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 17 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 64 64
Rank change year-on-year +27 0 -32
Contract jobs citing Microservices 140 55 80
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.51% 2.66% 2.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.27% 3.03% 3.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 103 35 54
10th Percentile £350 £405 £406
25th Percentile £400 £447 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -18.73% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £531 £588 £624
90th Percentile £598 £626 £625
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -7.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 5
10th Percentile - £61.70 £40.88
25th Percentile - £65.17 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £74.39 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% +62.15% -
75th Percentile - £82.67 £48.43
90th Percentile - £85.57 -
England median hourly rate £74.26 £36.50 £48.43
% change year-on-year +103.45% -24.63% -33.66%

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 2,233 1,817 2,397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 87.84% 87.82% 87.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,460 1,033 1,617
10th Percentile £213 £275 £307
25th Percentile £358 £390 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £662 £684
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 94 169
10th Percentile £16.44 £16.02 £13.43
25th Percentile £21.70 £21.10 £18.00
Median hourly rate £41.86 £30.95 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.23% -22.63% +11.11%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.80 £46.91
90th Percentile £69.67 £74.39 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.29
% change year-on-year -28.14% -13.14% +15.12%

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 17 January 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
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 17 January 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 +27 86 £450 -18.18% 57
Cheshire +11 45 £402 -22.69% 14
Merseyside -13 6 £480 +1.05% 6
Lancashire -12 2 - - 22
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 7 (5.00%) Confluence
2 3 (2.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (2.14%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.43%) JBoss
3 2 (1.43%) Mule
3 2 (1.43%) Mule ESB
4 1 (0.71%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.71%) Apache
4 1 (0.71%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.71%) nginx
4 1 (0.71%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.71%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 5 (3.57%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.71%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 93 (66.43%) AWS
2 36 (25.71%) Azure
2 36 (25.71%) Serverless
3 28 (20.00%) AWS Lambda
3 28 (20.00%) GCP
4 22 (15.71%) Amazon SQS
4 22 (15.71%) GitHub
5 17 (12.14%) Amazon ECS
6 16 (11.43%) Apigee
7 12 (8.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 12 (8.57%) Amazon EventBridge
8 11 (7.86%) Amazon EKS
9 10 (7.14%) Datadog
9 10 (7.14%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (6.43%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (6.43%) AWS Step Functions
10 9 (6.43%) Kong
11 8 (5.71%) AWS CloudFormation
12 7 (5.00%) PaaS
13 6 (4.29%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.86%) HTTP
1 4 (2.86%) HTTPS
2 3 (2.14%) Firewall
3 1 (0.71%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.71%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (18.57%) NoSQL
2 23 (16.43%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (13.57%) DynamoDB
4 16 (11.43%) MySQL
5 14 (10.00%) MongoDB
6 11 (7.86%) DocumentDB
6 11 (7.86%) Redis
6 11 (7.86%) Relational Database
7 10 (7.14%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (5.71%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (3.57%) BigQuery
9 5 (3.57%) RDBMS
10 4 (2.86%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (1.43%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.71%) Big Data
12 1 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (0.71%) DataStage
12 1 (0.71%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 32 (22.86%) Git
2 20 (14.29%) Jenkins
3 19 (13.57%) GitLab
4 12 (8.57%) JIRA
4 12 (8.57%) SonarQube
5 10 (7.14%) JUnit
6 8 (5.71%) Postman
7 6 (4.29%) CircleCI
7 6 (4.29%) Gradle
7 6 (4.29%) Maven
8 5 (3.57%) Cypress.io
8 5 (3.57%) Mockito
8 5 (3.57%) SonarLint
9 4 (2.86%) Mocha
10 3 (2.14%) Jasmine
10 3 (2.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (1.43%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.43%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.71%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.71%) Selenium
General
1 41 (29.29%) Public Sector
2 38 (27.14%) Finance
3 36 (25.71%) Social Skills
4 18 (12.86%) Banking
5 15 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.86%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.14%) Billing
8 2 (1.43%) Military
8 2 (1.43%) Retail
9 1 (0.71%) Digital Healthcare
9 1 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.71%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 61 (43.57%) Developer
2 32 (22.86%) Java Developer
3 30 (21.43%) Architect
4 26 (18.57%) Senior
5 16 (11.43%) Software Engineer
6 15 (10.71%) Solutions Architect
7 14 (10.00%) Senior Developer
8 12 (8.57%) Full-Stack Developer
8 12 (8.57%) Lead
9 10 (7.14%) Technical Architect
10 9 (6.43%) Backend Developer
10 9 (6.43%) Java Architect
11 8 (5.71%) Analyst
11 8 (5.71%) Business Analyst
11 8 (5.71%) Java Technical Architect
11 8 (5.71%) Senior Java Developer
12 6 (4.29%) Cloud Engineer
12 6 (4.29%) Technical Analyst
12 6 (4.29%) Technical Business Analyst
13 5 (3.57%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (46.43%) Spring Boot
2 62 (44.29%) Spring
3 36 (25.71%) RESTful
4 32 (22.86%) React
5 31 (22.14%) Kafka
6 25 (17.86%) REST
7 23 (16.43%) Node.js
8 20 (14.29%) AngularJS
9 19 (13.57%) OAuth
10 17 (12.14%) JSON
10 17 (12.14%) JWT
11 15 (10.71%) Hibernate
12 13 (9.29%) OAuth2
12 13 (9.29%) XML
13 10 (7.14%) .NET
14 9 (6.43%) JAX-RS
14 9 (6.43%) Jest
14 9 (6.43%) Playwright
15 8 (5.71%) NestJS
15 8 (5.71%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 29 (20.71%) Cloud Native
2 24 (17.14%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (10.00%) Onboarding
4 13 (9.29%) Product Ownership
5 9 (6.43%) Mobile App
6 7 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (4.29%) N-Tier
8 2 (1.43%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.43%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.43%) Mobile Banking
9 1 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.71%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.71%) NHS
9 1 (0.71%) Online Banking
9 1 (0.71%) PKI
9 1 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.71%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 1 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 10 (7.14%) Linux
2 6 (4.29%) Unix
3 3 (2.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.43%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (46.43%) Agile
1 65 (46.43%) CI/CD
2 51 (36.43%) DevOps
3 44 (31.43%) Containerisation
4 42 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
5 35 (25.00%) TDD
6 29 (20.71%) API Design
7 28 (20.00%) Software Engineering
8 27 (19.29%) Full-Stack Development
9 25 (17.86%) Test Automation
10 23 (16.43%) Event-Driven
11 22 (15.71%) Mentoring
12 21 (15.00%) Design Patterns
13 19 (13.57%) BDD
13 19 (13.57%) Stakeholder Management
14 18 (12.86%) API Development
14 18 (12.86%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 17 (12.14%) Computer Science
15 17 (12.14%) SDLC
16 16 (11.43%) MVC
Programming Languages
1 95 (67.86%) Java
2 26 (18.57%) SQL
3 20 (14.29%) Python
4 16 (11.43%) TypeScript
5 12 (8.57%) JavaScript
6 9 (6.43%) Kotlin
7 6 (4.29%) Bash
7 6 (4.29%) C#
8 3 (2.14%) PL/SQL
8 3 (2.14%) PowerShell
8 3 (2.14%) Ruby
9 2 (1.43%) Perl
9 2 (1.43%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.71%) Go
10 1 (0.71%) PHP
Qualifications
1 22 (15.71%) Security Cleared
2 19 (13.57%) Degree
3 17 (12.14%) Computer Science Degree
4 16 (11.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (5.71%) AWS Certification
6 6 (4.29%) SC Cleared
7 3 (2.14%) TOGAF Certification
8 2 (1.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.43%) CBAP
8 2 (1.43%) CSPO
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (7.14%) ISO 20022
2 9 (6.43%) Accessibility
3 7 (5.00%) PCI DSS
4 5 (3.57%) WCAG
5 3 (2.14%) GDPR
5 3 (2.14%) QA
6 1 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.71%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.71%) HL7
6 1 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.71%) NIST
6 1 (0.71%) PSD2
6 1 (0.71%) SEPA
System Software
1 57 (40.71%) Docker
2 3 (2.14%) ISA Server
3 2 (1.43%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 50 (35.71%) Kubernetes
2 26 (18.57%) Terraform
3 3 (2.14%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.71%) Ansible
4 1 (0.71%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 10 (7.14%) Oracle
1 10 (7.14%) Splunk
2 9 (6.43%) Google
3 7 (5.00%) MuleSoft
4 6 (4.29%) Gigya
4 6 (4.29%) Microsoft
5 5 (3.57%) Ping Identity
5 5 (3.57%) Virgin Media
6 4 (2.86%) Dynatrace
7 3 (2.14%) Adobe
7 3 (2.14%) AppDynamics
7 3 (2.14%) Guidewire
7 3 (2.14%) Red Hat
8 2 (1.43%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.43%) IBM
8 2 (1.43%) IBM Sterling
9 1 (0.71%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.71%) Informatica
9 1 (0.71%) Pega
9 1 (0.71%) Salesforce