GCP Contract Job Trends in the North West

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring GCP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 86 103
Rank change year-on-year +36 +17 -15
Contract jobs citing GCP 119 38 37
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.37% 1.80% 1.31%
As % of the Cloud Services category 12.92% 5.44% 3.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 89 27 30
10th Percentile £347 £356 £100
25th Percentile £430 £388 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -12.17% +9.52% -16.00%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £588
90th Percentile £688 £700 £639
England median daily rate £526 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.29% - -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £59.75 £72.50 -
Median hourly rate £64.50 £75.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -14.00% - -
75th Percentile £69.25 £77.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £52.25 £41.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +25.90% -27.83% -14.18%

All Cloud Computing Skills
North West

GCP falls under the Cloud Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring cloud computing skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 921 699 964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.81% 33.19% 34.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 656 491 716
10th Percentile £216 £230 £268
25th Percentile £358 £381 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £486
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.26% -2.80%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £627 £650 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 9 61
10th Percentile £15.70 £17.44 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £24.18 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +96.44% +15.14% -67.69%
75th Percentile £74.26 £29.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.30 £79.50 £71.87
England median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.15
% change year-on-year +34.55% +24.15% -11.40%

GCP
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing GCP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

GCP job vacancy trend in the North West

GCP
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing GCP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing GCP

GCP
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing GCP in the North West over the 6 months to 13 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for GCP in the North West

GCP
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing GCP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing GCP

GCP
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 GCP 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 +28 73 £519 -7.82% 44
Cheshire -1 39 £500 +40.45% 8
Lancashire - 5 £425 - 16
Merseyside -18 2 - - 6
GCP
England

GCP
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 (5.88%) SAS
2 4 (3.36%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.68%) Apache
4 1 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.84%) IIS
Applications
1 8 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (4.20%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 92 (77.31%) Azure
2 85 (71.43%) AWS
3 14 (11.76%) GitHub
4 13 (10.92%) Power Platform
5 11 (9.24%) AWS CloudFormation
6 9 (7.56%) Google Tag Manager
7 8 (6.72%) Google Analytics
8 7 (5.88%) Datadog
8 7 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (5.04%) Apigee
9 6 (5.04%) OpenShift
10 4 (3.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 4 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (3.36%) Pulumi
11 3 (2.52%) Cloud Functions
11 3 (2.52%) Entra ID
12 2 (1.68%) Cloud Computing
12 2 (1.68%) Dataform
13 1 (0.84%) Azure Storage
13 1 (0.84%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 10 (8.40%) Firewall
2 4 (3.36%) HTTP
2 4 (3.36%) HTTPS
2 4 (3.36%) VPN
3 3 (2.52%) Internet
4 2 (1.68%) VoIP
4 2 (1.68%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.84%) DNS
5 1 (0.84%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.84%) VLAN
5 1 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (15.13%) BigQuery
2 12 (10.08%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (10.08%) Looker
2 12 (10.08%) Power BI
3 4 (3.36%) Tableau
4 3 (2.52%) Metadata
4 3 (2.52%) NoSQL
4 3 (2.52%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.68%) MongoDB
5 2 (1.68%) MySQL
5 2 (1.68%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.84%) Cloud Spanner
6 1 (0.84%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.84%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (12.61%) Jenkins
2 14 (11.76%) GitLab
3 7 (5.88%) Git
3 7 (5.88%) Postman
4 4 (3.36%) Selenium
5 3 (2.52%) CircleCI
5 3 (2.52%) JMeter
6 2 (1.68%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.84%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.84%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.84%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.84%) Snyk
7 1 (0.84%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.84%) Spinnaker
General
1 44 (36.97%) Social Skills
2 31 (26.05%) Finance
3 23 (19.33%) Banking
4 20 (16.81%) Public Sector
5 18 (15.13%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (3.36%) Games
7 3 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.52%) Marketing
7 3 (2.52%) Retail
8 2 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.68%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.84%) Advertising
9 1 (0.84%) Automotive
9 1 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.84%) Electronics
9 1 (0.84%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.84%) Military
9 1 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.84%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 37 (31.09%) Architect
2 13 (10.92%) Analyst
2 13 (10.92%) Senior
3 12 (10.08%) Solutions Architect
4 11 (9.24%) Platform Engineer
5 9 (7.56%) Data Scientist
6 7 (5.88%) GCP Engineer
7 6 (5.04%) Developer
7 6 (5.04%) Performance Analyst
8 5 (4.20%) Cloud Architect
8 5 (4.20%) Governance Manager
8 5 (4.20%) Security Architect
8 5 (4.20%) Security Engineer
9 4 (3.36%) Apigee Developer
9 4 (3.36%) Applications Architect
9 4 (3.36%) Data Architect
9 4 (3.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 4 (3.36%) GCP Architect
9 4 (3.36%) Payments Architect
9 4 (3.36%) Payments Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (12.61%) Spring
1 15 (12.61%) Spring Boot
2 11 (9.24%) Kafka
3 8 (6.72%) RESTful
4 7 (5.88%) REST
5 6 (5.04%) Elastic Stack
5 6 (5.04%) React
5 6 (5.04%) XGBoost
6 5 (4.20%) JSON
6 5 (4.20%) JWT
6 5 (4.20%) OAuth
7 4 (3.36%) Hibernate
7 4 (3.36%) JAX-RS
7 4 (3.36%) OAuth2
7 4 (3.36%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (3.36%) XML
8 3 (2.52%) Middleware
9 2 (1.68%) HTML
9 2 (1.68%) Node.js
10 1 (0.84%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 10 (8.40%) Distributed Systems
2 7 (5.88%) Credit Risk
3 6 (5.04%) Cloud Native
3 6 (5.04%) Private Cloud
4 5 (4.20%) e-Learning
4 5 (4.20%) Product Ownership
5 4 (3.36%) Virtual Team
6 3 (2.52%) Clustering
6 3 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (2.52%) Distributed Computing
6 3 (2.52%) NHS
6 3 (2.52%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.68%) Mobile Banking
7 2 (1.68%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.68%) Replication
8 1 (0.84%) CUDA
8 1 (0.84%) Cyber Defence
8 1 (0.84%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.84%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (0.84%) IBM XIV
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.72%) Linux
2 5 (4.20%) Windows
3 4 (3.36%) Mac OS
4 3 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.84%) Android
5 1 (0.84%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (34.45%) CI/CD
2 35 (29.41%) DevOps
3 34 (28.57%) Analytics
4 31 (26.05%) Agile
5 30 (25.21%) Containerisation
6 23 (19.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 23 (19.33%) Microservices
6 23 (19.33%) Observability
7 19 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (15.13%) Data Science
8 18 (15.13%) Machine Learning
9 17 (14.29%) Data Modelling
9 17 (14.29%) Incident Response
10 16 (13.45%) Data Analysis
11 15 (12.61%) User Experience
12 14 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
12 14 (11.76%) Validation
13 13 (10.92%) Business Intelligence
13 13 (10.92%) Decision-Making
13 13 (10.92%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 44 (36.97%) Python
2 25 (21.01%) Java
3 14 (11.76%) Bash
4 11 (9.24%) SQL
5 9 (7.56%) JavaScript
6 8 (6.72%) Go
7 7 (5.88%) R
8 6 (5.04%) PowerShell
8 6 (5.04%) TypeScript
9 3 (2.52%) C#
10 1 (0.84%) Bicep
10 1 (0.84%) C
10 1 (0.84%) C++
10 1 (0.84%) LookML
10 1 (0.84%) PHP
Qualifications
1 16 (13.45%) Security Cleared
2 9 (7.56%) Azure Certification
3 8 (6.72%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (6.72%) Degree
3 8 (6.72%) SC Cleared
4 7 (5.88%) AWS Certification
5 6 (5.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (5.04%) CISM
5 6 (5.04%) CISSP
6 5 (4.20%) ITIL Certification
7 4 (3.36%) IBM Certification
8 2 (1.68%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.68%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.84%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 1 (0.84%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (14.29%) Data Quality
2 11 (9.24%) QA
3 10 (8.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (7.56%) Accessibility
5 8 (6.72%) ISO 20022
6 7 (5.88%) GDPR
6 7 (5.88%) NIST
7 5 (4.20%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.84%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.84%) GRC
8 1 (0.84%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.84%) PERC
8 1 (0.84%) PSD2
8 1 (0.84%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.84%) WCAG
System Software
1 29 (24.37%) Docker
2 8 (6.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (4.20%) vSphere
4 4 (3.36%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 38 (31.93%) Kubernetes
2 27 (22.69%) Terraform
3 9 (7.56%) Grafana
3 9 (7.56%) Prometheus
4 8 (6.72%) Ansible
5 5 (4.20%) Fluentd
6 4 (3.36%) SCCM
7 3 (2.52%) Istio
7 3 (2.52%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 43 (36.13%) Google
2 19 (15.97%) Microsoft
3 11 (9.24%) Splunk
4 9 (7.56%) VMware
5 7 (5.88%) Pega
6 5 (4.20%) Cribl.io
6 5 (4.20%) IBM
7 4 (3.36%) Citrix
7 4 (3.36%) Confluent
7 4 (3.36%) F5
7 4 (3.36%) Palo Alto
8 3 (2.52%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.84%) Checkmarx
9 1 (0.84%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.84%) Facebook
9 1 (0.84%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.84%) SAP
9 1 (0.84%) SnapLogic
9 1 (0.84%) Veracode