Digital Engineering Contract Job Trends in the North West

Digital Engineering
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Digital Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 143 115 112
Rank change year-on-year -28 -3 +61
Contract jobs citing Digital Engineering 6 8 27
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.24% 0.37% 1.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.27% 0.43% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 0 0
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 - -
England median daily rate £618 £675 £613
% change year-on-year -8.52% +10.20% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 23
Median hourly rate - £46.18 £46.18
England median hourly rate £121.77 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +163.69% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
North West

Digital Engineering 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 2,213 1,874 2,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.38% 86.48% 89.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,448 1,055 1,596
10th Percentile £213 £265 £295
25th Percentile £358 £390 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £567 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £656 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £544
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.49% -1.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 108 157
10th Percentile £16.41 £16.00 £15.75
25th Percentile £20.63 £21.20 £18.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £31.25 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.80% -11.97% +33.81%
75th Percentile £51.76 £51.91 £46.88
90th Percentile £69.78 £68.65 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.70%

Digital Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Digital Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Digital Engineering job vacancy trend in the North West

Digital Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Digital Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Digital Engineering

Digital Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Digital Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Digital Engineering

Digital Engineering
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 Digital Engineering within the North West region over the 6 months to 19 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
Lancashire -12 3 £550 - 2
Manchester -14 3 - - 5
Digital Engineering
England

Digital Engineering
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 3 (50.00%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 3 (50.00%) BGP
1 3 (50.00%) Firewall
1 3 (50.00%) Software-Defined Networking
1 3 (50.00%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (50.00%) BigQuery
General
1 3 (50.00%) Analytical Skills
1 3 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (33.33%) Automotive
2 2 (33.33%) Finance
2 2 (33.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 3 (50.00%) Architect
1 3 (50.00%) Data Architect
1 3 (50.00%) GCP Architect
1 3 (50.00%) GCP Data Architect
1 3 (50.00%) Platform Engineer
2 2 (33.33%) BigQuery Architect
2 2 (33.33%) ETL Architect
Miscellaneous
1 3 (50.00%) Cloud Native
1 3 (50.00%) Data Centre
1 3 (50.00%) Product Ownership
2 2 (33.33%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (50.00%) Linux
1 3 (50.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1 3 (50.00%) Windows
1 3 (50.00%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (50.00%) AI
1 3 (50.00%) Change Control
1 3 (50.00%) Computer Science
1 3 (50.00%) Containerisation
1 3 (50.00%) Continuous Improvement
1 3 (50.00%) Cybersecurity
1 3 (50.00%) Data Architecture
1 3 (50.00%) ETL
1 3 (50.00%) High Availability
1 3 (50.00%) ITSM
1 3 (50.00%) Knowledge Management
1 3 (50.00%) Platform Engineering
1 3 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
1 3 (50.00%) Service Delivery
1 3 (50.00%) Virtual Infrastructure
2 2 (33.33%) Data Engineering
2 2 (33.33%) Data Integration
2 2 (33.33%) Digital Innovation
2 2 (33.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 1 (16.67%) Technical Debt
Programming Languages
1 3 (50.00%) Bash
1 3 (50.00%) Perl
1 3 (50.00%) PowerShell
1 3 (50.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 3 (50.00%) CCDP
1 3 (50.00%) CCNA
1 3 (50.00%) CCNP
1 3 (50.00%) Cisco Certification
1 3 (50.00%) Degree
1 3 (50.00%) SC Cleared
1 3 (50.00%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 3 (50.00%) Active Directory
1 3 (50.00%) VMware Infrastructure
Vendors
1 3 (50.00%) Citrix
1 3 (50.00%) Google
1 3 (50.00%) Hitachi
1 3 (50.00%) Red Hat
1 3 (50.00%) VMware