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 5 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 39 59
Rank change year-on-year -25 +20 +36
Contract jobs citing Microservices 130 110 64
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.30% 5.03% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.00% 5.68% 3.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 74 84 42
10th Percentile £419 £334 £425
25th Percentile £462 £385 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £443 £550
Median % change year-on-year +16.95% -19.55% +7.32%
75th Percentile £575 £542 £597
90th Percentile £650 £665 £695
England median daily rate £533 £530 £575
% change year-on-year +0.47% -7.83% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £62.50 - £82.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £85.00
75th Percentile £67.50 - £87.50
90th Percentile £71.30 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.00 £41.33
% change year-on-year -2.99% +62.12% -44.90%

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 3,248 1,938 2,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.50% 88.53% 83.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,834 1,285 1,103
10th Percentile £300 £268 £295
25th Percentile £402 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £480
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -6.25% -4.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £680 £668
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 140 111
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.82 £16.50
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £29.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +86.12% -40.84% +33.77%
75th Percentile £71.91 £47.12 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.25 £73.56
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -3.37%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 -5 106 £525 +5.00% 134
Cheshire -28 16 £500 +17.65% 21
Merseyside -11 4 £575 +12.75% 11
Cumbria - 2 £376 - 10
Lancashire - 1 £538 - 27
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 8 (6.15%) Confluence
2 5 (3.85%) Camunda
3 1 (0.77%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.77%) JBoss
3 1 (0.77%) Mule
3 1 (0.77%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.77%) nginx
3 1 (0.77%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.77%) SAP MM
1 1 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 76 (58.46%) AWS
2 30 (23.08%) Azure
3 22 (16.92%) GCP
4 17 (13.08%) GitHub
5 16 (12.31%) Serverless
6 13 (10.00%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (6.92%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (6.15%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (5.38%) Amazon EKS
9 7 (5.38%) Amazon SQS
9 7 (5.38%) OpenShift
10 6 (4.62%) Anthropic Claude
10 6 (4.62%) GitHub Copilot
10 6 (4.62%) Google Gemini
11 5 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 4 (3.08%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (3.08%) Azure AKS
13 3 (2.31%) SaaS
13 3 (2.31%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.31%) HTTP
2 1 (0.77%) Firewall
2 1 (0.77%) Network Security
2 1 (0.77%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (10.77%) MongoDB
2 13 (10.00%) SQL Server
3 11 (8.46%) NoSQL
4 7 (5.38%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (5.38%) Relational Database
5 6 (4.62%) DynamoDB
6 4 (3.08%) MySQL
7 1 (0.77%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.77%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.77%) SAP BW
7 1 (0.77%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 20 (15.38%) Git
2 17 (13.08%) Jenkins
3 16 (12.31%) JUnit
3 16 (12.31%) Selenium
4 14 (10.77%) Mockito
5 13 (10.00%) Cucumber
5 13 (10.00%) GitLab
5 13 (10.00%) REST Assured
6 9 (6.92%) SonarQube
7 8 (6.15%) JIRA
8 7 (5.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (4.62%) Claude Code
9 6 (4.62%) Maven
10 5 (3.85%) Gradle
11 4 (3.08%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (3.08%) Gatling
11 4 (3.08%) Postman
12 3 (2.31%) Serenity BDD
13 2 (1.54%) Cypress.io
13 2 (1.54%) TestNG
General
1 31 (23.85%) Finance
2 29 (22.31%) Social Skills
3 28 (21.54%) Public Sector
4 14 (10.77%) Banking
5 12 (9.23%) Retail
6 9 (6.92%) Military
7 4 (3.08%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (2.31%) Retail Banking
9 2 (1.54%) iGaming
10 1 (0.77%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.77%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.77%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.77%) Marketing
10 1 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 42 (32.31%) Developer
2 28 (21.54%) Senior
3 25 (19.23%) Architect
3 25 (19.23%) Software Engineer
4 23 (17.69%) Java Developer
5 18 (13.85%) Lead
6 15 (11.54%) Java Engineer
7 11 (8.46%) AWS Engineer
7 11 (8.46%) Full-Stack Developer
7 11 (8.46%) Java Software Engineer
7 11 (8.46%) Solutions Architect
8 9 (6.92%) AWS Software Engineer
8 9 (6.92%) Lead Developer
8 9 (6.92%) Senior Developer
9 8 (6.15%) Senior Software Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Test Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 6 (4.62%) Engineering Specialist
11 6 (4.62%) Principal Engineer
11 6 (4.62%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (34.62%) Spring Boot
2 41 (31.54%) Spring
3 34 (26.15%) REST
4 32 (24.62%) Kafka
5 27 (20.77%) Node.js
6 25 (19.23%) React
7 16 (12.31%) RESTful
7 16 (12.31%) Terraform
8 10 (7.69%) .NET
8 10 (7.69%) AngularJS
9 9 (6.92%) Next.js
10 7 (5.38%) HTML
10 7 (5.38%) Playwright
11 6 (4.62%) CSS
11 6 (4.62%) Nunjucks
12 5 (3.85%) ActiveMQ
12 5 (3.85%) JAX-RS
12 5 (3.85%) JPA
13 4 (3.08%) Hibernate
13 4 (3.08%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 50 (38.46%) Cloud Native
2 26 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (6.92%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.15%) Public Cloud
5 6 (4.62%) Onboarding
6 5 (3.85%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (3.85%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (3.08%) Data Structures
7 4 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (3.08%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (2.31%) AI Agents
8 3 (2.31%) Culture of Ownership
8 3 (2.31%) Distributed Architecture
8 3 (2.31%) Mainframe
8 3 (2.31%) Private Cloud
9 2 (1.54%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (1.54%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.77%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 1 (0.77%) Low-Code
10 1 (0.77%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 12 (9.23%) Linux
2 5 (3.85%) Unix
3 3 (2.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.54%) Windows
5 1 (0.77%) Android
5 1 (0.77%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (60.77%) CI/CD
2 68 (52.31%) Agile
3 62 (47.69%) Software Engineering
4 56 (43.08%) DevOps
5 54 (41.54%) Test Automation
6 38 (29.23%) Event-Driven
7 36 (27.69%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 31 (23.85%) Observability
9 30 (23.08%) Continuous Improvement
10 24 (18.46%) Containerisation
10 24 (18.46%) Technical Leadership
11 23 (17.69%) TDD
12 22 (16.92%) Full-Stack Development
13 21 (16.15%) Infrastructure as Code
13 21 (16.15%) Mentoring
14 17 (13.08%) Code Quality
14 17 (13.08%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (12.31%) SDLC
16 15 (11.54%) Architectural Patterns
16 15 (11.54%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 84 (64.62%) Java
2 20 (15.38%) JavaScript
3 19 (14.62%) SQL
4 16 (12.31%) TypeScript
5 12 (9.23%) Python
6 7 (5.38%) C#
7 6 (4.62%) Go
8 2 (1.54%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.77%) Perl
9 1 (0.77%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (26.15%) Security Cleared
2 25 (19.23%) SC Cleared
3 7 (5.38%) Degree
4 6 (4.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.54%) CEH
6 2 (1.54%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (0.77%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.77%) CCSP
7 1 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.77%) CISM
7 1 (0.77%) CISSP
7 1 (0.77%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.77%) OSCP
7 1 (0.77%) SANS
7 1 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (9.23%) QA
2 11 (8.46%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.54%) NIST
4 1 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.77%) COBIT
4 1 (0.77%) GDPR
4 1 (0.77%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.77%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.77%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (30.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 42 (32.31%) Kubernetes
2 7 (5.38%) Grafana
2 7 (5.38%) Prometheus
3 4 (3.08%) Istio
4 1 (0.77%) Network Intrusion Detection System
4 1 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 10 (7.69%) Google
2 5 (3.85%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.08%) IBM
3 4 (3.08%) Veracode
4 3 (2.31%) Oracle
4 3 (2.31%) Splunk
5 2 (1.54%) SAP
6 1 (0.77%) Adobe
6 1 (0.77%) BiZZdesign
6 1 (0.77%) CheckPoint
6 1 (0.77%) Cisco
6 1 (0.77%) F5
6 1 (0.77%) Foundry
6 1 (0.77%) Intel
6 1 (0.77%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.77%) Sage