Developer Contract Job Trends in the North West

Developer
England > North West

The median Developer daily rate in the North West is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 July 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 12 10
Rank change year-on-year -11 -2 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 274 226 320
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 7.44% 10.41% 11.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 8.14% 11.26% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 194 236
10th Percentile £347 £313 £306
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £457 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.88% +1.61% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £545 £519
90th Percentile £600 £625 £575
England median daily rate £516 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -1.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 1 2
10th Percentile £25.49 - £40.70
25th Percentile £36.32 - £47.75
Median hourly rate £41.06 £47.12 £59.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.87% -20.81% +19.00%
75th Percentile £46.18 - £71.25
90th Percentile - - £78.30
England median hourly rate £48.40 £47.12 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.72% -24.61% +4.17%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 3,365 2,007 2,550
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.34% 92.49% 94.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,896 1,313 1,573
10th Percentile £306 £258 £263
25th Percentile £400 £365 £382
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +7.84% -7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £594 £550 £575
90th Percentile £675 £656 £666
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 151 297
10th Percentile £17.32 £13.00 £11.77
25th Percentile £25.49 £17.30 £15.22
Median hourly rate £50.00 £29.27 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.82% +0.93% +8.01%
75th Percentile £73.75 £57.35 £47.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.79 £70.90
England median hourly rate £45.56 £28.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +59.84% -28.75% -6.98%

Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Developer job vacancy trend in the North West

Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

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

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer in the North West over the 6 months to 13 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in the North West

Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

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

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

Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Developer in the North West over the 6 months to 13 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Developer in the North West

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 Developer within the North West region over the 6 months to 13 July 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 -3 195 £475 - 94
Cheshire -25 32 £400 +7.38% 21
Merseyside -15 20 £437 -20.64% 14
Lancashire -1 15 £463 -9.76% 49
Cumbria -6 7 £875 - 5
Developer
England

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

For the 6 months to 13 July 2026, 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 Developer in the job title.

1 106 (38.69%) Java
2 94 (34.31%) Agile
3 73 (26.64%) CI/CD
4 60 (21.90%) Microservices
5 56 (20.44%) Azure
5 56 (20.44%) DevOps
6 50 (18.25%) AWS
7 46 (16.79%) SQL
8 45 (16.42%) Security Cleared
8 45 (16.42%) Spring
9 44 (16.06%) Test Automation
10 42 (15.33%) Problem-Solving
10 42 (15.33%) TDD
11 41 (14.96%) Spring Boot
12 37 (13.50%) JavaScript
13 36 (13.14%) Microsoft
13 36 (13.14%) React
14 35 (12.77%) C#
15 31 (11.31%) Full-Stack Development
15 31 (11.31%) Node.js
15 31 (11.31%) SC Cleared
16 29 (10.58%) Data Modelling
17 28 (10.22%) Docker
17 28 (10.22%) Git
17 28 (10.22%) Kubernetes
17 28 (10.22%) Mentoring
17 28 (10.22%) TypeScript
18 27 (9.85%) .NET
18 27 (9.85%) Business Intelligence
18 27 (9.85%) Power Platform

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:

Application Platforms
1 15 (5.47%) Confluence
2 4 (1.46%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.09%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.73%) Apache
4 2 (0.73%) CMS
4 2 (0.73%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.36%) Appian
5 1 (0.36%) Camunda
5 1 (0.36%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.36%) JBoss
5 1 (0.36%) Mule
5 1 (0.36%) Mule ESB
5 1 (0.36%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.36%) SAS
5 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.36%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) NEC Housing
1 1 (0.36%) Odoo
1 1 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 56 (20.44%) Azure
2 50 (18.25%) AWS
3 27 (9.85%) Power Platform
4 17 (6.20%) Serverless
5 15 (5.47%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (2.92%) AWS Lambda
6 8 (2.92%) GitHub
7 7 (2.55%) Copilot Studio
7 7 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
7 7 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (2.55%) Microsoft Copilot
7 7 (2.55%) Power Automate
8 6 (2.19%) Amazon S3
9 5 (1.82%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (1.82%) Amazon ECR
9 5 (1.82%) Amazon SQS
9 5 (1.82%) OpenShift
9 5 (1.82%) PowerApps
10 4 (1.46%) Azure AKS
10 4 (1.46%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.73%) Network Security
1 2 (0.73%) SD-WAN
1 2 (0.73%) TCP/IP
1 2 (0.73%) WAN
1 2 (0.73%) Wireless
2 1 (0.36%) IPsec
2 1 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.03%) Power BI
2 21 (7.66%) MongoDB
3 18 (6.57%) SQL Server
4 14 (5.11%) Power Query
5 13 (4.74%) Relational Database
6 12 (4.38%) PostgreSQL
7 11 (4.01%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (2.55%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.82%) DocumentDB
9 5 (1.82%) MySQL
10 4 (1.46%) DataStage
10 4 (1.46%) Db2
10 4 (1.46%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (1.46%) Hadoop
11 3 (1.09%) Oracle Database
11 3 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (0.73%) Metadata
12 2 (0.73%) WebFOCUS
13 1 (0.36%) OLTP
13 1 (0.36%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 28 (10.22%) Git
2 24 (8.76%) GitLab
3 19 (6.93%) JIRA
4 13 (4.74%) Mockito
5 10 (3.65%) Jenkins
6 8 (2.92%) JUnit
7 5 (1.82%) Cypress.io
7 5 (1.82%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.46%) Claude Code
8 4 (1.46%) Mocha
9 3 (1.09%) ClearCase
10 2 (0.73%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.73%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.36%) Eclipse
11 1 (0.36%) ESLint
11 1 (0.36%) Hudson
11 1 (0.36%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.36%) Postman
11 1 (0.36%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.36%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 70 (25.55%) Public Sector
2 48 (17.52%) Social Skills
3 33 (12.04%) Finance
4 22 (8.03%) Banking
5 18 (6.57%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.65%) Military
7 7 (2.55%) Manufacturing
8 6 (2.19%) Aerospace
9 3 (1.09%) Retail
10 2 (0.73%) Front Office
10 2 (0.73%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.36%) Advertising
11 1 (0.36%) Automotive
11 1 (0.36%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Games
11 1 (0.36%) Law
11 1 (0.36%) Legal
11 1 (0.36%) Legal Technology
11 1 (0.36%) Local Government
11 1 (0.36%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (16.42%) Spring
2 41 (14.96%) Spring Boot
3 36 (13.14%) React
4 31 (11.31%) Node.js
5 27 (9.85%) .NET
6 26 (9.49%) RESTful
7 25 (9.12%) REST
8 22 (8.03%) Kafka
9 19 (6.93%) AngularJS
10 16 (5.84%) HTML
11 13 (4.74%) YAML
12 12 (4.38%) CSS
13 11 (4.01%) JSON
14 9 (3.28%) ActiveMQ
14 9 (3.28%) JAX-RS
14 9 (3.28%) Jest
14 9 (3.28%) XML
15 7 (2.55%) .NET Core
15 7 (2.55%) React Native
16 6 (2.19%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 21 (7.66%) Cloud Native
2 12 (4.38%) Enterprise Software
3 11 (4.01%) Product Ownership
4 9 (3.28%) Data Structures
4 9 (3.28%) NHS
5 7 (2.55%) Mobile App
5 7 (2.55%) Onboarding
6 6 (2.19%) AI Agents
6 6 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.82%) Algorithms
7 5 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.09%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.73%) Equities
10 2 (0.73%) Fixed Income
10 2 (0.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 2 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (0.73%) IoT
11 1 (0.36%) CSOC
11 1 (0.36%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.20%) Linux
1 17 (6.20%) Unix
2 8 (2.92%) Mac OS X
3 3 (1.09%) VMS
3 3 (1.09%) Windows
4 2 (0.73%) Android
4 2 (0.73%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.73%) Mac OS
4 2 (0.73%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (34.31%) Agile
2 73 (26.64%) CI/CD
3 60 (21.90%) Microservices
4 56 (20.44%) DevOps
5 44 (16.06%) Test Automation
6 42 (15.33%) Problem-Solving
6 42 (15.33%) TDD
7 31 (11.31%) Full-Stack Development
8 29 (10.58%) Data Modelling
9 28 (10.22%) Mentoring
10 27 (9.85%) Business Intelligence
11 26 (9.49%) SDLC
12 23 (8.39%) AI
12 23 (8.39%) BDD
13 22 (8.03%) Code Quality
14 21 (7.66%) ETL
15 20 (7.30%) Software Engineering
16 19 (6.93%) Analytics
16 19 (6.93%) Continuous Improvement
16 19 (6.93%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 106 (38.69%) Java
2 46 (16.79%) SQL
3 37 (13.50%) JavaScript
4 35 (12.77%) C#
5 28 (10.22%) TypeScript
6 19 (6.93%) Python
7 16 (5.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 7 (2.55%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.55%) PowerShell
9 6 (2.19%) Apex Code
9 6 (2.19%) Go
10 5 (1.82%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.46%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.09%) VB
12 3 (1.09%) VB6
13 2 (0.73%) C++
13 2 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.36%) ABAP
14 1 (0.36%) PHP
14 1 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 45 (16.42%) Security Cleared
2 31 (11.31%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.39%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (2.92%) Degree
5 4 (1.46%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.36%) CTC Cleared
6 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.47%) Accessibility
2 14 (5.11%) QA
3 9 (3.28%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.19%) WCAG
5 4 (1.46%) GRC
6 3 (1.09%) ISO 20022
6 3 (1.09%) PSD2
6 3 (1.09%) SEPA
7 1 (0.36%) NCSC
7 1 (0.36%) NIST
System Software
1 28 (10.22%) Docker
Systems Management
1 28 (10.22%) Kubernetes
2 17 (6.20%) Terraform
3 9 (3.28%) Ansible
4 4 (1.46%) Grafana
5 1 (0.36%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 36 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 16 (5.84%) Oracle
2 16 (5.84%) Salesforce
3 12 (4.38%) ServiceNow
4 5 (1.82%) Pega
5 4 (1.46%) Atlassian
5 4 (1.46%) Google
5 4 (1.46%) IBM
5 4 (1.46%) OpenAI
5 4 (1.46%) Teradata
6 3 (1.09%) SAP
6 3 (1.09%) Veracode
7 2 (0.73%) Adobe
7 2 (0.73%) Cisco
8 1 (0.36%) Dell
8 1 (0.36%) Foundry
8 1 (0.36%) NEC
8 1 (0.36%) Sage
8 1 (0.36%) Sitecore
8 1 (0.36%) Xamarin