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 21 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 34 53
Rank change year-on-year -8 +19 +49
Contract jobs citing Microservices 159 107 86
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.53% 5.36% 3.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.44% 5.98% 3.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 81 58
10th Percentile £380 £358 £406
25th Percentile £447 £393 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -8.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £574 £551 £655
90th Percentile £650 £615 £850
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -13.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 5
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 £48.43
90th Percentile - £78.38 -
England median hourly rate £77.50 £55.00 £47.16
% change year-on-year +40.91% +16.64% -34.96%

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 2,925 1,788 2,379
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.36% 89.53% 83.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,725 1,193 1,447
10th Percentile £300 £306 £307
25th Percentile £400 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -7.07% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £558 £585
90th Percentile £675 £663 £675
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 101 274
10th Percentile £17.26 £12.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £26.45 £19.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.00 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year +56.25% +4.92% +0.76%
75th Percentile £75.75 £63.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.41 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.50 £27.38 £38.00
% change year-on-year +73.52% -27.96% +7.04%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +11 130 £525 -0.94% 46
Cheshire -33 23 £447 +11.19% 7
Lancashire -12 3 £650 +10.64% 17
Merseyside -12 1 £575 +39.39%
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 (3.77%) 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 89 (55.97%) AWS
2 52 (32.70%) Azure
3 24 (15.09%) GCP
4 23 (14.47%) Serverless
5 20 (12.58%) GitHub
6 11 (6.92%) AWS Lambda
6 11 (6.92%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (5.66%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (5.03%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (3.77%) Amazon EventBridge
10 5 (3.14%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (3.14%) Apigee
10 5 (3.14%) Azure Service Bus
10 5 (3.14%) Kong
11 4 (2.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.52%) Azure AKS
11 4 (2.52%) IaaS
11 4 (2.52%) PaaS
12 3 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.89%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.26%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (13.21%) MongoDB
2 18 (11.32%) NoSQL
3 17 (10.69%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (6.92%) DynamoDB
5 8 (5.03%) MySQL
5 8 (5.03%) Relational Database
5 8 (5.03%) SQL Server
6 5 (3.14%) DocumentDB
7 3 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 24 (15.09%) Git
2 20 (12.58%) GitLab
3 18 (11.32%) Selenium
4 16 (10.06%) Jenkins
5 11 (6.92%) JIRA
5 11 (6.92%) JUnit
6 8 (5.03%) Cucumber
6 8 (5.03%) Mockito
6 8 (5.03%) REST Assured
7 7 (4.40%) Cypress.io
7 7 (4.40%) Postman
8 6 (3.77%) Gatling
8 6 (3.77%) Mocha
9 5 (3.14%) JMeter
9 5 (3.14%) Serenity BDD
9 5 (3.14%) SonarQube
10 4 (2.52%) CircleCI
11 3 (1.89%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.63%) Eclipse
12 1 (0.63%) Robot Framework
General
1 43 (27.04%) Public Sector
2 31 (19.50%) Social Skills
3 30 (18.87%) Finance
4 12 (7.55%) Banking
5 8 (5.03%) Retail
6 7 (4.40%) Analytical Skills
7 6 (3.77%) Military
8 3 (1.89%) Billing
8 3 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.89%) Retail Banking
9 2 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.63%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.63%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 64 (40.25%) Developer
2 36 (22.64%) Architect
3 34 (21.38%) Java Developer
4 30 (18.87%) Lead
5 26 (16.35%) Senior
6 19 (11.95%) Software Engineer
7 17 (10.69%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (10.06%) Lead Developer
9 14 (8.81%) Senior Developer
10 13 (8.18%) Full-Stack Developer
11 12 (7.55%) Software Developer
12 10 (6.29%) Backend Developer
13 9 (5.66%) Senior Software Engineer
13 9 (5.66%) Test Engineer
14 8 (5.03%) Lead Java Developer
15 7 (4.40%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 7 (4.40%) Principal Engineer
16 6 (3.77%) Full-Stack Java Developer
16 6 (3.77%) Lead Test Engineer
16 6 (3.77%) Senior Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (31.45%) Spring
2 45 (28.30%) Spring Boot
3 40 (25.16%) React
4 32 (20.13%) Node.js
5 29 (18.24%) REST
6 28 (17.61%) Kafka
7 23 (14.47%) AngularJS
7 23 (14.47%) RESTful
8 17 (10.69%) .NET
9 12 (7.55%) Playwright
10 11 (6.92%) OAuth
11 9 (5.66%) Nunjucks
11 9 (5.66%) Spring Cloud
12 8 (5.03%) Jest
13 7 (4.40%) ActiveMQ
13 7 (4.40%) HTML
13 7 (4.40%) JAX-RS
13 7 (4.40%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (4.40%) Vue
14 6 (3.77%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 45 (28.30%) Cloud Native
2 18 (11.32%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (10.06%) Product Ownership
4 9 (5.66%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (5.66%) Mobile App
5 7 (4.40%) Onboarding
6 6 (3.77%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.52%) Mainframe
7 4 (2.52%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.89%) Legacy Applications
8 3 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (1.26%) 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 14 (8.81%) Linux
2 9 (5.66%) Unix
3 7 (4.40%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.26%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (52.20%) Agile
2 79 (49.69%) CI/CD
3 67 (42.14%) DevOps
4 50 (31.45%) Test Automation
5 42 (26.42%) Event-Driven
6 35 (22.01%) Software Engineering
7 33 (20.75%) Containerisation
7 33 (20.75%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 32 (20.13%) Problem-Solving
9 28 (17.61%) Full-Stack Development
9 28 (17.61%) Observability
9 28 (17.61%) TDD
10 27 (16.98%) Technical Leadership
11 25 (15.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 22 (13.84%) Infrastructure as Code
12 22 (13.84%) Mentoring
13 20 (12.58%) API Design
13 20 (12.58%) Integration Patterns
14 19 (11.95%) Architectural Patterns
14 19 (11.95%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 91 (57.23%) Java
2 24 (15.09%) JavaScript
2 24 (15.09%) TypeScript
3 21 (13.21%) SQL
4 13 (8.18%) C#
5 10 (6.29%) Python
6 9 (5.66%) Kotlin
7 7 (4.40%) Go
8 1 (0.63%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 31 (19.50%) Security Cleared
2 21 (13.21%) SC Cleared
3 17 (10.69%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (5.03%) Degree
5 4 (2.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 4 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
5 4 (2.52%) CISSP
5 4 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.89%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.26%) CCSP
7 2 (1.26%) CEH
7 2 (1.26%) CISM
7 2 (1.26%) GIAC
7 2 (1.26%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 2 (1.26%) OSCP
7 2 (1.26%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.63%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (10.06%) Accessibility
2 11 (6.92%) QA
3 5 (3.14%) WCAG
4 4 (2.52%) NIST
5 2 (1.26%) COBIT
5 2 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.26%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.63%) GDPR
6 1 (0.63%) GRC
6 1 (0.63%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.63%) PSD2
6 1 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.63%) SEPA
System Software
1 53 (33.33%) Docker
Systems Management
1 44 (27.67%) Kubernetes
2 23 (14.47%) Terraform
3 15 (9.43%) Grafana
4 12 (7.55%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.89%) Istio
6 2 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (8.18%) Microsoft
2 9 (5.66%) Google
3 5 (3.14%) MuleSoft
3 5 (3.14%) Splunk
4 3 (1.89%) Foundry
4 3 (1.89%) Guidewire
4 3 (1.89%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.26%) Atlassian
5 2 (1.26%) Databricks
5 2 (1.26%) Oracle
5 2 (1.26%) PagerDuty
6 1 (0.63%) Adobe
6 1 (0.63%) SAP