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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 120 -
Rank change year-on-year +7 - -
Contract jobs citing Distributed Systems 33 5 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.25% 0.24% -
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.59% 0.76% -
Number of daily rates quoted 27 4 0
10th Percentile £381 £429 -
25th Percentile £458 £470 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 -
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% - -
75th Percentile £557 £524 -
90th Percentile £615 £571 -
England median daily rate £525 £638 £628
% change year-on-year -17.65% +1.59% -3.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £60.30 - -
25th Percentile £62.63 £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £68.38 £85.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -19.55% - -
75th Percentile £72.26 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £73.46 - -
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 920 659 798
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.77% 31.50% 28.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 631 378 552
10th Percentile £200 £202 £250
25th Percentile £358 £350 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £470 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.15% -6.10% +1.21%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £588
90th Percentile £625 £660 £650
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 36 65
10th Percentile £18.50 £19.72 £13.48
25th Percentile £25.81 £22.35 £17.25
Median hourly rate £45.46 £26.47 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.77% -11.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £60.61 £33.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £35.38 £53.75
England median hourly rate £30.05 £37.50 £35.50
% change year-on-year -19.86% +5.63% +57.88%

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 30 January 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
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 30 January 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
Cheshire -4 16 £479 +18.29% 9
Manchester 0 12 £500 +1.01% 20
Merseyside - 4 £510 - 1
Lancashire - 1 - - 6
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 4 (12.12%) Confluence
2 2 (6.06%) Tomcat
3 1 (3.03%) JBoss
3 1 (3.03%) Mule
3 1 (3.03%) Mule ESB
3 1 (3.03%) OpenStack
3 1 (3.03%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 5 (15.15%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (3.03%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 20 (60.61%) AWS
2 16 (48.48%) Azure
3 10 (30.30%) GCP
4 5 (15.15%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (12.12%) Azure AKS
5 4 (12.12%) Serverless
6 2 (6.06%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (6.06%) Amazon EKS
6 2 (6.06%) Amazon EventBridge
6 2 (6.06%) Amazon SQS
6 2 (6.06%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (6.06%) IaaS
6 2 (6.06%) OpenShift
6 2 (6.06%) PaaS
7 1 (3.03%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (3.03%) Amazon Kinesis
7 1 (3.03%) Amazon S3
7 1 (3.03%) AWS Step Functions
7 1 (3.03%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (3.03%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.03%) Firewall
1 1 (3.03%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (9.09%) DynamoDB
1 3 (9.09%) NoSQL
2 2 (6.06%) DocumentDB
2 2 (6.06%) MySQL
2 2 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (3.03%) Apache Cassandra
3 1 (3.03%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (3.03%) Hadoop
3 1 (3.03%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (18.18%) Jenkins
2 5 (15.15%) JUnit
3 4 (12.12%) JIRA
3 4 (12.12%) Postman
4 3 (9.09%) Artifactory
5 2 (6.06%) Cucumber
5 2 (6.06%) GitLab
5 2 (6.06%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (3.03%) Git
6 1 (3.03%) Selenium
General
1 14 (42.42%) Social Skills
2 12 (36.36%) Banking
3 11 (33.33%) Finance
4 7 (21.21%) Public Sector
5 3 (9.09%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (6.06%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (6.06%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (6.06%) Retail
7 1 (3.03%) Electronics
7 1 (3.03%) Manufacturing
7 1 (3.03%) Marketing
7 1 (3.03%) Telecoms
7 1 (3.03%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 16 (48.48%) Architect
2 8 (24.24%) Solutions Architect
3 6 (18.18%) Developer
4 5 (15.15%) Senior
5 4 (12.12%) Java Developer
5 4 (12.12%) Payments Architect
5 4 (12.12%) Payments Solutions Architect
5 4 (12.12%) Senior Developer
5 4 (12.12%) Senior Java Developer
5 4 (12.12%) Software Engineer
6 3 (9.09%) Applications Architect
6 3 (9.09%) AWS DevOps
6 3 (9.09%) Java Engineer
6 3 (9.09%) Java Software Engineer
6 3 (9.09%) Platform Engineer
6 3 (9.09%) Software Architect
7 2 (6.06%) AWS Architect
7 2 (6.06%) AWS Engineer
7 2 (6.06%) Cloud Architect
8 1 (3.03%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (45.45%) Spring
1 15 (45.45%) Spring Boot
2 6 (18.18%) React
2 6 (18.18%) RESTful
3 5 (15.15%) AngularJS
3 5 (15.15%) JSON
3 5 (15.15%) REST
4 4 (12.12%) jQuery
4 4 (12.12%) POJO
4 4 (12.12%) Thymeleaf
5 3 (9.09%) Kafka
5 3 (9.09%) Node.js
6 2 (6.06%) .NET
7 1 (3.03%) Hibernate
7 1 (3.03%) J2EE
7 1 (3.03%) JSF
7 1 (3.03%) Middleware
7 1 (3.03%) Struts
7 1 (3.03%) Web Services
7 1 (3.03%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (30.30%) Cloud Native
2 5 (15.15%) Onboarding
3 2 (6.06%) Embedded Systems
3 2 (6.06%) Mobile Banking
3 2 (6.06%) Product Ownership
4 1 (3.03%) Algorithms
4 1 (3.03%) Data Structures
4 1 (3.03%) Distributed Applications
4 1 (3.03%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (3.03%) Online Banking
4 1 (3.03%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (3.03%) Linux
1 1 (3.03%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (75.76%) Microservices
2 20 (60.61%) Containerisation
3 19 (57.58%) CI/CD
4 14 (42.42%) Software Engineering
5 13 (39.39%) Agile
5 13 (39.39%) DevOps
6 10 (30.30%) Architectural Patterns
6 10 (30.30%) UML
7 8 (24.24%) Data Modelling
7 8 (24.24%) Full-Stack Development
7 8 (24.24%) Translating Business Requirements
8 7 (21.21%) Mentoring
8 7 (21.21%) OOA/OOD
8 7 (21.21%) Roadmaps
9 6 (18.18%) API Development
9 6 (18.18%) Logical Data Model
9 6 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
9 6 (18.18%) Technology Roadmap
9 6 (18.18%) Unit Testing
10 5 (15.15%) OO
Programming Languages
1 23 (69.70%) Java
2 6 (18.18%) Python
3 4 (12.12%) SQL
3 4 (12.12%) TypeScript
4 3 (9.09%) C
4 3 (9.09%) C++
5 2 (6.06%) C#
5 2 (6.06%) PL/SQL
6 1 (3.03%) Bash
6 1 (3.03%) Go
6 1 (3.03%) JavaScript
6 1 (3.03%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 5 (15.15%) BPSS Clearance
1 5 (15.15%) Security Cleared
2 4 (12.12%) SC Cleared
3 2 (6.06%) AWS Certification
3 2 (6.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 1 (3.03%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (21.21%) ISO 20022
2 5 (15.15%) PCI DSS
3 4 (12.12%) Accessibility
4 3 (9.09%) IEC 61508
4 3 (9.09%) IEC 62304
4 3 (9.09%) ISO 26262
5 2 (6.06%) QA
6 1 (3.03%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (3.03%) NIST
System Software
1 17 (51.52%) Docker
2 1 (3.03%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 12 (36.36%) Kubernetes
2 3 (9.09%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (21.21%) Google
2 4 (12.12%) Atlassian
3 2 (6.06%) AppDynamics
3 2 (6.06%) Dynatrace
3 2 (6.06%) Oracle
3 2 (6.06%) Splunk
4 1 (3.03%) Microsoft
4 1 (3.03%) MuleSoft
4 1 (3.03%) SAP