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 22 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 79 101
Rank change year-on-year +31 +22 -8
Contract jobs citing GCP 131 51 36
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.28% 2.52% 1.28%
As % of the Cloud Services category 12.94% 7.38% 3.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 34 29
10th Percentile £358 £398 £100
25th Percentile £450 £503 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £599 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.19% +14.00% -12.50%
75th Percentile £625 £688 £606
90th Percentile £689 £729 £670
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 0
10th Percentile £60.43 £68.00 -
25th Percentile £61.44 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £66.75 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -7.93% - -
75th Percentile £70.94 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £71.28 £77.00 -
England median hourly rate £59.75 £53.50 £54.28
% change year-on-year +11.68% -1.43% -22.46%

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 1,012 691 927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.03% 34.14% 32.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 714 520 680
10th Percentile £220 £230 £293
25th Percentile £369 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.71% -2.35%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £550
90th Percentile £639 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 15 71
10th Percentile £18.70 £22.30 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.38 £25.53 £16.06
Median hourly rate £62.00 £28.75 £17.29
Median % change year-on-year +115.65% +66.33% -50.61%
75th Percentile £76.00 £43.39 £25.13
90th Percentile £90.00 £74.75 £46.18
England median hourly rate £37.12 £27.13 £21.00
% change year-on-year +36.85% +29.17% -16.00%

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 22 March 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 22 March 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 71 £551 -7.94% 49
Cheshire +17 52 £534 +2.69% 10
Lancashire -10 6 £425 -19.81% 12
Merseyside -18 2 - - 7
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 (5.34%) SAS
2 4 (3.05%) OpenStack
3 3 (2.29%) Apache
4 1 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.76%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (3.82%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (3.82%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 102 (77.86%) Azure
2 99 (75.57%) AWS
3 15 (11.45%) GitHub
4 13 (9.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 12 (9.16%) AWS CloudFormation
6 9 (6.87%) GitHub Actions
6 9 (6.87%) Power Platform
7 8 (6.11%) Apigee
7 8 (6.11%) Entra ID
8 7 (5.34%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 6 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (4.58%) Google Analytics
9 6 (4.58%) Google Tag Manager
10 5 (3.82%) Akamai
10 5 (3.82%) Datadog
11 4 (3.05%) Azure AKS
11 4 (3.05%) OpenShift
12 3 (2.29%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (2.29%) Cloud Functions
12 3 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 16 (12.21%) Firewall
2 8 (6.11%) HTTP
3 5 (3.82%) DNS
3 5 (3.82%) VPN
4 4 (3.05%) HTTPS
4 4 (3.05%) TCP/IP
5 3 (2.29%) Internet
5 3 (2.29%) Network Security
6 2 (1.53%) BGP
6 2 (1.53%) OSPF
6 2 (1.53%) Wireshark
7 1 (0.76%) Cisco ASA
7 1 (0.76%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.76%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (11.45%) BigQuery
2 10 (7.63%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (6.11%) Looker
3 8 (6.11%) Power BI
4 4 (3.05%) NoSQL
5 3 (2.29%) Tableau
6 2 (1.53%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (1.53%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.53%) MySQL
6 2 (1.53%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.76%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.76%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.76%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 18 (13.74%) Jenkins
2 14 (10.69%) GitLab
3 7 (5.34%) Git
3 7 (5.34%) Postman
4 4 (3.05%) Selenium
5 3 (2.29%) CircleCI
5 3 (2.29%) JMeter
6 2 (1.53%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.76%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.76%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.76%) JIRA
7 1 (0.76%) Snyk
7 1 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.76%) Spinnaker
General
1 37 (28.24%) Social Skills
2 30 (22.90%) Finance
3 24 (18.32%) Banking
4 17 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (12.21%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.29%) Retail
7 2 (1.53%) Games
7 2 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.76%) Advertising
8 1 (0.76%) Automotive
8 1 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.76%) Electronics
8 1 (0.76%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.76%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.76%) Marketing
8 1 (0.76%) Military
8 1 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.76%) Publishing
8 1 (0.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 40 (30.53%) Architect
2 18 (13.74%) Senior
3 14 (10.69%) Solutions Architect
4 12 (9.16%) Security Engineer
5 11 (8.40%) Analyst
5 11 (8.40%) GCP Engineer
5 11 (8.40%) Platform Engineer
6 9 (6.87%) DevOps Engineer
7 8 (6.11%) Cloud Engineer
8 6 (4.58%) Cloud Architect
8 6 (4.58%) Developer
8 6 (4.58%) Security Architect
9 5 (3.82%) Applications Architect
9 5 (3.82%) Data Scientist
9 5 (3.82%) Governance Manager
9 5 (3.82%) Lead
9 5 (3.82%) Lead Architect
10 4 (3.05%) Apigee Developer
10 4 (3.05%) GCP Architect
10 4 (3.05%) Payments Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (11.45%) Spring
1 15 (11.45%) Spring Boot
2 10 (7.63%) Kafka
2 10 (7.63%) OAuth
3 9 (6.87%) REST
4 8 (6.11%) RESTful
5 7 (5.34%) JWT
5 7 (5.34%) OAuth2
6 6 (4.58%) React
7 5 (3.82%) JSON
7 5 (3.82%) XGBoost
8 4 (3.05%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (3.05%) Hibernate
8 4 (3.05%) JAX-RS
8 4 (3.05%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (3.05%) XML
9 3 (2.29%) OpenID
10 2 (1.53%) .NET
10 2 (1.53%) Node.js
10 2 (1.53%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 13 (9.92%) Cloud Native
2 10 (7.63%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.34%) Credit Risk
4 6 (4.58%) Private Cloud
5 5 (3.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 5 (3.82%) e-Learning
5 5 (3.82%) Security Posture
6 4 (3.05%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.05%) Product Ownership
6 4 (3.05%) Virtual Team
7 3 (2.29%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.53%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (1.53%) Clustering
8 2 (1.53%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.53%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.53%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.53%) Replication
9 1 (0.76%) CUDA
9 1 (0.76%) Management Information System
9 1 (0.76%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 10 (7.63%) Linux
2 9 (6.87%) Windows
3 4 (3.05%) Mac OS
3 4 (3.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.29%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.76%) Android
5 1 (0.76%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (42.75%) CI/CD
2 46 (35.11%) DevOps
3 35 (26.72%) Analytics
4 33 (25.19%) Agile
5 32 (24.43%) Containerisation
5 32 (24.43%) Infrastructure as Code
6 26 (19.85%) Microservices
7 24 (18.32%) Observability
8 20 (15.27%) Continuous Improvement
8 20 (15.27%) DevSecOps
9 19 (14.50%) Incident Response
9 19 (14.50%) Problem-Solving
10 16 (12.21%) Data Modelling
10 16 (12.21%) Event-Driven
11 15 (11.45%) Cloud Security
12 14 (10.69%) Data Analysis
12 14 (10.69%) Data Science
12 14 (10.69%) Roadmaps
13 13 (9.92%) SIEM
13 13 (9.92%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 53 (40.46%) Python
2 28 (21.37%) Java
3 21 (16.03%) Bash
4 15 (11.45%) PowerShell
5 8 (6.11%) SQL
6 7 (5.34%) Go
6 7 (5.34%) JavaScript
6 7 (5.34%) R
7 5 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 4 (3.05%) Bicep
9 2 (1.53%) C#
10 1 (0.76%) C
10 1 (0.76%) C++
10 1 (0.76%) PHP
10 1 (0.76%) Scala
Qualifications
1 15 (11.45%) Azure Certification
1 15 (11.45%) Security Cleared
2 12 (9.16%) AWS Certification
3 9 (6.87%) Degree
4 8 (6.11%) CISSP
4 8 (6.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (5.34%) SC Cleared
6 5 (3.82%) ITIL Certification
7 4 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (3.05%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (3.05%) CISM
7 4 (3.05%) IBM Certification
8 3 (2.29%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (1.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 2 (1.53%) CCNP
9 2 (1.53%) DV Cleared
9 2 (1.53%) GIAC
10 1 (0.76%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.76%) PMP
10 1 (0.76%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (9.16%) Data Quality
2 11 (8.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (6.87%) ISO 20022
4 8 (6.11%) NIST
4 8 (6.11%) QA
5 7 (5.34%) GDPR
6 6 (4.58%) Accessibility
7 4 (3.05%) PCI DSS
8 2 (1.53%) PSD2
9 1 (0.76%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.76%) PERC
9 1 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.76%) SEPA
9 1 (0.76%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.76%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (29.77%) Docker
2 7 (5.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (3.05%) Active Directory
3 4 (3.05%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 47 (35.88%) Kubernetes
2 35 (26.72%) Terraform
3 12 (9.16%) Prometheus
4 11 (8.40%) Grafana
5 7 (5.34%) Ansible
6 6 (4.58%) Istio
7 4 (3.05%) Argo
7 4 (3.05%) Progress Chef
8 3 (2.29%) Fluentd
8 3 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (2.29%) SCCM
8 3 (2.29%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (1.53%) linkerd
10 1 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 46 (35.11%) Google
2 17 (12.98%) Microsoft
3 13 (9.92%) Splunk
4 8 (6.11%) VMware
5 7 (5.34%) Pega
6 5 (3.82%) Palo Alto
7 4 (3.05%) Confluent
7 4 (3.05%) F5
7 4 (3.05%) IBM
7 4 (3.05%) Red Hat
8 3 (2.29%) Citrix
8 3 (2.29%) Cribl.io
8 3 (2.29%) PagerDuty
9 2 (1.53%) CyberArk
9 2 (1.53%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.53%) MuleSoft
9 2 (1.53%) Okta
10 1 (0.76%) Checkmarx
10 1 (0.76%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.76%) Veracode