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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 121 110
Rank change year-on-year 0 -11 +35
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 56 10 15
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.42% 0.45% 0.62%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.35% 1.34% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 8 10
10th Percentile £425 £345 £431
25th Percentile £500 £399 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £510 £483
Median % change year-on-year +9.80% +5.70% -25.77%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £622
90th Percentile - £710 £653
England median daily rate £560 £575 £650
% change year-on-year -2.61% -11.54% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 0
10th Percentile £72.50 - -
25th Percentile £73.44 - -
Median hourly rate £77.00 - -
75th Percentile £83.44 - -
90th Percentile £86.00 - -
England median hourly rate £75.00 £66.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +12.78% +20.91% -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 1,287 749 653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.71% 33.60% 26.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 776 507 397
10th Percentile £329 £302 £300
25th Percentile £413 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £495
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -7.99% -1.10%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £594
90th Percentile £675 £644 £738
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 40 28
10th Percentile £16.50 £22.36 £11.25
25th Percentile £25.38 £27.07 £16.62
Median hourly rate £43.96 £47.12 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year -6.71% +72.92% -32.42%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £86.25 £77.63 £71.65
England median hourly rate £40.00 £32.83 £50.00
% change year-on-year +21.84% -34.34% +9.05%

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 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 27 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 27 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 -1 38 £625 +19.05% 56
Cheshire +5 13 £474 -8.23% 9
Merseyside -16 3 £575 +12.75% 5
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 (12.50%) Confluence
2 4 (7.14%) SharePoint
3 3 (5.36%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.79%) Apache
4 1 (1.79%) Camunda
4 1 (1.79%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (7.14%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 32 (57.14%) AWS
2 12 (21.43%) Serverless
3 10 (17.86%) AWS Lambda
4 8 (14.29%) Amazon ECS
4 8 (14.29%) Amazon SQS
5 6 (10.71%) Amazon EKS
6 4 (7.14%) Amazon EventBridge
7 3 (5.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (5.36%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (5.36%) Azure
7 3 (5.36%) GCP
7 3 (5.36%) GitHub
7 3 (5.36%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (1.79%) Akamai
8 1 (1.79%) Amazon EMR
8 1 (1.79%) Amazon S3
8 1 (1.79%) AWS Fargate
8 1 (1.79%) Fivetran
8 1 (1.79%) Kong
8 1 (1.79%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (8.93%) SSH
2 4 (7.14%) HTTP
3 1 (1.79%) Firewall
3 1 (1.79%) Network Security
3 1 (1.79%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (17.86%) DynamoDB
1 10 (17.86%) NoSQL
2 7 (12.50%) MySQL
3 4 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (7.14%) Relational Database
4 3 (5.36%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (5.36%) MongoDB
5 1 (1.79%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (1.79%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (1.79%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.79%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.79%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.79%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.79%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 7 (12.50%) JIRA
2 6 (10.71%) Mockito
3 3 (5.36%) Git
3 3 (5.36%) GitLab
3 3 (5.36%) JUnit
General
1 19 (33.93%) Social Skills
2 10 (17.86%) Finance
3 7 (12.50%) Banking
4 6 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (3.57%) iGaming
6 1 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.79%) Legal
6 1 (1.79%) Marketing
6 1 (1.79%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.79%) Retail
Job Titles
1 23 (41.07%) Software Engineer
2 21 (37.50%) Senior
3 19 (33.93%) Java Engineer
4 16 (28.57%) Java Software Engineer
5 12 (21.43%) AWS Engineer
6 9 (16.07%) Senior Software Engineer
7 8 (14.29%) AWS Software Engineer
8 7 (12.50%) Principal Engineer
9 6 (10.71%) Senior Java Engineer
10 5 (8.93%) Product Manager
10 5 (8.93%) Technical Manager
11 4 (7.14%) Kubernetes Engineer
11 4 (7.14%) Senior Java Software Engineer
11 4 (7.14%) Senior Manager
11 4 (7.14%) Senior Product Manager
12 3 (5.36%) Architect
12 3 (5.36%) Java Developer
12 3 (5.36%) Senior Developer
12 3 (5.36%) Senior Java Developer
12 3 (5.36%) Technical Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (37.50%) Kafka
2 18 (32.14%) Spring
3 17 (30.36%) Spring Boot
4 13 (23.21%) RESTful
5 10 (17.86%) Terraform
6 9 (16.07%) REST
7 6 (10.71%) .NET
8 3 (5.36%) ActiveMQ
8 3 (5.36%) JAX-RS
8 3 (5.36%) Spring MVC
8 3 (5.36%) Spring Security
9 2 (3.57%) Middleware
10 1 (1.79%) .NET Core
10 1 (1.79%) .NET Framework
10 1 (1.79%) Jakarta EE
10 1 (1.79%) JWT
10 1 (1.79%) LangChain
10 1 (1.79%) LangGraph
10 1 (1.79%) OpenID
10 1 (1.79%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 26 (46.43%) Cloud Native
2 8 (14.29%) Legacy Systems
3 6 (10.71%) PKI
4 5 (8.93%) Management Information System
5 4 (7.14%) Tandem
6 3 (5.36%) Onboarding
7 2 (3.57%) Client/Server
7 2 (3.57%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (3.57%) Product Ownership
7 2 (3.57%) Virtual Team
8 1 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.79%) Clustering
8 1 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (1.79%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (1.79%) Marketing Technology
8 1 (1.79%) Online Gambling
8 1 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (14.29%) Unix
2 6 (10.71%) Linux
3 4 (7.14%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (67.86%) CI/CD
2 31 (55.36%) Event-Driven
3 30 (53.57%) Software Engineering
4 29 (51.79%) Event-Driven Architecture
5 25 (44.64%) Microservices
6 16 (28.57%) Observability
7 15 (26.79%) Agile
8 14 (25.00%) Stakeholder Management
8 14 (25.00%) Test Automation
9 12 (21.43%) Continuous Improvement
10 10 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
10 10 (17.86%) Technical Leadership
11 9 (16.07%) Data Modelling
12 8 (14.29%) Clean Code
12 8 (14.29%) DevOps
12 8 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
12 8 (14.29%) Roadmaps
13 7 (12.50%) Mentoring
13 7 (12.50%) Product Management
13 7 (12.50%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 26 (46.43%) Java
2 11 (19.64%) Python
3 9 (16.07%) Kotlin
4 7 (12.50%) SQL
5 5 (8.93%) C#
6 2 (3.57%) Go
7 1 (1.79%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (10.71%) Degree
2 5 (8.93%) SC Cleared
2 5 (8.93%) Security Cleared
3 4 (7.14%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.79%) CEH
4 1 (1.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
4 1 (1.79%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.79%) SAFe Agilist
4 1 (1.79%) SANS
4 1 (1.79%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.36%) QA
2 1 (1.79%) NIST
2 1 (1.79%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 15 (26.79%) Docker
Systems Management
1 18 (32.14%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.79%) Ansible
2 1 (1.79%) Istio
2 1 (1.79%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 5 (8.93%) Gemalto
1 5 (8.93%) Thales
2 4 (7.14%) IBM
3 2 (3.57%) Atlassian
4 1 (1.79%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (1.79%) CheckPoint
4 1 (1.79%) Cisco
4 1 (1.79%) F5
4 1 (1.79%) Intel
4 1 (1.79%) Microsoft
4 1 (1.79%) Sage
4 1 (1.79%) Teradata