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 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 67 87
Rank change year-on-year +10 +20 +20
Contract jobs citing GCP 114 58 40
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.43% 2.99% 1.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 11.05% 9.21% 4.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 39 28
10th Percentile £407 £402 £100
25th Percentile £450 £463 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £568 £550 £506
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% +8.64% -11.96%
75th Percentile £625 £671 £653
90th Percentile £699 £720 £754
England median daily rate £550 £580 £600
% change year-on-year -5.17% -3.33% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £20.99 - -
25th Percentile £28.57 £67.50 -
Median hourly rate £42.93 £70.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -38.67% - -
75th Percentile £58.07 £72.50 -
90th Percentile £66.13 - -
England median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -19.05% -4.55% -21.62%

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 1,032 630 854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 31.03% 32.51% 31.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 660 478 615
10th Percentile £300 £286 £281
25th Percentile £400 £400 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £466 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.26% -2.00% -5.00%
75th Percentile £588 £544 £575
90th Percentile £650 £638 £650
England median daily rate £513 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -1.44% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 18 64
10th Percentile £23.95 £12.82 £13.00
25th Percentile £28.50 £26.88 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £34.67 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +80.27% +115.88% -41.28%
75th Percentile £77.50 £58.13 £26.50
90th Percentile £95.00 £80.00 £63.18
England median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -38.58%

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 28 May 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing GCP in the North West over the 6 months to 28 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for GCP in the North West

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 28 May 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 -5 72 £554 -1.56% 82
Cheshire +7 36 £610 +24.49% 7
Lancashire -6 4 £513 -3.30% 13
Cumbria - 2 £525 -
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 3 (2.63%) Microsoft Exchange
1 3 (2.63%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.75%) Apache
3 1 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.88%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 92 (80.70%) Azure
2 86 (75.44%) AWS
3 19 (16.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
4 12 (10.53%) GitHub
5 8 (7.02%) AWS CloudFormation
5 8 (7.02%) Entra ID
5 8 (7.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 7 (6.14%) Azure AKS
6 7 (6.14%) Serverless
7 6 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (5.26%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (4.39%) Akamai
9 4 (3.51%) Amazon SageMaker
9 4 (3.51%) Apigee
9 4 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (3.51%) Azure Machine Learning
9 4 (3.51%) Power Platform
9 4 (3.51%) Vertex AI
10 3 (2.63%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (11.40%) Firewall
2 9 (7.89%) DNS
3 4 (3.51%) HTTP
3 4 (3.51%) TCP/IP
4 3 (2.63%) DKIM
4 3 (2.63%) DMARC
4 3 (2.63%) Internet
4 3 (2.63%) Network Security
4 3 (2.63%) VPN
5 2 (1.75%) BGP
5 2 (1.75%) OSPF
6 1 (0.88%) BIG-IP
6 1 (0.88%) Cisco ASA
6 1 (0.88%) Cisco Firepower
6 1 (0.88%) DNSSEC
6 1 (0.88%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.88%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.88%) SSL
6 1 (0.88%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (8.77%) BigQuery
2 5 (4.39%) Data Lake
3 4 (3.51%) Looker
3 4 (3.51%) NoSQL
4 3 (2.63%) Power BI
5 2 (1.75%) MongoDB
5 2 (1.75%) MySQL
5 2 (1.75%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.88%) Cloud Spanner
6 1 (0.88%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.88%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.88%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 12 (10.53%) Jenkins
2 9 (7.89%) Git
3 7 (6.14%) GitLab
3 7 (6.14%) Selenium
4 6 (5.26%) Postman
5 4 (3.51%) Cucumber
5 4 (3.51%) JIRA
5 4 (3.51%) SonarQube
6 3 (2.63%) JMeter
6 3 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (1.75%) Cypress.io
7 2 (1.75%) JUnit
7 2 (1.75%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.88%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.88%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.88%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.88%) Gatling
8 1 (0.88%) Gradle
8 1 (0.88%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.88%) Snyk
General
1 24 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 19 (16.67%) Finance
3 14 (12.28%) Public Sector
4 11 (9.65%) Banking
5 9 (7.89%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (1.75%) Financial Institution
6 2 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (1.75%) Retail
7 1 (0.88%) Advertising
7 1 (0.88%) Automotive
7 1 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.88%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.88%) Military
7 1 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (0.88%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 27 (23.68%) Architect
2 21 (18.42%) Senior
3 12 (10.53%) Security Engineer
3 12 (10.53%) Solutions Architect
4 11 (9.65%) GCP Engineer
5 10 (8.77%) DevOps Engineer
6 7 (6.14%) Cloud Engineer
7 6 (5.26%) Analyst
7 6 (5.26%) Lead
7 6 (5.26%) Security Architect
8 5 (4.39%) Data Engineer
8 5 (4.39%) Data Scientist
8 5 (4.39%) Governance Manager
8 5 (4.39%) Integration Engineer
8 5 (4.39%) Senior Software Engineer
8 5 (4.39%) Software Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) Applications Architect
9 4 (3.51%) GCP DevOps
9 4 (3.51%) GCP DevOps Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) Lead Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (10.53%) OAuth
2 9 (7.89%) React
3 7 (6.14%) REST
3 7 (6.14%) Spring
3 7 (6.14%) Spring Boot
4 6 (5.26%) Kafka
4 6 (5.26%) Node.js
4 6 (5.26%) OpenID
5 5 (4.39%) RESTful
5 5 (4.39%) XGBoost
6 4 (3.51%) JWT
6 4 (3.51%) OAuth2
6 4 (3.51%) PySpark
6 4 (3.51%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (2.63%) Playwright
7 3 (2.63%) SAML
8 2 (1.75%) .NET
8 2 (1.75%) A2A Protocol
8 2 (1.75%) GraphQL
8 2 (1.75%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 17 (14.91%) Cloud Native
2 8 (7.02%) Private Cloud
3 7 (6.14%) Public Cloud
3 7 (6.14%) Security Posture
4 6 (5.26%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 5 (4.39%) e-Learning
5 5 (4.39%) Management Information System
5 5 (4.39%) Product Ownership
6 4 (3.51%) AI Agents
6 4 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (3.51%) PKI
6 4 (3.51%) Virtual Team
7 3 (2.63%) Data Centre
7 3 (2.63%) Freedom of Information
8 2 (1.75%) CCTV
8 2 (1.75%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (1.75%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 12 (10.53%) Windows
2 9 (7.89%) Linux
3 6 (5.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.63%) Mac OS
4 3 (2.63%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.88%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (49.12%) CI/CD
2 49 (42.98%) DevOps
3 30 (26.32%) Agile
4 28 (24.56%) Infrastructure as Code
5 26 (22.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 24 (21.05%) Microservices
7 22 (19.30%) Observability
8 21 (18.42%) Problem-Solving
9 20 (17.54%) Analytics
10 18 (15.79%) Technical Leadership
11 17 (14.91%) Cloud Security
11 17 (14.91%) Roadmaps
12 16 (14.04%) DevSecOps
13 15 (13.16%) Containerisation
13 15 (13.16%) Risk Management
13 15 (13.16%) SIEM
14 14 (12.28%) Incident Response
14 14 (12.28%) Software Engineering
14 14 (12.28%) Zero Trust
15 12 (10.53%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 37 (32.46%) Python
2 21 (18.42%) Java
3 15 (13.16%) Bash
4 14 (12.28%) PowerShell
5 11 (9.65%) SQL
6 8 (7.02%) JavaScript
7 7 (6.14%) Go
8 5 (4.39%) TypeScript
9 3 (2.63%) Bicep
10 1 (0.88%) C#
10 1 (0.88%) Scala
Qualifications
1 16 (14.04%) Security Cleared
2 15 (13.16%) Azure Certification
3 13 (11.40%) AWS Certification
4 10 (8.77%) CISSP
5 7 (6.14%) Cisco Certification
5 7 (6.14%) Degree
6 6 (5.26%) SC Cleared
7 5 (4.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (3.51%) IBM Certification
8 4 (3.51%) ITIL Certification
9 3 (2.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 3 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (2.63%) GIAC
9 3 (2.63%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (1.75%) CCNP
10 2 (1.75%) CEH
10 2 (1.75%) CISM
10 2 (1.75%) DV Cleared
10 2 (1.75%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (9.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (8.77%) Data Quality
3 9 (7.89%) NIST
4 7 (6.14%) GDPR
5 6 (5.26%) QA
6 5 (4.39%) Accessibility
7 3 (2.63%) PCI DSS
8 2 (1.75%) ISO 20022
8 2 (1.75%) PSD2
9 1 (0.88%) COBIT
9 1 (0.88%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.88%) PERC
9 1 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.88%) SEPA
9 1 (0.88%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.88%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (21.93%) Docker
2 9 (7.89%) Active Directory
3 3 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 34 (29.82%) Kubernetes
2 33 (28.95%) Terraform
3 11 (9.65%) Prometheus
4 10 (8.77%) Grafana
5 8 (7.02%) Istio
6 7 (6.14%) Ansible
7 6 (5.26%) Progress Chef
7 6 (5.26%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (3.51%) Argo
9 3 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (2.63%) SCCM
10 2 (1.75%) linkerd
11 1 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 40 (35.09%) Google
2 16 (14.04%) Microsoft
3 6 (5.26%) Red Hat
3 6 (5.26%) Splunk
4 4 (3.51%) IBM
4 4 (3.51%) OpenAI
5 3 (2.63%) Citrix
5 3 (2.63%) MuleSoft
5 3 (2.63%) PagerDuty
5 3 (2.63%) VMware
6 2 (1.75%) CyberArk
6 2 (1.75%) Dynatrace
6 2 (1.75%) Okta
6 2 (1.75%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.88%) Checkmarx
7 1 (0.88%) CheckPoint
7 1 (0.88%) Cisco
7 1 (0.88%) Facebook
7 1 (0.88%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.88%) Veracode