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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 121 126
Rank change year-on-year -15 +5 +22
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 40 5 11
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.11% 0.24% 0.40%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.59% 0.83% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 5 7
10th Percentile £363 £380 £450
25th Percentile £438 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% +2.29% +13.51%
75th Percentile £650 £551 £650
90th Percentile - £582 £660
England median daily rate £550 £593 £650
% change year-on-year -7.17% -8.85% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £72.50 - -
Median hourly rate £85.00 - -
75th Percentile £95.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £75.00 £59.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +26.58% +7.73% -34.59%

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 1,113 603 712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 31.02% 29.33% 25.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 684 425 445
10th Percentile £325 £269 £297
25th Percentile £400 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +6.94% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £563 £585
90th Percentile £650 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 37 74
10th Percentile £19.61 £22.65 £13.00
25th Percentile £25.41 £26.88 £15.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £35.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.83% +36.54% -6.14%
75th Percentile £76.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £95.00 £79.65 £57.50
England median hourly rate £43.96 £33.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +33.21% -9.59% +53.43%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -21 25 £611 +12.32% 34
Cheshire +7 13 £390 +8.80% 2
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 (17.50%) Confluence
2 4 (10.00%) SharePoint
3 3 (7.50%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (10.00%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 22 (55.00%) AWS
2 8 (20.00%) Serverless
3 6 (15.00%) Amazon EKS
3 6 (15.00%) Azure
4 5 (12.50%) Amazon EventBridge
4 5 (12.50%) Amazon SQS
4 5 (12.50%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (10.00%) Amazon ECS
5 4 (10.00%) GCP
6 3 (7.50%) GitHub
6 3 (7.50%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (7.50%) IaaS
6 3 (7.50%) PaaS
7 2 (5.00%) Azure Monitor
8 1 (2.50%) Azure AKS
8 1 (2.50%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (10.00%) SSH
2 1 (2.50%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (22.50%) DynamoDB
2 6 (15.00%) NoSQL
3 4 (10.00%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (7.50%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (7.50%) DocumentDB
4 3 (7.50%) MySQL
4 3 (7.50%) Relational Database
5 1 (2.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 7 (17.50%) JIRA
2 3 (7.50%) GitLab
2 3 (7.50%) Jenkins
General
1 15 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 7 (17.50%) Finance
3 5 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (12.50%) Banking
4 3 (7.50%) Influencing Skills
4 3 (7.50%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.50%) Legal
5 1 (2.50%) Retail
Job Titles
1 13 (32.50%) Senior
2 10 (25.00%) Software Engineer
3 7 (17.50%) Architect
4 6 (15.00%) Java Engineer
4 6 (15.00%) Java Software Engineer
4 6 (15.00%) Senior Software Engineer
5 5 (12.50%) Principal Engineer
5 5 (12.50%) Product Manager
6 4 (10.00%) AWS Architect
6 4 (10.00%) AWS Engineer
6 4 (10.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
6 4 (10.00%) Senior Manager
6 4 (10.00%) Senior Product Manager
7 3 (7.50%) Kafka Engineer
7 3 (7.50%) Kubernetes Engineer
7 3 (7.50%) Technical Manager
7 3 (7.50%) Technical Product Manager
8 2 (5.00%) Applications Architect
8 2 (5.00%) Senior Java Engineer
8 2 (5.00%) Senior Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (27.50%) Kafka
2 6 (15.00%) .NET
2 6 (15.00%) RESTful
3 5 (12.50%) Spring
3 5 (12.50%) Spring Boot
4 4 (10.00%) Node.js
4 4 (10.00%) React
4 4 (10.00%) REST
5 3 (7.50%) AngularJS
5 3 (7.50%) Vue
6 2 (5.00%) ARM Templates
7 1 (2.50%) .NET Core
7 1 (2.50%) .NET Framework
7 1 (2.50%) Hibernate
7 1 (2.50%) JSF
7 1 (2.50%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (2.50%) OpenAPI
7 1 (2.50%) Struts
7 1 (2.50%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 21 (52.50%) Cloud Native
2 10 (25.00%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (12.50%) Management Information System
4 4 (10.00%) PKI
5 3 (7.50%) Onboarding
5 3 (7.50%) Tandem
6 2 (5.00%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (5.00%) Product Ownership
6 2 (5.00%) Virtual Team
7 1 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (2.50%) Clustering
7 1 (2.50%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (2.50%) Data Structures
7 1 (2.50%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (2.50%) Mobile Banking
7 1 (2.50%) Online Banking
Operating Systems
1 4 (10.00%) Unix
1 4 (10.00%) Windows
2 3 (7.50%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (65.00%) Event-Driven
2 24 (60.00%) Event-Driven Architecture
3 20 (50.00%) CI/CD
4 18 (45.00%) Microservices
5 14 (35.00%) Software Engineering
6 13 (32.50%) Observability
7 10 (25.00%) Agile
8 9 (22.50%) Roadmaps
9 8 (20.00%) Architectural Patterns
9 8 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
10 7 (17.50%) Data Modelling
10 7 (17.50%) Decision-Making
10 7 (17.50%) Technical Leadership
11 6 (15.00%) Customer Experience
11 6 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
11 6 (15.00%) Release Management
11 6 (15.00%) Stakeholder Management
11 6 (15.00%) Technology Roadmap
12 5 (12.50%) Clean Code
12 5 (12.50%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 11 (27.50%) Java
2 9 (22.50%) Python
3 5 (12.50%) C#
3 5 (12.50%) Kotlin
4 4 (10.00%) TypeScript
5 3 (7.50%) SQL
6 2 (5.00%) Go
Qualifications
1 5 (12.50%) BPSS Clearance
2 3 (7.50%) AWS Certification
2 3 (7.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 3 (7.50%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (7.50%) Degree
2 3 (7.50%) SC Cleared
2 3 (7.50%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 14 (35.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 13 (32.50%) Kubernetes
2 12 (30.00%) Terraform
3 1 (2.50%) Ansible
3 1 (2.50%) Grafana
Vendors
1 4 (10.00%) Gemalto
1 4 (10.00%) Thales
2 3 (7.50%) IBM
3 2 (5.00%) Atlassian
4 1 (2.50%) Google
4 1 (2.50%) Microsoft