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 13 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 119 -
Rank change year-on-year -7 - -
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 31 5 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.14% 0.24% -
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.43% 0.76% -
Number of daily rates quoted 24 4 0
10th Percentile £405 £429 -
25th Percentile £458 £470 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £495 -
Median % change year-on-year +0.20% - -
75th Percentile £545 £524 -
90th Percentile £575 £571 -
England median daily rate £509 £600 £630
% change year-on-year -15.17% -4.76% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 0
10th Percentile £63.40 - -
25th Percentile £70.38 £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £84.63 £85.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -0.44% - -
75th Percentile £95.00 £87.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £73.50 £71.25 -
% change year-on-year +3.16% - -

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 903 657 777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.15% 31.20% 27.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 380 530
10th Percentile £195 £200 £280
25th Percentile £350 £328 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -10.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £550 £563 £588
90th Percentile £622 £656 £650
England median daily rate £510 £548 £549
% change year-on-year -6.93% -0.18% -4.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 38 75
10th Percentile £18.58 £19.91 £13.00
25th Percentile £29.22 £22.72 £15.00
Median hourly rate £45.46 £28.37 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year +60.27% +6.40% -23.83%
75th Percentile £67.00 £33.75 £43.91
90th Percentile £74.26 £39.75 £53.75
England median hourly rate £32.50 £39.02 £32.50
% change year-on-year -16.71% +20.06% +44.54%

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 13 February 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 13 February 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 13 February 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 -5 16 £500 +1.01% 17
Cheshire -17 14 £465 +14.96% 4
Lancashire - 1 - - 5
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 5 (16.13%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 5 (16.13%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 22 (70.97%) AWS
2 14 (45.16%) Azure
3 10 (32.26%) GCP
4 5 (16.13%) Serverless
5 3 (9.68%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (9.68%) IaaS
5 3 (9.68%) PaaS
6 2 (6.45%) Amazon EventBridge
6 2 (6.45%) Amazon SQS
6 2 (6.45%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (6.45%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (3.23%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (3.23%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (3.23%) Amazon Kinesis
7 1 (3.23%) AWS Fargate
7 1 (3.23%) AWS Step Functions
7 1 (3.23%) Azure AKS
7 1 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (3.23%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (3.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (12.90%) DynamoDB
1 4 (12.90%) NoSQL
2 3 (9.68%) DocumentDB
2 3 (9.68%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (6.45%) MySQL
4 1 (3.23%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (3.23%) Apache Cassandra
4 1 (3.23%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (3.23%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 5 (16.13%) Jenkins
1 5 (16.13%) JIRA
2 3 (9.68%) GitLab
3 2 (6.45%) Artifactory
3 2 (6.45%) Rational DOORS
4 1 (3.23%) Cucumber
4 1 (3.23%) Git
4 1 (3.23%) Selenium
General
1 15 (48.39%) Social Skills
2 10 (32.26%) Banking
2 10 (32.26%) Finance
3 4 (12.90%) Public Sector
4 3 (9.68%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (6.45%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (6.45%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (6.45%) Retail
Job Titles
1 17 (54.84%) Architect
2 8 (25.81%) Solutions Architect
3 4 (12.90%) Payments Architect
3 4 (12.90%) Payments Solutions Architect
4 3 (9.68%) Applications Architect
4 3 (9.68%) AWS Architect
4 3 (9.68%) AWS DevOps
4 3 (9.68%) Full-Stack Engineer
4 3 (9.68%) Java Engineer
4 3 (9.68%) Java Software Engineer
4 3 (9.68%) Software Engineer
5 2 (6.45%) AWS Engineer
5 2 (6.45%) Cloud Architect
5 2 (6.45%) Developer
5 2 (6.45%) Lead
5 2 (6.45%) Senior
5 2 (6.45%) Software Architect
5 2 (6.45%) Technical Architect
6 1 (3.23%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 1 (3.23%) AWS Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (32.26%) Spring
1 10 (32.26%) Spring Boot
2 5 (16.13%) REST
3 4 (12.90%) Kafka
3 4 (12.90%) Node.js
3 4 (12.90%) React
4 3 (9.68%) AngularJS
5 2 (6.45%) .NET
5 2 (6.45%) ARM Templates
5 2 (6.45%) RESTful
5 2 (6.45%) Vue
6 1 (3.23%) Hibernate
6 1 (3.23%) JSF
6 1 (3.23%) JWT
6 1 (3.23%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (3.23%) OAuth
6 1 (3.23%) OAuth2
6 1 (3.23%) OpenAPI
6 1 (3.23%) Struts
6 1 (3.23%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 13 (41.94%) Cloud Native
2 4 (12.90%) Onboarding
3 2 (6.45%) Embedded Systems
3 2 (6.45%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (6.45%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (6.45%) Mobile Banking
3 2 (6.45%) Product Ownership
3 2 (6.45%) Virtual Team
4 1 (3.23%) Algorithms
4 1 (3.23%) Culture of Ownership
4 1 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (3.23%) Data Structures
4 1 (3.23%) Distributed Applications
4 1 (3.23%) Distributed Architecture
4 1 (3.23%) Online Banking
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (77.42%) Microservices
2 17 (54.84%) Containerisation
3 15 (48.39%) Agile
4 14 (45.16%) CI/CD
5 12 (38.71%) Architectural Patterns
5 12 (38.71%) DevOps
5 12 (38.71%) Software Engineering
6 9 (29.03%) Data Modelling
6 9 (29.03%) Mentoring
6 9 (29.03%) Observability
6 9 (29.03%) Roadmaps
6 9 (29.03%) Translating Business Requirements
6 9 (29.03%) UML
7 8 (25.81%) Event-Driven
8 7 (22.58%) OOA/OOD
8 7 (22.58%) Technology Roadmap
9 6 (19.35%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 6 (19.35%) Logical Data Model
9 6 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
10 5 (16.13%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 17 (54.84%) Java
2 6 (19.35%) TypeScript
3 5 (16.13%) Python
4 2 (6.45%) C
4 2 (6.45%) C#
4 2 (6.45%) C++
4 2 (6.45%) SQL
5 1 (3.23%) Go
5 1 (3.23%) JavaScript
5 1 (3.23%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 7 (22.58%) BPSS Clearance
2 5 (16.13%) Security Cleared
3 4 (12.90%) SC Cleared
4 3 (9.68%) AWS Certification
4 3 (9.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (22.58%) ISO 20022
2 5 (16.13%) PCI DSS
3 2 (6.45%) IEC 61508
3 2 (6.45%) IEC 62304
3 2 (6.45%) ISO 26262
3 2 (6.45%) QA
4 1 (3.23%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (3.23%) NIST
System Software
1 15 (48.39%) Docker
2 1 (3.23%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 7 (22.58%) Kubernetes
2 6 (19.35%) Terraform
3 1 (3.23%) Grafana
Vendors
1 7 (22.58%) Google
2 4 (12.90%) Atlassian
3 1 (3.23%) Microsoft