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 6 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 118 108
Rank change year-on-year -11 -10 +39
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 48 8 15
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.27% 0.36% 0.63%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.89% 1.15% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 6 10
10th Percentile £450 £385 £431
25th Percentile £500 £437 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £524 £483
Median % change year-on-year +6.97% +8.50% -25.77%
75th Percentile £650 £548 £622
90th Percentile £662 £657 £653
England median daily rate £550 £575 £606
% change year-on-year -4.35% -5.15% +1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 0
10th Percentile £72.50 - -
25th Percentile £73.63 - -
Median hourly rate £81.00 - -
75th Percentile £92.50 - -
90th Percentile £95.00 - -
England median hourly rate £75.00 £66.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +13.64% +20.00% -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 1,234 698 634
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.62% 31.81% 26.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 753 460 394
10th Percentile £341 £296 £309
25th Percentile £413 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £466 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.35% -6.85% -
75th Percentile £600 £580 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £731
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 39 38
10th Percentile £16.50 £21.77 £12.48
25th Percentile £24.47 £26.88 £15.92
Median hourly rate £43.96 £35.50 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +23.83% +30.28% -25.34%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £91.33 £79.20 £76.12
England median hourly rate £43.96 £31.78 £47.50
% change year-on-year +38.35% -33.11% +11.76%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -9 30 £650 +21.04% 30
Cheshire +8 13 £474 -12.47% 10
Merseyside -17 3 £575 +12.75% 4
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 6 (12.50%) Confluence
2 4 (8.33%) SharePoint
3 3 (6.25%) Apache Spark
4 1 (2.08%) Apache
4 1 (2.08%) Camunda
Applications
1 4 (8.33%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 26 (54.17%) AWS
2 9 (18.75%) Serverless
3 8 (16.67%) Amazon ECS
3 8 (16.67%) Amazon SQS
3 8 (16.67%) AWS Lambda
4 6 (12.50%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (8.33%) Amazon EventBridge
5 4 (8.33%) Azure
6 3 (6.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (6.25%) AWS CloudFormation
6 3 (6.25%) GitHub
6 3 (6.25%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (4.17%) Azure Monitor
7 2 (4.17%) GCP
8 1 (2.08%) Amazon EMR
8 1 (2.08%) Amazon S3
8 1 (2.08%) Azure AKS
8 1 (2.08%) Fivetran
8 1 (2.08%) LangSmith
8 1 (2.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (8.33%) SSH
2 1 (2.08%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (20.83%) DynamoDB
1 10 (20.83%) NoSQL
2 6 (12.50%) MySQL
3 4 (8.33%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (6.25%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (6.25%) MongoDB
4 3 (6.25%) Relational Database
5 1 (2.08%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (2.08%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (2.08%) Data Lake
5 1 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.08%) Delta Lake
5 1 (2.08%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.08%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 6 (12.50%) JIRA
1 6 (12.50%) Mockito
2 3 (6.25%) Git
2 3 (6.25%) GitLab
2 3 (6.25%) JUnit
General
1 16 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 9 (18.75%) Finance
3 7 (14.58%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (14.58%) Banking
4 2 (4.17%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (2.08%) Legal
5 1 (2.08%) Marketing
5 1 (2.08%) Retail
Job Titles
1 17 (35.42%) Senior
2 16 (33.33%) Software Engineer
3 12 (25.00%) Java Engineer
3 12 (25.00%) Java Software Engineer
4 10 (20.83%) AWS Engineer
5 7 (14.58%) AWS Software Engineer
5 7 (14.58%) Principal Engineer
5 7 (14.58%) Senior Software Engineer
6 5 (10.42%) Lead
6 5 (10.42%) Product Manager
6 5 (10.42%) Technical Manager
7 4 (8.33%) Developer
7 4 (8.33%) Senior Manager
7 4 (8.33%) Senior Product Manager
8 3 (6.25%) Architect
8 3 (6.25%) Senior Developer
8 3 (6.25%) Senior Java Developer
8 3 (6.25%) Senior Java Engineer
8 3 (6.25%) Senior Java Software Engineer
8 3 (6.25%) Technical Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (31.25%) Kafka
2 13 (27.08%) RESTful
3 11 (22.92%) Spring
3 11 (22.92%) Spring Boot
4 6 (12.50%) .NET
5 5 (10.42%) REST
6 3 (6.25%) ActiveMQ
6 3 (6.25%) JAX-RS
6 3 (6.25%) Spring MVC
6 3 (6.25%) Spring Security
7 2 (4.17%) AngularJS
7 2 (4.17%) ARM Templates
7 2 (4.17%) Middleware
7 2 (4.17%) Node.js
7 2 (4.17%) React
7 2 (4.17%) Vue
8 1 (2.08%) .NET Core
8 1 (2.08%) .NET Framework
8 1 (2.08%) Jakarta EE
8 1 (2.08%) Java EE
Miscellaneous
1 21 (43.75%) Cloud Native
2 10 (20.83%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (10.42%) Management Information System
4 4 (8.33%) PKI
5 3 (6.25%) Tandem
6 2 (4.17%) Client/Server
6 2 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (4.17%) Onboarding
6 2 (4.17%) Product Ownership
6 2 (4.17%) Virtual Team
7 1 (2.08%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (2.08%) Clustering
7 1 (2.08%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (2.08%) Data Structures
7 1 (2.08%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (2.08%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 7 (14.58%) Unix
2 6 (12.50%) Linux
3 4 (8.33%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 27 (56.25%) Event-Driven
3 25 (52.08%) Event-Driven Architecture
4 23 (47.92%) Microservices
5 21 (43.75%) Software Engineering
6 16 (33.33%) Agile
7 15 (31.25%) Observability
8 12 (25.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 12 (25.00%) Stakeholder Management
9 10 (20.83%) Mentoring
9 10 (20.83%) Technical Leadership
9 10 (20.83%) Test Automation
10 9 (18.75%) Data Modelling
10 9 (18.75%) DevOps
10 9 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
10 9 (18.75%) Roadmaps
11 8 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 7 (14.58%) Clean Code
12 7 (14.58%) Migration
12 7 (14.58%) Product Management
Programming Languages
1 18 (37.50%) Java
2 10 (20.83%) Python
3 7 (14.58%) SQL
4 5 (10.42%) C#
4 5 (10.42%) Kotlin
5 2 (4.17%) Go
5 2 (4.17%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (12.50%) SC Cleared
1 6 (12.50%) Security Cleared
2 4 (8.33%) Degree
3 3 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.08%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (6.25%) QA
2 1 (2.08%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 15 (31.25%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (29.17%) Kubernetes
2 12 (25.00%) Terraform
3 1 (2.08%) Ansible
3 1 (2.08%) Grafana
Vendors
1 4 (8.33%) Gemalto
1 4 (8.33%) Thales
2 3 (6.25%) IBM
3 2 (4.17%) Atlassian
4 1 (2.08%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.08%) Sage
4 1 (2.08%) Teradata