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 2 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 114 120 115
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +30
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 68 12 7
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.72% 0.55% 0.29%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.98% 1.60% 1.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 10 5
10th Percentile £417 £403 £411
25th Percentile £483 £497 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £530 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.66% +11.58% -26.92%
75th Percentile £644 £622 £495
90th Percentile £685 £695 £497
England median daily rate £555 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +5.71% -12.50% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 0 1
10th Percentile £73.00 - -
25th Percentile £76.25 - £82.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 - £85.00
75th Percentile £77.50 - £87.50
90th Percentile £83.75 - -
England median hourly rate £77.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +14.93% -4.29% -22.22%

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 1,365 749 688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.56% 34.33% 28.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 785 510 368
10th Percentile £325 £311 £294
25th Percentile £417 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £454 £490
Median % change year-on-year +10.13% -7.35% -2.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 152 41 24
10th Percentile £14.32 £15.50 £15.92
25th Percentile £21.14 £18.87 £19.65
Median hourly rate £43.96 £35.00 £27.59
Median % change year-on-year +25.60% +26.86% -34.89%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £59.13
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.45 £91.35
England median hourly rate £35.00 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +16.67% -47.69% +24.59%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 45 £575 +4.55% 82
Cheshire +9 16 £474 -18.77% 13
Merseyside -12 4 £538 +5.39% 5
Cumbria - 3 £525 - 2
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 9 (13.24%) Confluence
2 4 (5.88%) SharePoint
3 3 (4.41%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.47%) Apache
4 1 (1.47%) Camunda
4 1 (1.47%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (5.88%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 39 (57.35%) AWS
2 14 (20.59%) Serverless
3 12 (17.65%) AWS Lambda
4 8 (11.76%) Amazon ECS
5 7 (10.29%) Amazon SQS
6 6 (8.82%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (5.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (5.88%) GCP
8 3 (4.41%) Amazon EventBridge
8 3 (4.41%) AWS Fargate
8 3 (4.41%) Azure
8 3 (4.41%) GitHub
9 2 (2.94%) Amazon S3
9 2 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.94%) SaaS
10 1 (1.47%) Akamai
10 1 (1.47%) Amazon EMR
10 1 (1.47%) Kong
10 1 (1.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 6 (8.82%) HTTP
2 5 (7.35%) SSH
3 1 (1.47%) Firewall
3 1 (1.47%) Network Security
3 1 (1.47%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (14.71%) NoSQL
2 7 (10.29%) DynamoDB
2 7 (10.29%) MySQL
3 4 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (5.88%) Relational Database
4 3 (4.41%) MongoDB
5 2 (2.94%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (2.94%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (2.94%) SQL Server
6 1 (1.47%) Apache Iceberg
6 1 (1.47%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.47%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.47%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 9 (13.24%) JIRA
2 6 (8.82%) Mockito
3 5 (7.35%) Git
4 3 (4.41%) GitLab
4 3 (4.41%) JUnit
5 1 (1.47%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.47%) Selenium
General
1 27 (39.71%) Social Skills
2 15 (22.06%) Finance
3 7 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (10.29%) Banking
4 2 (2.94%) iGaming
4 2 (2.94%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.47%) Legal
5 1 (1.47%) Marketing
5 1 (1.47%) Retail
Job Titles
1 27 (39.71%) Software Engineer
2 23 (33.82%) Java Engineer
3 19 (27.94%) Java Software Engineer
3 19 (27.94%) Senior
4 13 (19.12%) AWS Engineer
5 10 (14.71%) AWS Software Engineer
5 10 (14.71%) Senior Software Engineer
6 8 (11.76%) Developer
7 7 (10.29%) Senior Java Engineer
7 7 (10.29%) Technical Manager
8 5 (7.35%) Architect
8 5 (7.35%) Senior Java Software Engineer
9 4 (5.88%) Delivery Manager
9 4 (5.88%) Java Developer
9 4 (5.88%) Principal Engineer
9 4 (5.88%) Solutions Architect
9 4 (5.88%) Technical Delivery Manager
10 3 (4.41%) Engineering Manager
10 3 (4.41%) Product Manager
10 3 (4.41%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (39.71%) Kafka
2 22 (32.35%) Spring
3 21 (30.88%) Spring Boot
4 16 (23.53%) RESTful
5 13 (19.12%) REST
6 7 (10.29%) Terraform
7 4 (5.88%) .NET
8 3 (4.41%) ActiveMQ
8 3 (4.41%) JAX-RS
8 3 (4.41%) React
8 3 (4.41%) Spring MVC
8 3 (4.41%) Spring Security
9 2 (2.94%) Middleware
9 2 (2.94%) Web Services
10 1 (1.47%) .NET Framework
10 1 (1.47%) AngularJS
10 1 (1.47%) Jakarta EE
10 1 (1.47%) OAuth
10 1 (1.47%) OpenID
10 1 (1.47%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (50.00%) Cloud Native
2 9 (13.24%) Legacy Systems
3 7 (10.29%) Onboarding
4 6 (8.82%) PKI
5 5 (7.35%) Product Ownership
6 4 (5.88%) Management Information System
6 4 (5.88%) Tandem
7 3 (4.41%) AI Agents
7 3 (4.41%) Client/Server
7 3 (4.41%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (2.94%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (2.94%) Virtual Team
9 1 (1.47%) Data Structures
9 1 (1.47%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (1.47%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 1 (1.47%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (1.47%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (1.47%) Online Gambling
9 1 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (11.76%) Unix
2 5 (7.35%) Linux
3 4 (5.88%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (73.53%) CI/CD
2 43 (63.24%) Software Engineering
3 33 (48.53%) Event-Driven
4 31 (45.59%) Event-Driven Architecture
5 27 (39.71%) Microservices
6 24 (35.29%) Agile
6 24 (35.29%) Observability
7 23 (33.82%) Test Automation
8 22 (32.35%) Continuous Improvement
9 18 (26.47%) Stakeholder Management
10 15 (22.06%) Problem-Solving
11 12 (17.65%) DevOps
12 11 (16.18%) Technical Leadership
13 10 (14.71%) Clean Code
13 10 (14.71%) E-Commerce
13 10 (14.71%) Mentoring
14 9 (13.24%) AI
14 9 (13.24%) Code Quality
14 9 (13.24%) Decision-Making
14 9 (13.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 40 (58.82%) Java
2 11 (16.18%) Python
3 10 (14.71%) Kotlin
4 7 (10.29%) SQL
5 4 (5.88%) TypeScript
6 3 (4.41%) C#
6 3 (4.41%) JavaScript
7 2 (2.94%) Go
8 1 (1.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 6 (8.82%) Degree
2 5 (7.35%) SC Cleared
2 5 (7.35%) Security Cleared
3 4 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.47%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.47%) CEH
5 1 (1.47%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 1 (1.47%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.47%) SAFe Agilist
5 1 (1.47%) SANS
5 1 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (5.88%) QA
2 1 (1.47%) NIST
2 1 (1.47%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 18 (26.47%) Docker
Systems Management
1 24 (35.29%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.47%) Istio
2 1 (1.47%) Network Intrusion Detection System
2 1 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 5 (7.35%) Gemalto
1 5 (7.35%) Thales
2 4 (5.88%) Atlassian
2 4 (5.88%) IBM
3 1 (1.47%) BiZZdesign
3 1 (1.47%) CheckPoint
3 1 (1.47%) Cisco
3 1 (1.47%) F5
3 1 (1.47%) Intel
3 1 (1.47%) Microsoft
3 1 (1.47%) Sage
3 1 (1.47%) Teradata