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 12 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 34 55
Rank change year-on-year -13 +21 +45
Contract jobs citing Microservices 156 116 82
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.21% 5.35% 3.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 6.08% 3.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 87 59
10th Percentile £400 £337 £418
25th Percentile £447 £391 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £469 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.94% -10.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £548 £653
90th Percentile £682 £623 £850
England median daily rate £528 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +0.48% -4.55% -13.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 3
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 -
90th Percentile - £78.38 -
England median hourly rate £77.50 £64.75 £45.88
% change year-on-year +19.69% +41.13% -36.72%

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 3,108 1,907 2,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.89% 87.92% 84.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,840 1,254 1,411
10th Percentile £297 £278 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +6.22% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £564 £582
90th Percentile £675 £665 £675
England median daily rate £525 £514 £525
% change year-on-year +2.14% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 286 119 259
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.36 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £19.07 £15.50
Median hourly rate £50.50 £29.80 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.46% +10.37% -7.85%
75th Percentile £76.00 £60.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £79.20 £66.79
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.09%

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 12 July 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 12 July 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 12 July 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 +3 129 £525 -0.94% 67
Cheshire -31 20 £447 +13.74% 7
Lancashire -13 3 £650 +10.64% 18
Merseyside -16 1 £575 +39.39% 3
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 (3.85%) Confluence
2 1 (0.64%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 1 (0.64%) Apache
2 1 (0.64%) Camunda
2 1 (0.64%) JBoss
2 1 (0.64%) Mule
2 1 (0.64%) Mule ESB
2 1 (0.64%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 85 (54.49%) AWS
2 53 (33.97%) Azure
3 25 (16.03%) GCP
3 25 (16.03%) Serverless
4 21 (13.46%) GitHub
5 13 (8.33%) AWS Lambda
6 12 (7.69%) GitHub Actions
7 10 (6.41%) Amazon SQS
8 9 (5.77%) Amazon EKS
9 7 (4.49%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (4.49%) Amazon EventBridge
10 5 (3.21%) Azure Service Bus
11 4 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.56%) Azure AKS
11 4 (2.56%) GitHub Copilot
11 4 (2.56%) IaaS
11 4 (2.56%) PaaS
12 3 (1.92%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.92%) Amazon S3
12 3 (1.92%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.28%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (16.03%) MongoDB
2 14 (8.97%) NoSQL
2 14 (8.97%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (7.69%) DynamoDB
4 9 (5.77%) SQL Server
5 8 (5.13%) Relational Database
6 7 (4.49%) MySQL
7 5 (3.21%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.92%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 25 (16.03%) Git
2 18 (11.54%) GitLab
2 18 (11.54%) Selenium
3 16 (10.26%) Jenkins
4 11 (7.05%) JIRA
5 10 (6.41%) Mockito
6 9 (5.77%) JUnit
7 8 (5.13%) REST Assured
8 7 (4.49%) Cucumber
8 7 (4.49%) Postman
9 6 (3.85%) Gatling
10 5 (3.21%) Cypress.io
10 5 (3.21%) JMeter
10 5 (3.21%) Serenity BDD
10 5 (3.21%) SonarQube
11 4 (2.56%) Mocha
12 3 (1.92%) Claude Code
12 3 (1.92%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (1.28%) CircleCI
14 1 (0.64%) Robot Framework
General
1 44 (28.21%) Public Sector
2 31 (19.87%) Social Skills
3 26 (16.67%) Finance
4 12 (7.69%) Banking
5 11 (7.05%) Retail
6 7 (4.49%) Military
7 4 (2.56%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (1.92%) Billing
8 3 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.92%) Retail Banking
9 2 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.64%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 60 (38.46%) Developer
2 38 (24.36%) Architect
3 34 (21.79%) Java Developer
4 31 (19.87%) Lead
5 28 (17.95%) Senior
6 20 (12.82%) Software Engineer
7 18 (11.54%) Solutions Architect
8 17 (10.90%) Lead Developer
9 12 (7.69%) Senior Developer
9 12 (7.69%) Software Developer
10 11 (7.05%) Full-Stack Developer
11 10 (6.41%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 10 (6.41%) Senior Software Engineer
12 9 (5.77%) Test Engineer
13 8 (5.13%) Lead Java Developer
13 8 (5.13%) Principal Engineer
14 7 (4.49%) Backend Developer
15 6 (3.85%) AWS Engineer
15 6 (3.85%) Lead Test Engineer
15 6 (3.85%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (27.56%) Spring
2 40 (25.64%) React
3 38 (24.36%) Spring Boot
4 34 (21.79%) Node.js
5 31 (19.87%) Kafka
6 26 (16.67%) REST
7 22 (14.10%) AngularJS
8 19 (12.18%) RESTful
9 18 (11.54%) .NET
10 10 (6.41%) Playwright
11 9 (5.77%) ActiveMQ
11 9 (5.77%) JAX-RS
11 9 (5.77%) Nunjucks
12 8 (5.13%) OAuth
13 7 (4.49%) HTML
13 7 (4.49%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (4.49%) Vue
14 6 (3.85%) CSS
14 6 (3.85%) Jest
14 6 (3.85%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 44 (28.21%) Cloud Native
2 18 (11.54%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (10.26%) Product Ownership
4 10 (6.41%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (4.49%) Onboarding
6 6 (3.85%) Public Cloud
7 5 (3.21%) Mobile App
8 4 (2.56%) Mainframe
8 4 (2.56%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.92%) Culture of Ownership
9 3 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.92%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (1.92%) Virtual Team
10 2 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (1.28%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
11 1 (0.64%) AI Agents
11 1 (0.64%) Low-Code
11 1 (0.64%) Marketing Technology
11 1 (0.64%) Online Banking
Operating Systems
1 16 (10.26%) Linux
2 11 (7.05%) Unix
3 8 (5.13%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.28%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (53.85%) Agile
2 78 (50.00%) CI/CD
3 66 (42.31%) DevOps
4 54 (34.62%) Test Automation
5 47 (30.13%) Event-Driven
6 38 (24.36%) Software Engineering
7 37 (23.72%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 34 (21.79%) Containerisation
9 32 (20.51%) TDD
10 31 (19.87%) Observability
11 30 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
11 30 (19.23%) Technical Leadership
12 28 (17.95%) Full-Stack Development
13 26 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
13 26 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
14 25 (16.03%) Mentoring
15 23 (14.74%) BDD
16 21 (13.46%) Architectural Patterns
17 19 (12.18%) API Development
18 18 (11.54%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 85 (54.49%) Java
2 24 (15.38%) TypeScript
3 23 (14.74%) JavaScript
4 14 (8.97%) SQL
5 13 (8.33%) C#
6 11 (7.05%) Python
7 7 (4.49%) Go
8 5 (3.21%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.64%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.64%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 35 (22.44%) Security Cleared
2 23 (14.74%) SC Cleared
3 16 (10.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (3.21%) Degree
5 4 (2.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 4 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
5 4 (2.56%) CISSP
6 3 (1.92%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.92%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.28%) CCSP
7 2 (1.28%) CEH
7 2 (1.28%) CISM
7 2 (1.28%) GIAC
7 2 (1.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 2 (1.28%) OSCP
7 2 (1.28%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.64%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.97%) Accessibility
2 13 (8.33%) QA
3 4 (2.56%) NIST
4 3 (1.92%) WCAG
5 2 (1.28%) COBIT
5 2 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.28%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.64%) GDPR
6 1 (0.64%) GRC
6 1 (0.64%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.64%) PSD2
6 1 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.64%) SEPA
System Software
1 53 (33.97%) Docker
Systems Management
1 44 (28.21%) Kubernetes
2 27 (17.31%) Terraform
3 15 (9.62%) Grafana
4 12 (7.69%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.92%) Istio
6 2 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (8.33%) Microsoft
2 10 (6.41%) Google
3 5 (3.21%) Splunk
4 3 (1.92%) Foundry
4 3 (1.92%) Guidewire
4 3 (1.92%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.28%) Atlassian
5 2 (1.28%) Databricks
5 2 (1.28%) MuleSoft
5 2 (1.28%) Oracle
5 2 (1.28%) PagerDuty
6 1 (0.64%) Adobe
6 1 (0.64%) SAP