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 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 57 81
Rank change year-on-year -4 +24 +17
Contract jobs citing GCP 134 73 42
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.54% 3.33% 1.76%
As % of the Cloud Services category 11.13% 10.64% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 47 23
10th Percentile £419 £413 £375
25th Percentile £463 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £558 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% -4.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £618 £636 £669
90th Percentile £677 £743 £760
England median daily rate £550 £555 £615
% change year-on-year -0.90% -9.76% +0.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 0
10th Percentile £51.33 - -
25th Percentile £74.38 £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 £69.50 £61.75 £46.25
% change year-on-year +12.55% +33.51% -37.36%

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 1,204 686 752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 31.83% 31.27% 31.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 775 512 511
10th Percentile £240 £305 £300
25th Percentile £400 £387 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £613 £538 £575
90th Percentile £690 £638 £650
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 23 38
10th Percentile £18.85 £12.82 £13.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.87 -
Median hourly rate £46.80 £40.59 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +15.30% +152.74% -40.96%
75th Percentile £76.00 £56.25 £31.38
90th Percentile £91.00 £75.50 £70.28
England median hourly rate £37.12 £25.15 £23.80
% change year-on-year +47.59% +5.67% -29.79%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 -4 90 £530 -7.42% 126
Cheshire +22 40 £614 +29.21% 27
Cumbria - 2 £525 -
Lancashire -6 1 - - 11
Merseyside -21 1 £525 +7.69% 10
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 6 (4.48%) Apache
2 5 (3.73%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.99%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (2.99%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.75%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 111 (82.84%) Azure
2 106 (79.10%) AWS
3 27 (20.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
4 16 (11.94%) AWS CloudFormation
5 13 (9.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 11 (8.21%) Azure DevOps
6 11 (8.21%) Entra ID
6 11 (8.21%) Serverless
7 10 (7.46%) Azure AKS
7 10 (7.46%) Vertex AI
8 8 (5.97%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (5.97%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (5.97%) Azure Sentinel
8 8 (5.97%) GitHub
8 8 (5.97%) Microsoft 365
9 6 (4.48%) Amazon SageMaker
9 6 (4.48%) Azure Machine Learning
9 6 (4.48%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (4.48%) Snowflake
10 5 (3.73%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (17.91%) Firewall
2 8 (5.97%) DNS
3 7 (5.22%) Network Security
3 7 (5.22%) VPN
4 6 (4.48%) BGP
4 6 (4.48%) OSPF
5 4 (2.99%) HTTP
5 4 (2.99%) TCP/IP
5 4 (2.99%) VLAN
6 3 (2.24%) DKIM
6 3 (2.24%) DMARC
6 3 (2.24%) NAS
6 3 (2.24%) SAN
6 3 (2.24%) SSL
6 3 (2.24%) Wireless
7 2 (1.49%) Cisco ASA
7 2 (1.49%) Junos
7 2 (1.49%) WAN
8 1 (0.75%) BIG-IP
8 1 (0.75%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.97%) BigQuery
2 7 (5.22%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.99%) NoSQL
4 3 (2.24%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (1.49%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.75%) Big Data
6 1 (0.75%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.75%) Flink
6 1 (0.75%) Looker
6 1 (0.75%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.75%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 13 (9.70%) Jenkins
2 8 (5.97%) Git
3 7 (5.22%) Cucumber
4 6 (4.48%) Selenium
5 5 (3.73%) GitLab
5 5 (3.73%) Postman
5 5 (3.73%) SonarQube
5 5 (3.73%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (2.99%) JIRA
6 4 (2.99%) JUnit
6 4 (2.99%) REST Assured
7 2 (1.49%) Burp Suite
7 2 (1.49%) Gatling
7 2 (1.49%) Gradle
7 2 (1.49%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.75%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.75%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.75%) TestNG
General
1 32 (23.88%) Finance
2 20 (14.93%) Social Skills
3 12 (8.96%) Banking
4 9 (6.72%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (5.97%) Public Sector
6 7 (5.22%) Retail
7 5 (3.73%) Games
7 5 (3.73%) Manufacturing
8 3 (2.24%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.75%) Digital Health
9 1 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.75%) Military
9 1 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 31 (23.13%) Security Engineer
2 28 (20.90%) Architect
3 27 (20.15%) Cloud Engineer
4 14 (10.45%) Cloud Security Engineer
4 14 (10.45%) Senior
5 13 (9.70%) Solutions Architect
6 11 (8.21%) DevOps Engineer
7 8 (5.97%) Analyst
7 8 (5.97%) Data Engineer
8 7 (5.22%) GCP Engineer
9 6 (4.48%) Lead
9 6 (4.48%) Technical Analyst
10 5 (3.73%) Administrator
10 5 (3.73%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.73%) Integration Engineer
10 5 (3.73%) Network Engineer
10 5 (3.73%) Systems Analyst
10 5 (3.73%) Technical Architect
11 4 (2.99%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 4 (2.99%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (8.21%) OAuth
2 9 (6.72%) PySpark
3 6 (4.48%) Kafka
3 6 (4.48%) Node.js
3 6 (4.48%) OpenID
3 6 (4.48%) React
4 5 (3.73%) Langfuse
5 4 (2.99%) OAuth2
5 4 (2.99%) REST
5 4 (2.99%) Spring
5 4 (2.99%) Spring Boot
6 3 (2.24%) JWT
6 3 (2.24%) Playwright
6 3 (2.24%) SAML
7 2 (1.49%) ARM Templates
7 2 (1.49%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (1.49%) GraphQL
7 2 (1.49%) Next.js
7 2 (1.49%) Nunjucks
7 2 (1.49%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 25 (18.66%) Cloud Native
2 19 (14.18%) Security Posture
3 11 (8.21%) Management Information System
4 10 (7.46%) AI Agents
5 8 (5.97%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (5.22%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (4.48%) Public Cloud
8 5 (3.73%) Animation
8 5 (3.73%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 4 (2.99%) Cloud Security Posture
9 4 (2.99%) PKI
9 4 (2.99%) Product Ownership
10 3 (2.24%) Data Centre
10 3 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (2.24%) Freedom of Information
10 3 (2.24%) Private Cloud
10 3 (2.24%) Replication
11 2 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (1.49%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 25 (18.66%) Windows
2 24 (17.91%) Linux
3 15 (11.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (4.48%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (47.01%) CI/CD
2 56 (41.79%) DevOps
3 46 (34.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 37 (27.61%) Agile
5 35 (26.12%) Cloud Security
6 24 (17.91%) Change Management
6 24 (17.91%) Observability
6 24 (17.91%) SIEM
7 23 (17.16%) AI
8 22 (16.42%) Infrastructure Automation
9 21 (15.67%) Scrum
10 20 (14.93%) Microservices
11 18 (13.43%) Analytics
11 18 (13.43%) Roadmaps
11 18 (13.43%) Threat Modelling
12 16 (11.94%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (11.94%) Cybersecurity
12 16 (11.94%) DevSecOps
12 16 (11.94%) Problem-Solving
13 15 (11.19%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 53 (39.55%) Python
2 28 (20.90%) Bash
2 28 (20.90%) PowerShell
3 24 (17.91%) Java
4 18 (13.43%) Bicep
5 11 (8.21%) SQL
6 4 (2.99%) JavaScript
7 3 (2.24%) Go
8 1 (0.75%) Google Apps Script
8 1 (0.75%) Scala
Qualifications
1 19 (14.18%) Azure Certification
2 18 (13.43%) AWS Certification
2 18 (13.43%) CISSP
3 16 (11.94%) Degree
4 14 (10.45%) Security Cleared
5 11 (8.21%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (5.97%) SC Cleared
7 5 (3.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 5 (3.73%) CCNP
8 3 (2.24%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 3 (2.24%) GIAC
8 3 (2.24%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (1.49%) CCNA
9 2 (1.49%) CEH
9 2 (1.49%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.75%) CCSP
10 1 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.75%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.75%) PMP
10 1 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (6.72%) Data Quality
2 7 (5.22%) NIST
3 6 (4.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (4.48%) QA
4 4 (2.99%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.49%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.49%) GDPR
6 1 (0.75%) CDISC
6 1 (0.75%) COBIT
6 1 (0.75%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.75%) NCSC
6 1 (0.75%) PSD2
6 1 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.75%) SEPA
System Software
1 33 (24.63%) Docker
2 14 (10.45%) Active Directory
3 3 (2.24%) Hyper-V
3 3 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.49%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 51 (38.06%) Terraform
2 49 (36.57%) Kubernetes
3 14 (10.45%) Progress Chef
4 12 (8.96%) Prometheus
5 10 (7.46%) Grafana
6 9 (6.72%) Ansible
7 8 (5.97%) Istio
8 7 (5.22%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (4.48%) Argo
10 3 (2.24%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (1.49%) linkerd
12 1 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.75%) Nagios
Vendors
1 46 (34.33%) Google
2 20 (14.93%) Microsoft
3 15 (11.19%) Red Hat
4 7 (5.22%) Databricks
4 7 (5.22%) Salesforce
5 6 (4.48%) OpenAI
5 6 (4.48%) Palo Alto
5 6 (4.48%) Perforce
6 5 (3.73%) Dynatrace
6 5 (3.73%) Fortinet
7 4 (2.99%) Aruba
7 4 (2.99%) Splunk
8 3 (2.24%) Arista
8 3 (2.24%) Juniper
8 3 (2.24%) MuleSoft
8 3 (2.24%) VMware
9 2 (1.49%) Confluent
9 2 (1.49%) CyberArk
9 2 (1.49%) Okta
9 2 (1.49%) ServiceNow