%) E-Commerce
3 1 (20.00%) ERP
3 1 (20.00%) Integration Testing
3 1 (20.00%) Logistics
3 1 (20.00%) Mentoring
3 1 (20.00%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 3 (60.00%) Java
2 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 1 (20.00%) C#
3 1 (20.00%) PHP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (40.00%) Accessibility
1 2 (40.00%) WCAG
2 1 (20.00%) QA
System Software
1 4 (80.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Argo
1 1 (20.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (20.00%) Google