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 27 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 119 107 144
Rank change year-on-year -12 +37 +25
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 17 8 1
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.73% 0.35% 0.035%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.10% 1.19% 0.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 6 1
10th Percentile £420 £414 -
25th Percentile £502 £434 £625
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £483 £650
Median % change year-on-year +7.25% -25.77% +33.33%
75th Percentile £591 £497 £675
90th Percentile £683 £498 -
England median daily rate £525 £638 £613
% change year-on-year -17.65% +4.08% -5.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
Median hourly rate £74.26 £85.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -12.64% - -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £57.50 -
% change year-on-year +16.52% - -

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 809 670 817
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.74% 28.90% 28.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 559 350 572
10th Percentile £262 £291 £256
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.42%
75th Percentile £575 £552 £594
90th Percentile £651 £675 £650
England median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 25 40
10th Percentile £15.62 £18.90 £16.23
25th Percentile £19.52 £21.25 £21.27
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £41.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -22.16% +91.69%
75th Percentile £67.25 £47.50 £50.94
90th Percentile £74.26 £90.80 £73.88
England median hourly rate £27.52 £50.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -44.97% +12.36% +67.39%

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 27 October 2025.

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
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 27 October 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
Manchester 0 7 £550 +11.68% 39
Cheshire -21 5 £505 +18.20% 13
Merseyside - 4 £510 - 1
Lancashire - 1 - - 8
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 2 (11.76%) Confluence
1 2 (11.76%) Tomcat
2 1 (5.88%) JBoss
2 1 (5.88%) Mule
2 1 (5.88%) Mule ESB
2 1 (5.88%) OpenStack
2 1 (5.88%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 2 (11.76%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (5.88%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 7 (41.18%) Azure
2 5 (29.41%) AWS
2 5 (29.41%) Azure DevOps
3 4 (23.53%) Azure AKS
4 2 (11.76%) Amazon EC2
4 2 (11.76%) GCP
4 2 (11.76%) OpenShift
5 1 (5.88%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (5.88%) Amazon EventBridge
5 1 (5.88%) Amazon Kinesis
5 1 (5.88%) Amazon S3
5 1 (5.88%) Amazon SQS
5 1 (5.88%) AWS Fargate
5 1 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (5.88%) AWS Step Functions
5 1 (5.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 1 (5.88%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (5.88%) Firewall
1 1 (5.88%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (5.88%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (5.88%) Apache Cassandra
1 1 (5.88%) DynamoDB
1 1 (5.88%) Hadoop
1 1 (5.88%) MySQL
1 1 (5.88%) NoSQL
1 1 (5.88%) Redis
Development Applications
1 5 (29.41%) JUnit
2 4 (23.53%) Jenkins
2 4 (23.53%) Postman
3 3 (17.65%) Artifactory
4 2 (11.76%) Git
4 2 (11.76%) JIRA
4 2 (11.76%) Rational DOORS
5 1 (5.88%) Cucumber
General
1 5 (29.41%) Public Sector
1 5 (29.41%) Social Skills
2 4 (23.53%) Banking
3 2 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (11.76%) Documentation Skills
3 2 (11.76%) Finance
4 1 (5.88%) Electronics
4 1 (5.88%) Manufacturing
4 1 (5.88%) Marketing
4 1 (5.88%) Telecoms
4 1 (5.88%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 7 (41.18%) Developer
2 6 (35.29%) Senior
3 5 (29.41%) Architect
3 5 (29.41%) Senior Developer
4 4 (23.53%) Java Developer
4 4 (23.53%) Senior Java Developer
5 3 (17.65%) Platform Engineer
5 3 (17.65%) Software Architect
5 3 (17.65%) Software Engineer
6 2 (11.76%) Java Engineer
6 2 (11.76%) Java Software Engineer
6 2 (11.76%) Payments Architect
6 2 (11.76%) Payments Solutions Architect
6 2 (11.76%) Solutions Architect
7 1 (5.88%) .NET Developer
7 1 (5.88%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 1 (5.88%) C# Developer
7 1 (5.88%) Cloud Platform Engineer
7 1 (5.88%) Senior .NET Developer
7 1 (5.88%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (47.06%) Spring
1 8 (47.06%) Spring Boot
2 6 (35.29%) RESTful
3 5 (29.41%) JSON
4 4 (23.53%) AngularJS
4 4 (23.53%) jQuery
4 4 (23.53%) POJO
4 4 (23.53%) React
4 4 (23.53%) Thymeleaf
5 2 (11.76%) .NET
5 2 (11.76%) Node.js
6 1 (5.88%) J2EE
6 1 (5.88%) Kafka
6 1 (5.88%) Middleware
6 1 (5.88%) OAuth
6 1 (5.88%) OAuth2
6 1 (5.88%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (5.88%) REST
6 1 (5.88%) Web Services
6 1 (5.88%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 3 (17.65%) Cloud Native
2 2 (11.76%) Embedded Systems
3 1 (5.88%) Algorithms
3 1 (5.88%) Data Structures
3 1 (5.88%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 1 (5.88%) Linux
1 1 (5.88%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (82.35%) CI/CD
2 12 (70.59%) Containerisation
2 12 (70.59%) Microservices
3 8 (47.06%) Software Engineering
4 7 (41.18%) DevOps
5 6 (35.29%) Unit Testing
6 5 (29.41%) Agile
6 5 (29.41%) API Development
6 5 (29.41%) Full-Stack Development
6 5 (29.41%) UML
7 4 (23.53%) MVC
7 4 (23.53%) User Research
8 3 (17.65%) FMEA
8 3 (17.65%) Mentoring
8 3 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
9 2 (11.76%) Analytical Thinking
9 2 (11.76%) Platform Engineering
9 2 (11.76%) SDLC
9 2 (11.76%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 2 (11.76%) Translating Business Requirements
Programming Languages
1 13 (76.47%) Java
2 3 (17.65%) C
2 3 (17.65%) C++
2 3 (17.65%) Python
2 3 (17.65%) SQL
3 2 (11.76%) C#
3 2 (11.76%) JavaScript
3 2 (11.76%) PL/SQL
3 2 (11.76%) TypeScript
4 1 (5.88%) Bash
4 1 (5.88%) Go
4 1 (5.88%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 4 (23.53%) SC Cleared
1 4 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 1 (5.88%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (23.53%) Accessibility
2 3 (17.65%) IEC 61508
2 3 (17.65%) IEC 62304
2 3 (17.65%) ISO 26262
2 3 (17.65%) PCI DSS
3 2 (11.76%) ISO 20022
4 1 (5.88%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (5.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (5.88%) NIST
4 1 (5.88%) QA
System Software
1 8 (47.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (52.94%) Kubernetes
2 1 (5.88%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (17.65%) Atlassian
2 2 (11.76%) AppDynamics
2 2 (11.76%) Dynatrace
2 2 (11.76%) Google
2 2 (11.76%) Oracle
2 2 (11.76%) Splunk
3 1 (5.88%) MuleSoft
3 1 (5.88%) SAP