Microservices Contract Job Trends in the North West

Microservices
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Microservices skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 34 57
Rank change year-on-year -9 +23 +46
Contract jobs citing Microservices 158 110 81
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.50% 5.40% 2.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 6.08% 3.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 82 57
10th Percentile £400 £358 £413
25th Percentile £442 £393 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £479 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.38% -8.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £555 £656
90th Percentile £650 £625 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -14.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 3
10th Percentile £58.75 £69.00 -
25th Percentile £63.06 £71.25 -
Median hourly rate £85.50 £75.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +63.47% +31.09%
75th Percentile £95.00 £77.81 -
90th Percentile - £78.38 -
England median hourly rate £77.50 £55.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +40.91% +19.88% -36.72%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Microservices falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,934 1,808 2,342
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.61% 88.76% 84.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,715 1,201 1,430
10th Percentile £300 £300 £306
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £455 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.51% -8.18% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £565 £585
90th Percentile £675 £665 £675
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 110 265
10th Percentile £17.25 £12.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £19.06 £14.22
Median hourly rate £50.00 £31.88 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.84% +6.27% -1.77%
75th Percentile £76.00 £62.25 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.24 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.31% -33.11% +1.65%

Microservices
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microservices relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Microservices job vacancy trend in the North West

Microservices
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microservices.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microservices

Microservices
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microservices in the North West over the 6 months to 28 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microservices in the North West

Microservices
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microservices.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microservices

Microservices
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microservices in the North West over the 6 months to 28 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microservices in the North West

Microservices
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 Microservices within the North West region over the 6 months to 28 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 +9 130 £525 -0.94% 50
Cheshire -28 21 £447 +11.19% 5
Lancashire -13 3 £650 +10.64% 16
Merseyside -14 1 £575 +39.39% 2
Cumbria - 1 £357 - 1
Microservices
England

Microservices
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 (3.80%) Confluence
2 1 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 1 (0.63%) Apache
2 1 (0.63%) Camunda
2 1 (0.63%) JBoss
2 1 (0.63%) Mule
2 1 (0.63%) Mule ESB
2 1 (0.63%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 87 (55.06%) AWS
2 53 (33.54%) Azure
3 25 (15.82%) GCP
4 24 (15.19%) Serverless
5 19 (12.03%) GitHub
6 12 (7.59%) AWS Lambda
7 10 (6.33%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (5.70%) Amazon EKS
8 9 (5.70%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (3.80%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (3.80%) Amazon EventBridge
10 5 (3.16%) Azure Service Bus
11 4 (2.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.53%) Azure AKS
11 4 (2.53%) IaaS
11 4 (2.53%) PaaS
12 3 (1.90%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.90%) Amazon S3
12 3 (1.90%) Apigee
12 3 (1.90%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.27%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (15.19%) MongoDB
2 16 (10.13%) NoSQL
3 15 (9.49%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (6.96%) DynamoDB
5 8 (5.06%) Relational Database
5 8 (5.06%) SQL Server
6 7 (4.43%) MySQL
7 5 (3.16%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.90%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 23 (14.56%) Git
2 19 (12.03%) GitLab
3 18 (11.39%) Selenium
4 16 (10.13%) Jenkins
5 11 (6.96%) JIRA
6 10 (6.33%) JUnit
7 9 (5.70%) Mockito
8 8 (5.06%) REST Assured
9 7 (4.43%) Cucumber
9 7 (4.43%) Postman
10 6 (3.80%) Cypress.io
10 6 (3.80%) Gatling
11 5 (3.16%) JMeter
11 5 (3.16%) Mocha
11 5 (3.16%) Serenity BDD
11 5 (3.16%) SonarQube
12 3 (1.90%) CircleCI
12 3 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
13 1 (0.63%) Eclipse
13 1 (0.63%) Robot Framework
General
1 43 (27.22%) Public Sector
2 31 (19.62%) Social Skills
3 27 (17.09%) Finance
4 12 (7.59%) Banking
5 8 (5.06%) Retail
6 6 (3.80%) Military
7 5 (3.16%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (1.90%) Billing
8 3 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.90%) Retail Banking
9 2 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.63%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.63%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 65 (41.14%) Developer
2 38 (24.05%) Architect
3 35 (22.15%) Java Developer
4 30 (18.99%) Lead
5 27 (17.09%) Senior
6 19 (12.03%) Software Engineer
7 18 (11.39%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (10.13%) Lead Developer
9 15 (9.49%) Senior Developer
10 12 (7.59%) Full-Stack Developer
10 12 (7.59%) Software Developer
11 10 (6.33%) Backend Developer
12 9 (5.70%) Senior Software Engineer
12 9 (5.70%) Test Engineer
13 8 (5.06%) Lead Java Developer
14 7 (4.43%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 7 (4.43%) Principal Engineer
15 6 (3.80%) Lead Test Engineer
15 6 (3.80%) Senior Backend Developer
15 6 (3.80%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (29.11%) Spring
2 41 (25.95%) Spring Boot
3 38 (24.05%) React
4 32 (20.25%) Node.js
5 30 (18.99%) Kafka
6 25 (15.82%) REST
7 22 (13.92%) AngularJS
8 21 (13.29%) RESTful
9 17 (10.76%) .NET
10 11 (6.96%) Playwright
11 9 (5.70%) Nunjucks
11 9 (5.70%) OAuth
12 8 (5.06%) ActiveMQ
12 8 (5.06%) JAX-RS
13 7 (4.43%) HTML
13 7 (4.43%) Jest
13 7 (4.43%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (4.43%) Spring Cloud
13 7 (4.43%) Vue
14 6 (3.80%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 44 (27.85%) Cloud Native
2 17 (10.76%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (10.13%) Product Ownership
4 9 (5.70%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (5.70%) Mobile App
5 7 (4.43%) Onboarding
6 6 (3.80%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.53%) Mainframe
7 4 (2.53%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.90%) Legacy Applications
8 3 (1.90%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.27%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.63%) Mobile Banking
10 1 (0.63%) NHS
10 1 (0.63%) Online Banking
10 1 (0.63%) PMI
10 1 (0.63%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 15 (9.49%) Linux
2 10 (6.33%) Unix
3 7 (4.43%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.27%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (51.90%) Agile
2 75 (47.47%) CI/CD
3 64 (40.51%) DevOps
4 50 (31.65%) Test Automation
5 43 (27.22%) Event-Driven
6 34 (21.52%) Software Engineering
7 33 (20.89%) Containerisation
7 33 (20.89%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 30 (18.99%) Problem-Solving
8 30 (18.99%) TDD
9 28 (17.72%) Observability
10 27 (17.09%) Technical Leadership
11 26 (16.46%) Full-Stack Development
12 24 (15.19%) Continuous Improvement
13 22 (13.92%) Infrastructure as Code
14 21 (13.29%) API Design
14 21 (13.29%) BDD
14 21 (13.29%) Mentoring
15 19 (12.03%) API Development
15 19 (12.03%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 90 (56.96%) Java
2 23 (14.56%) JavaScript
3 22 (13.92%) TypeScript
4 17 (10.76%) SQL
5 13 (8.23%) C#
6 10 (6.33%) Python
7 9 (5.70%) Kotlin
8 7 (4.43%) Go
9 1 (0.63%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 34 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 23 (14.56%) SC Cleared
3 15 (9.49%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (3.80%) Degree
5 4 (2.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 4 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
5 4 (2.53%) CISSP
6 3 (1.90%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.27%) CCSP
7 2 (1.27%) CEH
7 2 (1.27%) CISM
7 2 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.27%) GIAC
7 2 (1.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 2 (1.27%) OSCP
7 2 (1.27%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.63%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (9.49%) Accessibility
2 10 (6.33%) QA
3 4 (2.53%) NIST
3 4 (2.53%) WCAG
4 2 (1.27%) COBIT
4 2 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.27%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.63%) GDPR
5 1 (0.63%) GRC
5 1 (0.63%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.63%) PSD2
5 1 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.63%) SEPA
System Software
1 51 (32.28%) Docker
Systems Management
1 42 (26.58%) Kubernetes
2 23 (14.56%) Terraform
3 15 (9.49%) Grafana
4 12 (7.59%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.90%) Istio
6 2 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (8.23%) Microsoft
2 10 (6.33%) Google
3 5 (3.16%) Splunk
4 3 (1.90%) Foundry
4 3 (1.90%) Guidewire
4 3 (1.90%) MuleSoft
4 3 (1.90%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.27%) Atlassian
5 2 (1.27%) Databricks
5 2 (1.27%) Oracle
5 2 (1.27%) PagerDuty
6 1 (0.63%) Adobe
6 1 (0.63%) SAP