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 7 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 58 65
Rank change year-on-year +20 +7 -33
Contract jobs citing Microservices 150 68 79
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.69% 3.20% 2.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.55% 3.62% 3.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 109 46 50
10th Percentile £352 £396 £417
25th Percentile £400 £431 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £624
90th Percentile £584 £638 £625
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 5
10th Percentile £63.40 £61.70 -
25th Percentile £70.38 £65.17 -
Median hourly rate £75.13 £74.39 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% +62.15% -
75th Percentile £80.75 £82.67 £48.43
90th Percentile £89.30 £85.57 -
England median hourly rate £74.26 £32.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +132.06% -48.80% -14.38%

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 2,291 1,878 2,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 86.85% 88.42% 86.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,487 1,110 1,672
10th Percentile £213 £275 £306
25th Percentile £358 £383 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £568 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £682
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 98 213
10th Percentile £16.21 £16.04 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.85 £21.62 £15.68
Median hourly rate £42.69 £30.95 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.92% +3.17% -20.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £52.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.58 £53.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% - -

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 7 February 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 7 February 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 7 February 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 +24 100 £476 -13.41% 59
Cheshire +5 43 £402 -10.67% 10
Lancashire -16 4 £650 +8.33% 18
Merseyside -13 2 £480 +1.05% 4
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 (4.67%) Confluence
2 3 (2.00%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (1.33%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.67%) Apache
4 1 (0.67%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.67%) JBoss
4 1 (0.67%) OpenStack
Business Applications
1 5 (3.33%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.67%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 98 (65.33%) AWS
2 40 (26.67%) Azure
3 34 (22.67%) Serverless
4 25 (16.67%) AWS Lambda
5 24 (16.00%) GitHub
6 23 (15.33%) GCP
7 17 (11.33%) Amazon SQS
8 14 (9.33%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (8.00%) Amazon EKS
10 10 (6.67%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (6.67%) Apigee
11 9 (6.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (6.00%) Kong
12 8 (5.33%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (4.67%) Amazon EventBridge
13 7 (4.67%) Amazon S3
14 6 (4.00%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (4.00%) Amazon MSK
15 5 (3.33%) Azure AKS
15 5 (3.33%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.67%) HTTP
1 4 (2.67%) HTTPS
2 3 (2.00%) Firewall
3 2 (1.33%) Network Security
4 1 (0.67%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (14.67%) NoSQL
2 17 (11.33%) MongoDB
3 16 (10.67%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (9.33%) DocumentDB
5 13 (8.67%) MySQL
6 12 (8.00%) DynamoDB
7 7 (4.67%) Relational Database
8 6 (4.00%) Redis
9 4 (2.67%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (2.67%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (1.33%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.67%) Big Data
12 1 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (0.67%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 31 (20.67%) Git
2 29 (19.33%) GitLab
3 17 (11.33%) Jenkins
4 11 (7.33%) JIRA
5 9 (6.00%) JUnit
6 8 (5.33%) CircleCI
6 8 (5.33%) Mocha
6 8 (5.33%) Postman
7 7 (4.67%) Cypress.io
8 6 (4.00%) Mockito
8 6 (4.00%) Selenium
8 6 (4.00%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.67%) JMeter
10 3 (2.00%) Jasmine
10 3 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (1.33%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.33%) Gatling
11 2 (1.33%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.33%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.67%) Gradle
General
1 44 (29.33%) Public Sector
2 39 (26.00%) Finance
3 33 (22.00%) Social Skills
4 16 (10.67%) Banking
5 14 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.00%) Billing
8 2 (1.33%) Retail
9 1 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.67%) Military
9 1 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.67%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 68 (45.33%) Developer
2 35 (23.33%) Java Developer
3 28 (18.67%) Senior
4 26 (17.33%) Architect
5 18 (12.00%) Lead
6 16 (10.67%) Full-Stack Developer
6 16 (10.67%) Software Engineer
6 16 (10.67%) Solutions Architect
7 13 (8.67%) Senior Developer
8 10 (6.67%) Backend Developer
9 9 (6.00%) Lead Developer
10 8 (5.33%) Analyst
10 8 (5.33%) Business Analyst
11 7 (4.67%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 7 (4.67%) Node.js Developer
12 6 (4.00%) AWS Engineer
12 6 (4.00%) Cloud Engineer
12 6 (4.00%) Senior Backend Developer
12 6 (4.00%) Senior Software Engineer
12 6 (4.00%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (46.67%) Spring
2 67 (44.67%) Spring Boot
3 38 (25.33%) React
4 34 (22.67%) Kafka
5 33 (22.00%) Node.js
6 31 (20.67%) REST
7 29 (19.33%) RESTful
8 18 (12.00%) AngularJS
9 17 (11.33%) OAuth
10 15 (10.00%) Hibernate
11 13 (8.67%) Jest
12 12 (8.00%) Playwright
13 11 (7.33%) JSON
13 11 (7.33%) JWT
13 11 (7.33%) OAuth2
14 10 (6.67%) XML
15 9 (6.00%) JAX-RS
16 8 (5.33%) .NET
16 8 (5.33%) NestJS
16 8 (5.33%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 32 (21.33%) Cloud Native
2 23 (15.33%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (10.00%) Onboarding
4 11 (7.33%) Mobile App
5 9 (6.00%) Product Ownership
6 5 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.33%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.33%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.33%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.33%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.67%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.67%) NHS
9 1 (0.67%) Online Banking
9 1 (0.67%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.67%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 12 (8.00%) Linux
2 7 (4.67%) Unix
3 3 (2.00%) Mac OS X
3 3 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (47.33%) Agile
2 66 (44.00%) CI/CD
3 59 (39.33%) DevOps
4 41 (27.33%) Containerisation
5 37 (24.67%) Problem-Solving
6 35 (23.33%) Test Automation
7 32 (21.33%) Full-Stack Development
7 32 (21.33%) TDD
8 31 (20.67%) Software Engineering
9 27 (18.00%) Event-Driven
10 24 (16.00%) API Design
11 19 (12.67%) Continuous Improvement
11 19 (12.67%) Mentoring
12 18 (12.00%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 16 (10.67%) Architectural Patterns
13 16 (10.67%) Computer Science
13 16 (10.67%) Observability
14 15 (10.00%) API Development
14 15 (10.00%) Integration Patterns
14 15 (10.00%) Translating Business Requirements
Programming Languages
1 97 (64.67%) Java
2 29 (19.33%) TypeScript
3 24 (16.00%) SQL
4 16 (10.67%) JavaScript
5 13 (8.67%) Python
6 11 (7.33%) Kotlin
7 6 (4.00%) Bash
8 4 (2.67%) C#
8 4 (2.67%) Go
9 3 (2.00%) PowerShell
9 3 (2.00%) Ruby
10 2 (1.33%) Perl
10 2 (1.33%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.67%) PHP
11 1 (0.67%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 23 (15.33%) Security Cleared
2 19 (12.67%) BPSS Clearance
3 16 (10.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 16 (10.67%) Degree
4 10 (6.67%) SC Cleared
5 7 (4.67%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.33%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.33%) CBAP
7 2 (1.33%) CSPO
7 2 (1.33%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (8.67%) Accessibility
2 10 (6.67%) ISO 20022
3 7 (4.67%) PCI DSS
3 7 (4.67%) WCAG
4 3 (2.00%) GDPR
4 3 (2.00%) QA
5 1 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.67%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.67%) HL7
5 1 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.67%) NIST
5 1 (0.67%) PSD2
5 1 (0.67%) SEPA
System Software
1 53 (35.33%) Docker
2 3 (2.00%) ISA Server
3 2 (1.33%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 47 (31.33%) Kubernetes
2 20 (13.33%) Terraform
3 7 (4.67%) Prometheus
4 6 (4.00%) Grafana
5 1 (0.67%) Ansible
5 1 (0.67%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (8.00%) Microsoft
2 10 (6.67%) Splunk
3 9 (6.00%) Google
4 8 (5.33%) Oracle
5 6 (4.00%) MuleSoft
6 5 (3.33%) Ping Identity
6 5 (3.33%) Virgin Media
7 3 (2.00%) Adobe
7 3 (2.00%) Guidewire
7 3 (2.00%) Red Hat
8 2 (1.33%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.33%) Databricks
8 2 (1.33%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.33%) Foundry
8 2 (1.33%) IBM
8 2 (1.33%) IBM Sterling
8 2 (1.33%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.33%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.67%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.67%) AppDynamics