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 25 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 72 90
Rank change year-on-year +14 +18 +12
Contract jobs citing GCP 127 56 40
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.61% 2.80% 1.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 11.61% 8.45% 4.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 39 25
10th Percentile £415 £410 -
25th Percentile £452 £463 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.89% -3.64% -4.35%
75th Percentile £614 £671 £663
90th Percentile £660 £740 £758
England median daily rate £550 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 0
10th Percentile £46.27 - -
25th Percentile £71.75 £67.50 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £70.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -
75th Percentile - £72.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £69.00 £52.50 £51.75
% change year-on-year +31.43% +1.45% -26.07%

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 1,094 663 900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 31.06% 33.13% 32.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 695 511 635
10th Percentile £315 £313 £283
25th Percentile £400 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £538 £575
90th Percentile £675 £638 £650
England median daily rate £515 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 20 60
10th Percentile £21.70 £12.82 £15.25
25th Percentile £28.50 £23.36 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £34.67 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +80.27% +115.88% -28.34%
75th Percentile £77.00 £54.38 £26.50
90th Percentile £95.00 £77.50 £71.54
England median hourly rate £43.09 £25.15 £22.00
% change year-on-year +71.34% +14.32% -31.89%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 25 June 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 +11 85 £530 -7.83% 63
Cheshire +15 37 £588 +23.68% 9
Lancashire -5 3 £675 +27.36% 16
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 5 (3.94%) Apache
2 4 (3.15%) Apache Spark
3 3 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (2.36%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.79%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 105 (82.68%) Azure
2 99 (77.95%) AWS
3 26 (20.47%) Google Kubernetes Engine
4 13 (10.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 12 (9.45%) GitHub
6 10 (7.87%) AWS CloudFormation
7 8 (6.30%) Azure AKS
7 8 (6.30%) Azure DevOps
7 8 (6.30%) Serverless
8 6 (4.72%) Entra ID
8 6 (4.72%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (4.72%) Vertex AI
9 5 (3.94%) Akamai
9 5 (3.94%) Amazon SageMaker
9 5 (3.94%) Apigee
9 5 (3.94%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (3.94%) Azure Machine Learning
9 5 (3.94%) Snowflake
10 4 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (3.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (15.75%) Firewall
2 9 (7.09%) DNS
3 4 (3.15%) HTTP
3 4 (3.15%) TCP/IP
3 4 (3.15%) VPN
4 3 (2.36%) BGP
4 3 (2.36%) DKIM
4 3 (2.36%) DMARC
4 3 (2.36%) Network Security
4 3 (2.36%) OSPF
5 2 (1.57%) SSL
6 1 (0.79%) BIG-IP
6 1 (0.79%) Cisco ASA
6 1 (0.79%) Cisco Firepower
6 1 (0.79%) DNSSEC
6 1 (0.79%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.79%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.79%) SAN
6 1 (0.79%) VLAN
6 1 (0.79%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (6.30%) BigQuery
2 6 (4.72%) Data Lake
3 4 (3.15%) NoSQL
4 2 (1.57%) MongoDB
4 2 (1.57%) MySQL
4 2 (1.57%) Snowflake Schema
5 1 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.79%) Looker
5 1 (0.79%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (11.81%) Jenkins
2 10 (7.87%) Git
3 9 (7.09%) Selenium
4 8 (6.30%) Postman
5 7 (5.51%) Cucumber
5 7 (5.51%) GitLab
6 5 (3.94%) SonarQube
6 5 (3.94%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (3.15%) JIRA
7 4 (3.15%) JUnit
7 4 (3.15%) REST Assured
8 3 (2.36%) JMeter
9 2 (1.57%) Burp Suite
9 2 (1.57%) Gatling
9 2 (1.57%) Gradle
9 2 (1.57%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.79%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.79%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.79%) TestNG
General
1 26 (20.47%) Finance
2 25 (19.69%) Social Skills
3 14 (11.02%) Banking
4 11 (8.66%) Public Sector
5 7 (5.51%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (4.72%) Retail
7 5 (3.94%) Manufacturing
8 3 (2.36%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.79%) Advertising
10 1 (0.79%) Automotive
10 1 (0.79%) Digital Health
10 1 (0.79%) Games
10 1 (0.79%) Military
10 1 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 27 (21.26%) Architect
2 19 (14.96%) Security Engineer
2 19 (14.96%) Senior
3 15 (11.81%) Cloud Engineer
4 13 (10.24%) Solutions Architect
5 12 (9.45%) DevOps Engineer
6 10 (7.87%) GCP Engineer
7 8 (6.30%) Data Engineer
8 6 (4.72%) Analyst
8 6 (4.72%) Security Architect
9 5 (3.94%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 5 (3.94%) Cloud Security Engineer
9 5 (3.94%) Integration Engineer
9 5 (3.94%) Lead
9 5 (3.94%) Senior Software Engineer
9 5 (3.94%) Software Engineer
9 5 (3.94%) Technical Architect
10 4 (3.15%) Data Analytics Engineer
10 4 (3.15%) GCP DevOps
10 4 (3.15%) GCP DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (9.45%) OAuth
2 9 (7.09%) PySpark
3 8 (6.30%) Kafka
3 8 (6.30%) React
3 8 (6.30%) Spring
3 8 (6.30%) Spring Boot
4 7 (5.51%) REST
5 6 (4.72%) Node.js
5 6 (4.72%) OpenID
6 5 (3.94%) RESTful
7 4 (3.15%) JWT
7 4 (3.15%) OAuth2
7 4 (3.15%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (2.36%) Playwright
8 3 (2.36%) SAML
8 3 (2.36%) XGBoost
9 2 (1.57%) GraphQL
9 2 (1.57%) Next.js
9 2 (1.57%) Nunjucks
9 2 (1.57%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 22 (17.32%) Cloud Native
2 11 (8.66%) Security Posture
3 10 (7.87%) Management Information System
4 8 (6.30%) Private Cloud
4 8 (6.30%) Public Cloud
5 7 (5.51%) AI Agents
6 6 (4.72%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 5 (3.94%) e-Learning
7 5 (3.94%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (3.94%) PKI
8 4 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (3.15%) Product Ownership
8 4 (3.15%) Virtual Team
9 3 (2.36%) Data Centre
9 3 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.36%) Freedom of Information
10 2 (1.57%) CCTV
10 2 (1.57%) Enterprise Cloud
10 2 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (1.57%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 17 (13.39%) Linux
1 17 (13.39%) Windows
2 11 (8.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (2.36%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (53.54%) CI/CD
2 58 (45.67%) DevOps
3 35 (27.56%) Agile
4 34 (26.77%) Infrastructure as Code
5 30 (23.62%) Observability
6 25 (19.69%) Microservices
7 24 (18.90%) Cloud Security
8 22 (17.32%) Continuous Improvement
9 21 (16.54%) Roadmaps
10 20 (15.75%) SIEM
10 20 (15.75%) Technical Leadership
11 18 (14.17%) Analytics
11 18 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
12 17 (13.39%) Change Management
12 17 (13.39%) Scrum
13 16 (12.60%) AI
13 16 (12.60%) Cybersecurity
13 16 (12.60%) DevSecOps
14 15 (11.81%) Incident Response
14 15 (11.81%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 47 (37.01%) Python
2 26 (20.47%) Java
3 20 (15.75%) Bash
4 19 (14.96%) PowerShell
5 10 (7.87%) SQL
6 7 (5.51%) Go
7 6 (4.72%) Bicep
7 6 (4.72%) JavaScript
8 3 (2.36%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.79%) Scala
Qualifications
1 19 (14.96%) Azure Certification
2 17 (13.39%) AWS Certification
3 15 (11.81%) CISSP
4 14 (11.02%) Security Cleared
5 11 (8.66%) Degree
6 7 (5.51%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (4.72%) SC Cleared
8 5 (3.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 4 (3.15%) IBM Certification
9 4 (3.15%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (2.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (2.36%) GIAC
11 2 (1.57%) CCNP
11 2 (1.57%) CEH
11 2 (1.57%) CISM
11 2 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (1.57%) DV Cleared
11 2 (1.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (1.57%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.09%) Data Quality
1 9 (7.09%) NIST
2 8 (6.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (3.15%) PCI DSS
3 4 (3.15%) QA
4 2 (1.57%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.57%) GDPR
5 1 (0.79%) CDISC
5 1 (0.79%) COBIT
5 1 (0.79%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.79%) PSD2
5 1 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.79%) SEPA
5 1 (0.79%) SOC 2
System Software
1 28 (22.05%) Docker
2 8 (6.30%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.79%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 1 (0.79%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 45 (35.43%) Terraform
2 42 (33.07%) Kubernetes
3 13 (10.24%) Prometheus
4 12 (9.45%) Grafana
5 11 (8.66%) Progress Chef
6 10 (7.87%) Ansible
6 10 (7.87%) Istio
7 6 (4.72%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (3.94%) Argo
9 2 (1.57%) linkerd
10 1 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 1 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 44 (34.65%) Google
2 13 (10.24%) Microsoft
3 11 (8.66%) Red Hat
4 6 (4.72%) Databricks
5 5 (3.94%) OpenAI
5 5 (3.94%) Salesforce
6 4 (3.15%) Dynatrace
6 4 (3.15%) IBM
6 4 (3.15%) Splunk
7 3 (2.36%) MuleSoft
7 3 (2.36%) PagerDuty
7 3 (2.36%) Palo Alto
8 2 (1.57%) CyberArk
8 2 (1.57%) Fortinet
8 2 (1.57%) Okta
8 2 (1.57%) Perforce
8 2 (1.57%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.79%) CheckPoint
9 1 (0.79%) Cisco
9 1 (0.79%) VMware