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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 42 80 98
Rank change year-on-year +38 +18 -10
Contract jobs citing GCP 121 40 42
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.84% 1.87% 1.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 14.04% 6.04% 4.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 24 34
10th Percentile £356 £356 £400
25th Percentile £429 £375 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.36% +4.76% -12.50%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £605
90th Percentile £688 £668 £646
England median daily rate £525 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.50% - -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 £66.00 £57.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +14.78% -7.26% +77.14%

All Cloud 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 862 662 957
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.48% 30.98% 36.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 644 429 719
10th Percentile £216 £250 £265
25th Percentile £358 £375 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £539 £565 £575
90th Percentile £638 £646 £650
England median daily rate £500 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 13 53
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.16 £15.75
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.05 £17.72
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year +37.93% +22.83% -32.54%
75th Percentile £69.25 £58.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £72.37 £75.95 £50.84
England median hourly rate £26.50 £29.00 £24.31
% change year-on-year -8.62% +19.32% +8.02%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 +29 79 £532 -3.23% 111
Cheshire +11 34 £496 +39.33% 48
Merseyside -7 3 £425 -32.00% 23
Lancashire - 3 £388 - 36
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
3 2 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.65%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.83%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.83%) Confluence
4 1 (0.83%) IIS
Applications
1 8 (6.61%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (4.13%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 92 (76.03%) Azure
2 86 (71.07%) AWS
3 15 (12.40%) GitHub
4 14 (11.57%) Power Platform
5 13 (10.74%) Datadog
6 11 (9.09%) Apigee
7 10 (8.26%) Google Tag Manager
8 9 (7.44%) Google Analytics
9 8 (6.61%) Amazon SQS
9 8 (6.61%) SaaS
9 8 (6.61%) Serverless
10 7 (5.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (5.79%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (5.79%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (5.79%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (4.96%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (4.96%) Amazon EventBridge
11 6 (4.96%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (4.96%) OpenShift
11 6 (4.96%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (7.44%) Firewall
2 4 (3.31%) HTTP
2 4 (3.31%) HTTPS
2 4 (3.31%) VPN
3 3 (2.48%) Internet
4 2 (1.65%) SAN
4 2 (1.65%) VoIP
4 2 (1.65%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.83%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.83%) VLAN
5 1 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (22.31%) BigQuery
2 13 (10.74%) Looker
2 13 (10.74%) Power BI
3 12 (9.92%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (7.44%) PostgreSQL
5 8 (6.61%) DynamoDB
5 8 (6.61%) NoSQL
5 8 (6.61%) Relational Database
6 6 (4.96%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (4.96%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (4.96%) MySQL
6 6 (4.96%) Redis
7 5 (4.13%) RDBMS
7 5 (4.13%) Tableau
8 4 (3.31%) Metadata
9 2 (1.65%) Data Lake
9 2 (1.65%) Snowflake Schema
10 1 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.83%) Big Data
10 1 (0.83%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 24 (19.83%) Jenkins
2 15 (12.40%) Git
2 15 (12.40%) GitLab
3 7 (5.79%) SonarQube
4 5 (4.13%) Gradle
4 5 (4.13%) Maven
4 5 (4.13%) SonarLint
5 4 (3.31%) Postman
6 3 (2.48%) CircleCI
7 2 (1.65%) Fiddler
7 2 (1.65%) JIRA
7 2 (1.65%) Selenium
8 1 (0.83%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.83%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.83%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.83%) Gatling
8 1 (0.83%) JMeter
8 1 (0.83%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.83%) Snyk
8 1 (0.83%) Spinnaker
General
1 48 (39.67%) Social Skills
2 33 (27.27%) Finance
3 24 (19.83%) Banking
4 22 (18.18%) Public Sector
5 19 (15.70%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (4.13%) Marketing
7 4 (3.31%) Games
7 4 (3.31%) Retail
7 4 (3.31%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.65%) Automotive
8 2 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.65%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.65%) Military
9 1 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.83%) Electronics
9 1 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.83%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 47 (38.84%) Architect
2 14 (11.57%) Solutions Architect
3 13 (10.74%) Analyst
4 11 (9.09%) Platform Engineer
5 9 (7.44%) Java Architect
6 8 (6.61%) Developer
6 8 (6.61%) Java Technical Architect
6 8 (6.61%) Senior
6 8 (6.61%) Technical Architect
7 7 (5.79%) Data Architect
7 7 (5.79%) Data Scientist
7 7 (5.79%) GCP Architect
8 6 (4.96%) Performance Analyst
9 5 (4.13%) Lead
9 5 (4.13%) Security Engineer
10 4 (3.31%) Apigee Developer
10 4 (3.31%) Cloud Architect
10 4 (3.31%) GCP Engineer
10 4 (3.31%) Payments Architect
10 4 (3.31%) Payments Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (14.88%) Spring Boot
2 12 (9.92%) RESTful
2 12 (9.92%) Spring
3 10 (8.26%) JWT
4 8 (6.61%) Kafka
5 6 (4.96%) Dropwizard
5 6 (4.96%) Elastic Stack
5 6 (4.96%) J2EE
5 6 (4.96%) Micronaut
6 5 (4.13%) Celery
6 5 (4.13%) Middleware
6 5 (4.13%) OAuth
6 5 (4.13%) OAuth2
6 5 (4.13%) REST
7 4 (3.31%) GraphQL
7 4 (3.31%) Hibernate
7 4 (3.31%) JAX-RS
7 4 (3.31%) JSON
7 4 (3.31%) React
7 4 (3.31%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (11.57%) Cloud Native
2 8 (6.61%) Distributed Systems
2 8 (6.61%) Product Ownership
3 7 (5.79%) Credit Risk
4 6 (4.96%) N-Tier
5 5 (4.13%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.31%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (2.48%) Clustering
7 3 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (2.48%) NHS
7 3 (2.48%) Private Cloud
7 3 (2.48%) Synthetic Data
8 2 (1.65%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (1.65%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.65%) Replication
9 1 (0.83%) Data Centre
9 1 (0.83%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.83%) IBM XIV
9 1 (0.83%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 10 (8.26%) Linux
2 7 (5.79%) Windows
3 4 (3.31%) Mac OS
4 3 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 2 (1.65%) Unix
5 2 (1.65%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.83%) Android
6 1 (0.83%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (34.71%) CI/CD
2 39 (32.23%) Containerisation
3 36 (29.75%) Analytics
4 34 (28.10%) Agile
5 32 (26.45%) DevOps
6 29 (23.97%) Microservices
7 23 (19.01%) Infrastructure as Code
7 23 (19.01%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (15.70%) AI
8 19 (15.70%) Machine Learning
9 18 (14.88%) Data Modelling
9 18 (14.88%) Data Science
9 18 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
10 16 (13.22%) API Design
10 16 (13.22%) Data Analysis
10 16 (13.22%) User Experience
11 15 (12.40%) Observability
12 14 (11.57%) Business Intelligence
12 14 (11.57%) Event-Driven
13 13 (10.74%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 44 (36.36%) Python
2 28 (23.14%) Java
3 17 (14.05%) SQL
4 14 (11.57%) Bash
5 7 (5.79%) JavaScript
5 7 (5.79%) R
6 6 (4.96%) PowerShell
7 4 (3.31%) Go
8 3 (2.48%) C#
8 3 (2.48%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.65%) PHP
10 1 (0.83%) Bicep
10 1 (0.83%) C
10 1 (0.83%) C++
10 1 (0.83%) LookML
10 1 (0.83%) Scala
Qualifications
1 17 (14.05%) Security Cleared
2 10 (8.26%) Computer Science Degree
2 10 (8.26%) Degree
2 10 (8.26%) SC Cleared
3 8 (6.61%) Azure Certification
4 6 (4.96%) AWS Certification
5 5 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (4.13%) CISM
5 5 (4.13%) CISSP
6 3 (2.48%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.83%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (0.83%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (14.88%) Data Quality
2 15 (12.40%) QA
3 9 (7.44%) Accessibility
3 9 (7.44%) GDPR
4 8 (6.61%) ISO 20022
4 8 (6.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (4.13%) NIST
5 5 (4.13%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.65%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.83%) GRC
7 1 (0.83%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.83%) PERC
7 1 (0.83%) PSD2
7 1 (0.83%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (32.23%) Docker
2 8 (6.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (4.13%) vSphere
4 4 (3.31%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 42 (34.71%) Kubernetes
2 28 (23.14%) Terraform
3 6 (4.96%) Ansible
3 6 (4.96%) Grafana
3 6 (4.96%) Prometheus
4 5 (4.13%) Fluentd
5 4 (3.31%) SCCM
6 3 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.83%) Istio
Vendors
1 41 (33.88%) Google
2 19 (15.70%) Microsoft
3 11 (9.09%) Splunk
3 11 (9.09%) VMware
4 7 (5.79%) Pega
5 6 (4.96%) Citrix
5 6 (4.96%) F5
5 6 (4.96%) Gigya
6 5 (4.13%) Cribl.io
7 4 (3.31%) Confluent
7 4 (3.31%) Palo Alto
8 3 (2.48%) Hitachi
8 3 (2.48%) IBM
9 2 (1.65%) HP
9 2 (1.65%) Oracle
10 1 (0.83%) Checkmarx
10 1 (0.83%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.83%) Facebook
10 1 (0.83%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.83%) SAP