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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 32 53 104
Rank change year-on-year +21 +51 -74
Contract jobs citing Microservices 118 66 38
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 5.40% 2.76% 1.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.08% 3.31% 1.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 84 46 27
10th Percentile £321 £425 £325
25th Percentile £385 £455 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £452 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -13.86% +7.69% -15.22%
75th Percentile £545 £621 £688
90th Percentile £674 £795 -
England median daily rate £525 £575 £615
% change year-on-year -8.70% -6.50% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 2
10th Percentile £73.00 - £38.38
25th Percentile £73.75 - £39.63
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £43.10
75th Percentile £78.13 - £45.19
90th Percentile £78.50 - £45.60
England median hourly rate £67.00 £41.50 £73.75
% change year-on-year +61.45% -43.73% +8.86%

All Process and 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 1,940 1,992 2,454
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.83% 83.31% 87.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,287 1,157 1,649
10th Percentile £299 £294 £275
25th Percentile £375 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.72% -1.40% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £595
90th Percentile £678 £675 £675
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 108 162
10th Percentile £13.54 £16.43 £15.78
25th Percentile £17.36 £27.94 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.83% +21.43% +55.56%
75th Percentile £51.19 £57.63 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.32 £70.90 £66.80
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -41.51% -2.05% +51.38%

Microservices
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Microservices as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Microservices 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 18 September 2025.

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
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 18 September 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 +19 62 £500 -9.09% 69
Cheshire +3 47 £425 -6.08% 9
Merseyside +6 6 £510 +27.50% 3
Lancashire -1 1 - - 51
Microservices
England

Microservices
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 21 (17.80%) Confluence
2 12 (10.17%) JBoss
3 9 (7.63%) Tomcat
4 3 (2.54%) Mule
4 3 (2.54%) WebSphere
5 2 (1.69%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.85%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.85%) CMS
6 1 (0.85%) nginx
6 1 (0.85%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.85%) Sitecore CMS
6 1 (0.85%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.85%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.85%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.85%) Finacle
1 1 (0.85%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 53 (44.92%) AWS
2 23 (19.49%) Azure
3 19 (16.10%) GCP
3 19 (16.10%) Serverless
4 18 (15.25%) GitHub
5 17 (14.41%) AWS Lambda
6 16 (13.56%) OpenShift
7 14 (11.86%) Amazon SQS
8 12 (10.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 11 (9.32%) SaaS
10 10 (8.47%) Apigee
11 9 (7.63%) Amazon ECS
11 9 (7.63%) Amazon EventBridge
12 8 (6.78%) Datadog
13 7 (5.93%) Amazon EC2
13 7 (5.93%) PaaS
14 6 (5.08%) AWS Step Functions
15 5 (4.24%) AWS Fargate
15 5 (4.24%) Azure AKS
15 5 (4.24%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.54%) SAN
2 2 (1.69%) Firewall
2 2 (1.69%) HTTP
2 2 (1.69%) X.509
3 1 (0.85%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (19.49%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (17.80%) MongoDB
3 19 (16.10%) NoSQL
4 18 (15.25%) Relational Database
5 13 (11.02%) DynamoDB
6 12 (10.17%) MySQL
7 9 (7.63%) RDBMS
8 8 (6.78%) Amazon Aurora
9 7 (5.93%) Redis
10 6 (5.08%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (4.24%) BigQuery
12 4 (3.39%) SQL Server
13 3 (2.54%) Apache Cassandra
13 3 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
14 2 (1.69%) DocumentDB
15 1 (0.85%) MariaDB
15 1 (0.85%) Oracle Database
15 1 (0.85%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 45 (38.14%) Jenkins
2 41 (34.75%) JIRA
3 29 (24.58%) Git
3 29 (24.58%) JUnit
4 23 (19.49%) GitLab
5 20 (16.95%) Gradle
6 16 (13.56%) Maven
6 16 (13.56%) SonarQube
7 15 (12.71%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (11.86%) Mockito
9 10 (8.47%) Cucumber
10 8 (6.78%) Liquibase
11 6 (5.08%) Bitbucket
12 5 (4.24%) SonarLint
13 4 (3.39%) Bitbucket Server
13 4 (3.39%) CircleCI
13 4 (3.39%) Postman
13 4 (3.39%) TeamCity
14 3 (2.54%) Artifactory
14 3 (2.54%) Selenium
General
1 31 (26.27%) Public Sector
2 28 (23.73%) Social Skills
3 25 (21.19%) Finance
4 17 (14.41%) Banking
5 16 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (7.63%) Manufacturing
7 8 (6.78%) Electronics
7 8 (6.78%) Marketing
7 8 (6.78%) Telecoms
8 6 (5.08%) Military
9 2 (1.69%) Legal
9 2 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.85%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.85%) Automotive
10 1 (0.85%) Digital Healthcare
10 1 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.85%) Retail
10 1 (0.85%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (38.14%) Developer
2 30 (25.42%) Java Developer
3 21 (17.80%) Architect
4 20 (16.95%) Software Engineer
5 15 (12.71%) Senior
6 11 (9.32%) Lead
7 10 (8.47%) Java Architect
8 9 (7.63%) Engineering Manager
8 9 (7.63%) Technical Architect
9 8 (6.78%) Java Technical Architect
9 8 (6.78%) Senior Developer
9 8 (6.78%) Solutions Architect
10 7 (5.93%) Lead Software Engineer
10 7 (5.93%) Senior Java Developer
11 6 (5.08%) AWS Developer
11 6 (5.08%) Full-Stack Developer
12 5 (4.24%) Project Manager
12 5 (4.24%) React Developer
13 4 (3.39%) Infrastructure Architect
13 4 (3.39%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (44.07%) Spring Boot
2 44 (37.29%) Kafka
3 40 (33.90%) Spring
4 35 (29.66%) React
4 35 (29.66%) RESTful
5 16 (13.56%) REST
6 15 (12.71%) Node.js
7 12 (10.17%) AngularJS
8 11 (9.32%) Swagger
9 10 (8.47%) OpenAPI
10 9 (7.63%) J2EE
11 8 (6.78%) GraphQL
11 8 (6.78%) JSON
11 8 (6.78%) SOAP
11 8 (6.78%) Spring Cloud
12 7 (5.93%) .NET
12 7 (5.93%) Dropwizard
13 6 (5.08%) ActiveMQ
13 6 (5.08%) Hibernate
13 6 (5.08%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (16.95%) Cloud Native
2 9 (7.63%) Product Ownership
3 6 (5.08%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (5.08%) N-Tier
4 4 (3.39%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (3.39%) PKI
4 4 (3.39%) Private Cloud
4 4 (3.39%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.54%) Cyber Threat
5 3 (2.54%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (2.54%) Legacy Applications
5 3 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.54%) Virtual Team
6 1 (0.85%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.85%) Blockchain
6 1 (0.85%) Data Centre
6 1 (0.85%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.85%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 19 (16.10%) Linux
2 13 (11.02%) Unix
3 8 (6.78%) Windows
4 7 (5.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (2.54%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.85%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (55.08%) Agile
2 57 (48.31%) CI/CD
3 46 (38.98%) Containerisation
3 46 (38.98%) DevOps
4 37 (31.36%) TDD
5 33 (27.97%) Software Engineering
6 30 (25.42%) Problem-Solving
7 24 (20.34%) Event-Driven
8 22 (18.64%) Scrum
9 21 (17.80%) Continuous Integration
10 19 (16.10%) Design Patterns
10 19 (16.10%) Mentoring
11 18 (15.25%) Migration
11 18 (15.25%) Stakeholder Management
12 17 (14.41%) API Development
12 17 (14.41%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 16 (13.56%) Artificial Intelligence
13 16 (13.56%) Coaching
13 16 (13.56%) Full-Stack Development
13 16 (13.56%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 86 (72.88%) Java
2 40 (33.90%) SQL
3 22 (18.64%) Python
4 16 (13.56%) TypeScript
5 14 (11.86%) JavaScript
6 7 (5.93%) Shell Script
7 6 (5.08%) Bash
7 6 (5.08%) C#
8 4 (3.39%) Perl
9 3 (2.54%) PL/SQL
10 2 (1.69%) PHP
Qualifications
1 23 (19.49%) Security Cleared
2 11 (9.32%) SC Cleared
3 6 (5.08%) BPSS Clearance
3 6 (5.08%) Degree
4 4 (3.39%) AWS Certification
5 3 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.69%) CBAP
6 2 (1.69%) CSPO
6 2 (1.69%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.69%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.85%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (6.78%) QA
2 5 (4.24%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.69%) GDPR
3 2 (1.69%) ISO 20022
3 2 (1.69%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.85%) COBIT
4 1 (0.85%) SEPA
System Software
1 47 (39.83%) Docker
2 5 (4.24%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 37 (31.36%) Kubernetes
2 23 (19.49%) Terraform
3 6 (5.08%) Progress Chef
4 4 (3.39%) Kibana
4 4 (3.39%) Prometheus
5 3 (2.54%) Ansible
5 3 (2.54%) Grafana
Vendors
1 14 (11.86%) Oracle
2 10 (8.47%) Microsoft
3 8 (6.78%) Red Hat
3 8 (6.78%) SAP
4 7 (5.93%) AppDynamics
4 7 (5.93%) Splunk
5 6 (5.08%) Gigya
6 5 (4.24%) Google
6 5 (4.24%) IBM
7 4 (3.39%) Cloudera
7 4 (3.39%) Dynatrace
7 4 (3.39%) VMware
8 3 (2.54%) Citrix
8 3 (2.54%) F5
8 3 (2.54%) HP
8 3 (2.54%) Veracode
9 2 (1.69%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.69%) ForgeRock
9 2 (1.69%) IBM Sterling
9 2 (1.69%) PagerDuty