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 26 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 85 102
Rank change year-on-year +36 +17 -8
Contract jobs citing GCP 121 40 34
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.34% 1.94% 1.23%
As % of the Cloud Services category 12.86% 5.71% 3.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 29 28
10th Percentile £351 £356 £100
25th Percentile £431 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.43% +9.52% -16.00%
75th Percentile £604 £650 £592
90th Percentile £688 £716 £641
England median daily rate £534 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -11.00% - -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 £54.50 £53.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +1.87% -6.96% -12.21%

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 941 701 957
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.72% 34.03% 34.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 674 501 694
10th Percentile £213 £238 £268
25th Percentile £358 £385 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.71% -2.35%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £551
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 48 11 76
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £14.25
25th Percentile £21.46 £22.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £60.00 £28.75 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +108.70% +62.25% -64.56%
75th Percentile £76.38 £30.63 £43.75
90th Percentile £86.50 £77.50 £71.87
England median hourly rate £39.50 £27.50 £21.46
% change year-on-year +43.64% +28.15% -14.16%

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 26 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 26 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 +27 73 £528 -13.84% 49
Cheshire +10 41 £500 +40.45% 12
Lancashire -13 5 £425 -19.81% 23
Merseyside -18 2 - - 4
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 (5.79%) SAS
2 4 (3.31%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.65%) Apache
4 1 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.83%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (5.79%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (4.13%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 93 (76.86%) Azure
2 87 (71.90%) AWS
3 12 (9.92%) GitHub
3 12 (9.92%) Power Platform
4 10 (8.26%) AWS CloudFormation
5 9 (7.44%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 8 (6.61%) Google Tag Manager
7 7 (5.79%) Google Analytics
8 6 (4.96%) Apigee
8 6 (4.96%) OpenShift
8 6 (4.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 5 (4.13%) Datadog
9 5 (4.13%) Entra ID
9 5 (4.13%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (2.48%) Cloud Functions
10 3 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
11 2 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
11 2 (1.65%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.65%) Dataform
11 2 (1.65%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 16 (13.22%) Firewall
2 5 (4.13%) VPN
3 4 (3.31%) HTTP
3 4 (3.31%) HTTPS
4 3 (2.48%) Internet
5 2 (1.65%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.83%) BGP
6 1 (0.83%) DNS
6 1 (0.83%) Network Security
6 1 (0.83%) OSPF
6 1 (0.83%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.83%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (14.05%) BigQuery
2 11 (9.09%) Looker
2 11 (9.09%) Power BI
3 10 (8.26%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (3.31%) Tableau
5 3 (2.48%) NoSQL
5 3 (2.48%) Relational Database
6 2 (1.65%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.65%) MySQL
6 2 (1.65%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.83%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.83%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.83%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 14 (11.57%) Jenkins
2 12 (9.92%) GitLab
3 7 (5.79%) Git
3 7 (5.79%) Postman
4 4 (3.31%) Selenium
5 3 (2.48%) CircleCI
5 3 (2.48%) JMeter
6 2 (1.65%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.83%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.83%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.83%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.83%) JIRA
7 1 (0.83%) Snyk
7 1 (0.83%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.83%) Spinnaker
General
1 42 (34.71%) Social Skills
2 30 (24.79%) Finance
3 21 (17.36%) Banking
4 18 (14.88%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (14.05%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.48%) Marketing
6 3 (2.48%) Retail
7 2 (1.65%) Games
7 2 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.65%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.83%) Advertising
8 1 (0.83%) Automotive
8 1 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.83%) Electronics
8 1 (0.83%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.83%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.83%) Military
8 1 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.83%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 34 (28.10%) Architect
2 13 (10.74%) Senior
3 12 (9.92%) Analyst
4 11 (9.09%) Solutions Architect
5 10 (8.26%) Platform Engineer
5 10 (8.26%) Security Engineer
6 9 (7.44%) Data Scientist
6 9 (7.44%) GCP Engineer
7 7 (5.79%) Cloud Engineer
8 6 (4.96%) Developer
9 5 (4.13%) Cloud Architect
9 5 (4.13%) Governance Manager
9 5 (4.13%) Performance Analyst
10 4 (3.31%) Applications Architect
10 4 (3.31%) Data Analyst
10 4 (3.31%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (3.31%) Java Developer
10 4 (3.31%) Payments Architect
10 4 (3.31%) Payments Solutions Architect
10 4 (3.31%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (12.40%) Spring
1 15 (12.40%) Spring Boot
2 11 (9.09%) Kafka
3 8 (6.61%) RESTful
4 7 (5.79%) REST
5 6 (4.96%) React
5 6 (4.96%) XGBoost
6 5 (4.13%) JSON
6 5 (4.13%) JWT
6 5 (4.13%) OAuth
7 4 (3.31%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (3.31%) Hibernate
7 4 (3.31%) JAX-RS
7 4 (3.31%) OAuth2
7 4 (3.31%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (3.31%) XML
8 2 (1.65%) HTML
8 2 (1.65%) Middleware
8 2 (1.65%) Node.js
9 1 (0.83%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 11 (9.09%) Cloud Native
2 10 (8.26%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.79%) Credit Risk
4 6 (4.96%) Private Cloud
5 5 (4.13%) e-Learning
5 5 (4.13%) Product Ownership
5 5 (4.13%) Security Posture
6 4 (3.31%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.31%) Virtual Team
7 3 (2.48%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (2.48%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.65%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (1.65%) Clustering
8 2 (1.65%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.65%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.83%) CUDA
9 1 (0.83%) Management Information System
9 1 (0.83%) NHS
9 1 (0.83%) PKI
9 1 (0.83%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 10 (8.26%) Linux
2 9 (7.44%) Windows
3 4 (3.31%) Mac OS
3 4 (3.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.83%) Android
5 1 (0.83%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (37.19%) CI/CD
2 40 (33.06%) DevOps
3 35 (28.93%) Agile
4 33 (27.27%) Analytics
5 29 (23.97%) Containerisation
6 25 (20.66%) Observability
7 24 (19.83%) Infrastructure as Code
8 23 (19.01%) Microservices
9 18 (14.88%) Data Science
10 17 (14.05%) Incident Response
10 17 (14.05%) Machine Learning
10 17 (14.05%) Problem-Solving
11 15 (12.40%) Continuous Improvement
11 15 (12.40%) Data Analysis
11 15 (12.40%) Data Modelling
12 14 (11.57%) Cloud Security
12 14 (11.57%) User Experience
13 13 (10.74%) Decision-Making
13 13 (10.74%) IT Strategy
13 13 (10.74%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 47 (38.84%) Python
2 28 (23.14%) Java
3 16 (13.22%) Bash
4 11 (9.09%) PowerShell
4 11 (9.09%) SQL
5 9 (7.44%) JavaScript
6 7 (5.79%) R
7 6 (4.96%) Go
7 6 (4.96%) TypeScript
8 3 (2.48%) C#
9 1 (0.83%) Bicep
9 1 (0.83%) C
9 1 (0.83%) C++
9 1 (0.83%) LookML
9 1 (0.83%) PHP
Qualifications
1 15 (12.40%) Security Cleared
2 13 (10.74%) Azure Certification
3 10 (8.26%) AWS Certification
4 9 (7.44%) Degree
5 8 (6.61%) CISSP
5 8 (6.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (5.79%) SC Cleared
7 6 (4.96%) CISM
8 5 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (4.13%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (3.31%) IBM Certification
10 2 (1.65%) DV Cleared
10 2 (1.65%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.83%) CCNP
11 1 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.83%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.83%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.83%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.83%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (11.57%) Data Quality
2 10 (8.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (8.26%) QA
3 8 (6.61%) Accessibility
3 8 (6.61%) ISO 20022
4 7 (5.79%) NIST
5 6 (4.96%) GDPR
6 4 (3.31%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.83%) GRC
7 1 (0.83%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.83%) PERC
7 1 (0.83%) PSD2
7 1 (0.83%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.83%) WCAG
System Software
1 33 (27.27%) Docker
2 7 (5.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (3.31%) vSphere
4 3 (2.48%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 41 (33.88%) Kubernetes
2 31 (25.62%) Terraform
3 7 (5.79%) Ansible
3 7 (5.79%) Grafana
3 7 (5.79%) Prometheus
4 5 (4.13%) Fluentd
5 4 (3.31%) Progress Chef
6 3 (2.48%) Istio
6 3 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.48%) SCCM
Vendors
1 48 (39.67%) Google
2 19 (15.70%) Microsoft
3 11 (9.09%) Splunk
4 8 (6.61%) VMware
5 7 (5.79%) Pega
6 5 (4.13%) Cribl.io
7 4 (3.31%) Confluent
7 4 (3.31%) F5
7 4 (3.31%) IBM
7 4 (3.31%) Palo Alto
7 4 (3.31%) Red Hat
8 3 (2.48%) Citrix
8 3 (2.48%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.83%) Checkmarx
9 1 (0.83%) CyberArk
9 1 (0.83%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.83%) Okta
9 1 (0.83%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.83%) SnapLogic
9 1 (0.83%) Veracode