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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 103
Rank change year-on-year +32 +23 -9
Contract jobs citing GCP 127 46 35
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.26% 2.26% 1.23%
As % of the Cloud Services category 12.88% 6.61% 3.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 98 31 29
10th Percentile £358 £375 £100
25th Percentile £450 £513 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £622 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.91% +18.48% -15.66%
75th Percentile £624 £675 £625
90th Percentile £700 £716 £670
England median daily rate £540 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -10.00% - -4.76%
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 £54.50 £54.28
% change year-on-year +9.63% +0.41% -20.76%

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 986 696 941
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.07% 34.27% 33.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 700 515 691
10th Percentile £219 £230 £280
25th Percentile £369 £391 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £550
90th Percentile £638 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 16 74
10th Percentile £18.23 £22.61 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.20 £16.06
Median hourly rate £57.50 £28.75 £17.39
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% +65.30% -67.17%
75th Percentile £76.00 £50.66 £26.50
90th Percentile £90.00 £76.88 £46.18
England median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -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 14 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 14 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 +14 70 £550 -4.35% 47
Cheshire +18 49 £530 +51.03% 14
Lancashire -10 6 £425 -19.81% 13
Merseyside -21 2 - - 5
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 (5.51%) SAS
2 4 (3.15%) OpenStack
3 3 (2.36%) Apache
4 1 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.79%) Confluence
Applications
1 6 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (3.94%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 99 (77.95%) Azure
2 95 (74.80%) AWS
3 15 (11.81%) GitHub
4 12 (9.45%) AWS CloudFormation
4 12 (9.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 10 (7.87%) Power Platform
6 9 (7.09%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (6.30%) Apigee
8 7 (5.51%) Entra ID
8 7 (5.51%) Google Tag Manager
8 7 (5.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 6 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (4.72%) Google Analytics
10 5 (3.94%) Akamai
10 5 (3.94%) Datadog
11 4 (3.15%) Azure AKS
11 4 (3.15%) OpenShift
12 3 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (2.36%) Cloud Functions
12 3 (2.36%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 15 (11.81%) Firewall
2 8 (6.30%) HTTP
3 5 (3.94%) DNS
4 4 (3.15%) HTTPS
4 4 (3.15%) TCP/IP
4 4 (3.15%) VPN
5 3 (2.36%) Internet
6 2 (1.57%) BGP
6 2 (1.57%) Network Security
6 2 (1.57%) OSPF
6 2 (1.57%) Wireshark
7 1 (0.79%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (12.60%) BigQuery
2 10 (7.87%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (7.09%) Looker
3 9 (7.09%) Power BI
4 4 (3.15%) NoSQL
5 3 (2.36%) Tableau
6 2 (1.57%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (1.57%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.57%) MySQL
6 2 (1.57%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.79%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.79%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.79%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 18 (14.17%) Jenkins
2 14 (11.02%) GitLab
3 7 (5.51%) Git
3 7 (5.51%) Postman
4 4 (3.15%) Selenium
5 3 (2.36%) CircleCI
5 3 (2.36%) JMeter
6 2 (1.57%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.79%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.79%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.79%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.79%) JIRA
7 1 (0.79%) Snyk
7 1 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.79%) Spinnaker
General
1 37 (29.13%) Social Skills
2 30 (23.62%) Finance
3 22 (17.32%) Banking
4 18 (14.17%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (13.39%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.36%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.36%) Retail
7 2 (1.57%) Games
7 2 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.57%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.79%) Advertising
8 1 (0.79%) Automotive
8 1 (0.79%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.79%) Electronics
8 1 (0.79%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.79%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.79%) Marketing
8 1 (0.79%) Military
8 1 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.79%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 38 (29.92%) Architect
2 18 (14.17%) Senior
3 14 (11.02%) Solutions Architect
4 12 (9.45%) Security Engineer
5 11 (8.66%) Analyst
5 11 (8.66%) Platform Engineer
6 10 (7.87%) GCP Engineer
7 8 (6.30%) DevOps Engineer
8 7 (5.51%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (4.72%) Developer
10 5 (3.94%) Cloud Architect
10 5 (3.94%) Data Scientist
10 5 (3.94%) Governance Manager
10 5 (3.94%) Lead
10 5 (3.94%) Lead Architect
10 5 (3.94%) Security Architect
11 4 (3.15%) Apigee Developer
11 4 (3.15%) GCP Architect
11 4 (3.15%) Payments Architect
11 4 (3.15%) Payments Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (11.81%) Spring
1 15 (11.81%) Spring Boot
2 10 (7.87%) Kafka
3 9 (7.09%) OAuth
3 9 (7.09%) REST
4 8 (6.30%) RESTful
5 7 (5.51%) JWT
6 6 (4.72%) OAuth2
6 6 (4.72%) React
7 5 (3.94%) JSON
7 5 (3.94%) XGBoost
8 4 (3.15%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (3.15%) Hibernate
8 4 (3.15%) JAX-RS
8 4 (3.15%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (3.15%) XML
9 2 (1.57%) HTML
9 2 (1.57%) Middleware
9 2 (1.57%) Node.js
9 2 (1.57%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 11 (8.66%) Cloud Native
2 10 (7.87%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.51%) Credit Risk
4 6 (4.72%) Private Cloud
5 5 (3.94%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 5 (3.94%) e-Learning
5 5 (3.94%) Security Posture
6 4 (3.15%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.15%) Product Ownership
6 4 (3.15%) Virtual Team
7 3 (2.36%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.57%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (1.57%) Clustering
8 2 (1.57%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.57%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.57%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.57%) Replication
9 1 (0.79%) Management Information System
9 1 (0.79%) NHS
9 1 (0.79%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 10 (7.87%) Linux
2 9 (7.09%) Windows
3 4 (3.15%) Mac OS
3 4 (3.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.36%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.79%) Android
5 1 (0.79%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (43.31%) CI/CD
2 44 (34.65%) DevOps
3 36 (28.35%) Analytics
4 35 (27.56%) Agile
5 33 (25.98%) Containerisation
6 31 (24.41%) Infrastructure as Code
7 26 (20.47%) Microservices
8 23 (18.11%) Observability
9 20 (15.75%) DevSecOps
10 19 (14.96%) Continuous Improvement
10 19 (14.96%) Incident Response
10 19 (14.96%) Problem-Solving
11 16 (12.60%) Data Modelling
11 16 (12.60%) Event-Driven
12 14 (11.02%) Data Analysis
12 14 (11.02%) Data Science
13 13 (10.24%) Decision-Making
13 13 (10.24%) IT Strategy
13 13 (10.24%) Machine Learning
13 13 (10.24%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 51 (40.16%) Python
2 27 (21.26%) Java
3 20 (15.75%) Bash
4 15 (11.81%) PowerShell
5 9 (7.09%) SQL
6 8 (6.30%) JavaScript
7 7 (5.51%) R
8 6 (4.72%) Go
8 6 (4.72%) TypeScript
9 4 (3.15%) Bicep
10 2 (1.57%) C#
11 1 (0.79%) C
11 1 (0.79%) C++
11 1 (0.79%) PHP
11 1 (0.79%) Scala
Qualifications
1 16 (12.60%) Azure Certification
1 16 (12.60%) Security Cleared
2 13 (10.24%) AWS Certification
3 9 (7.09%) Degree
4 8 (6.30%) CISSP
4 8 (6.30%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (6.30%) SC Cleared
5 5 (3.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (3.94%) ITIL Certification
6 4 (3.15%) Cisco Certification
6 4 (3.15%) CISM
6 4 (3.15%) IBM Certification
7 3 (2.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (1.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 2 (1.57%) CCNP
8 2 (1.57%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.57%) GIAC
8 2 (1.57%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.79%) PMP
9 1 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (10.24%) Data Quality
2 10 (7.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (7.09%) QA
4 8 (6.30%) ISO 20022
5 7 (5.51%) Accessibility
5 7 (5.51%) NIST
6 6 (4.72%) GDPR
7 4 (3.15%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.79%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.79%) PERC
8 1 (0.79%) PSD2
8 1 (0.79%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.79%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (30.71%) Docker
2 7 (5.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (3.15%) vSphere
4 3 (2.36%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 45 (35.43%) Kubernetes
2 34 (26.77%) Terraform
3 11 (8.66%) Grafana
3 11 (8.66%) Prometheus
4 7 (5.51%) Ansible
5 5 (3.94%) Istio
6 4 (3.15%) Argo
6 4 (3.15%) Progress Chef
7 3 (2.36%) Fluentd
7 3 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (2.36%) SCCM
8 2 (1.57%) linkerd
8 2 (1.57%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 46 (36.22%) Google
2 17 (13.39%) Microsoft
3 13 (10.24%) Splunk
4 8 (6.30%) VMware
5 7 (5.51%) Pega
6 4 (3.15%) Confluent
6 4 (3.15%) F5
6 4 (3.15%) IBM
6 4 (3.15%) Palo Alto
6 4 (3.15%) Red Hat
7 3 (2.36%) Citrix
7 3 (2.36%) Cribl.io
7 3 (2.36%) PagerDuty
8 2 (1.57%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.79%) Checkmarx
9 1 (0.79%) CyberArk
9 1 (0.79%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.79%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.79%) SnapLogic
9 1 (0.79%) Veracode