Distributed Systems Contract Job Trends in the North West

Distributed Systems
England > North West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Distributed Systems in contract job vacancies in the North West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Distributed Systems over the 6 months leading up to 20 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 124 113
Rank change year-on-year +5 -11 +32
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 51 10 15
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.32% 0.45% 0.62%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.01% 1.38% 2.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 8 10
10th Percentile £424 £345 £431
25th Percentile £500 £399 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £510 £483
Median % change year-on-year +10.29% +5.70% -25.77%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £622
90th Percentile £659 £710 £653
England median daily rate £550 £585 £650
% change year-on-year -5.98% -10.00% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 0
10th Percentile £72.50 - -
25th Percentile £73.44 - -
Median hourly rate £77.25 - -
75th Percentile £85.00 - -
90th Percentile £95.00 - -
England median hourly rate £75.00 £66.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +12.78% +20.91% -38.89%

All Generic Skills
North West

Distributed Systems falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 1,272 726 636
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.87% 32.81% 26.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 773 485 395
10th Percentile £345 £300 £313
25th Percentile £413 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £580 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £729
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 40 29
10th Percentile £16.50 £22.14 £11.25
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.88 £16.85
Median hourly rate £43.96 £43.86 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.24% +41.47% -20.00%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £87.50 £77.63 £93.90
England median hourly rate £41.00 £31.78 £48.75
% change year-on-year +29.03% -34.82% +11.00%

Distributed Systems
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Distributed Systems job vacancy trend in the North West

Distributed Systems
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Distributed Systems.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Distributed Systems

Distributed Systems
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Distributed Systems in the North West over the 6 months to 20 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Distributed Systems in the North West

Distributed Systems
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Distributed Systems.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Distributed Systems

Distributed Systems
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Distributed Systems in the North West over the 6 months to 20 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Distributed Systems in the North West

Distributed Systems
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 Distributed Systems within the North West region over the 6 months to 20 August 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 -6 33 £650 +23.81% 16
Cheshire +6 13 £474 -8.23% 3
Merseyside -20 3 £575 +12.75% 1
Cumbria - 2 £525 -
Distributed Systems
England

Distributed Systems
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 7 (13.73%) Confluence
2 4 (7.84%) SharePoint
3 3 (5.88%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.96%) Apache
4 1 (1.96%) Camunda
4 1 (1.96%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (7.84%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 30 (58.82%) AWS
2 12 (23.53%) Serverless
3 10 (19.61%) AWS Lambda
4 8 (15.69%) Amazon ECS
4 8 (15.69%) Amazon SQS
5 6 (11.76%) Amazon EKS
6 4 (7.84%) Amazon EventBridge
7 3 (5.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (5.88%) Azure
7 3 (5.88%) GCP
7 3 (5.88%) GitHub
7 3 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (1.96%) Akamai
8 1 (1.96%) Amazon EMR
8 1 (1.96%) Amazon S3
8 1 (1.96%) AWS Fargate
8 1 (1.96%) Fivetran
8 1 (1.96%) Kong
8 1 (1.96%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (9.80%) SSH
2 1 (1.96%) Firewall
2 1 (1.96%) HTTP
2 1 (1.96%) Network Security
2 1 (1.96%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (19.61%) DynamoDB
1 10 (19.61%) NoSQL
2 6 (11.76%) MySQL
3 4 (7.84%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (5.88%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (5.88%) MongoDB
4 3 (5.88%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (1.96%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (1.96%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.96%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.96%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.96%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 7 (13.73%) JIRA
2 6 (11.76%) Mockito
3 3 (5.88%) Git
3 3 (5.88%) GitLab
3 3 (5.88%) JUnit
General
1 18 (35.29%) Social Skills
2 10 (19.61%) Finance
3 7 (13.73%) Banking
4 6 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (1.96%) iGaming
5 1 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (1.96%) Legal
5 1 (1.96%) Marketing
5 1 (1.96%) Retail
Job Titles
1 20 (39.22%) Software Engineer
2 18 (35.29%) Senior
3 16 (31.37%) Java Engineer
4 15 (29.41%) Java Software Engineer
5 11 (21.57%) AWS Engineer
6 8 (15.69%) AWS Software Engineer
6 8 (15.69%) Senior Software Engineer
7 7 (13.73%) Principal Engineer
8 5 (9.80%) Product Manager
8 5 (9.80%) Senior Java Engineer
8 5 (9.80%) Technical Manager
9 4 (7.84%) Senior Java Software Engineer
9 4 (7.84%) Senior Manager
9 4 (7.84%) Senior Product Manager
10 3 (5.88%) Developer
10 3 (5.88%) Java Developer
10 3 (5.88%) Kubernetes Engineer
10 3 (5.88%) Senior Developer
10 3 (5.88%) Senior Java Developer
10 3 (5.88%) Technical Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (33.33%) Kafka
2 14 (27.45%) Spring
3 13 (25.49%) Spring Boot
4 12 (23.53%) RESTful
5 10 (19.61%) Terraform
6 7 (13.73%) REST
7 6 (11.76%) .NET
8 3 (5.88%) ActiveMQ
8 3 (5.88%) JAX-RS
8 3 (5.88%) Spring MVC
8 3 (5.88%) Spring Security
9 2 (3.92%) Middleware
10 1 (1.96%) .NET Core
10 1 (1.96%) .NET Framework
10 1 (1.96%) AngularJS
10 1 (1.96%) Jakarta EE
10 1 (1.96%) Node.js
10 1 (1.96%) OpenID
10 1 (1.96%) RabbitMQ
10 1 (1.96%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 22 (43.14%) Cloud Native
2 8 (15.69%) Legacy Systems
3 6 (11.76%) PKI
4 5 (9.80%) Management Information System
5 4 (7.84%) Tandem
6 3 (5.88%) Onboarding
7 2 (3.92%) Client/Server
7 2 (3.92%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (3.92%) Product Ownership
7 2 (3.92%) Virtual Team
8 1 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.96%) Clustering
8 1 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (1.96%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.96%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (1.96%) Marketing Technology
8 1 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (15.69%) Unix
2 6 (11.76%) Linux
3 4 (7.84%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 26 (50.98%) Event-Driven
3 25 (49.02%) Event-Driven Architecture
3 25 (49.02%) Software Engineering
4 23 (45.10%) Microservices
5 15 (29.41%) Agile
6 13 (25.49%) Observability
6 13 (25.49%) Stakeholder Management
7 11 (21.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 10 (19.61%) Test Automation
9 9 (17.65%) Data Modelling
9 9 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
9 9 (17.65%) Technical Leadership
10 8 (15.69%) Mentoring
10 8 (15.69%) Roadmaps
11 7 (13.73%) Clean Code
11 7 (13.73%) DevOps
11 7 (13.73%) Infrastructure as Code
11 7 (13.73%) Product Management
12 6 (11.76%) Release Management
Programming Languages
1 21 (41.18%) Java
2 11 (21.57%) Python
3 8 (15.69%) Kotlin
4 7 (13.73%) SQL
5 5 (9.80%) C#
6 2 (3.92%) Go
6 2 (3.92%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (11.76%) Degree
2 5 (9.80%) SC Cleared
2 5 (9.80%) Security Cleared
3 4 (7.84%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.96%) CEH
4 1 (1.96%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
4 1 (1.96%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.96%) SAFe Agilist
4 1 (1.96%) SANS
4 1 (1.96%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.88%) QA
2 1 (1.96%) NIST
2 1 (1.96%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 14 (27.45%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (27.45%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.96%) Ansible
2 1 (1.96%) Istio
2 1 (1.96%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 5 (9.80%) Gemalto
1 5 (9.80%) Thales
2 4 (7.84%) IBM
3 2 (3.92%) Atlassian
4 1 (1.96%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (1.96%) CheckPoint
4 1 (1.96%) Cisco
4 1 (1.96%) F5
4 1 (1.96%) Intel
4 1 (1.96%) Microsoft
4 1 (1.96%) Sage
4 1 (1.96%) Teradata