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 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 46 62 96
Rank change year-on-year +16 +34 -67
Contract jobs citing Microservices 110 57 47
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.52% 2.40% 1.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 2.86% 1.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 84 35 32
10th Percentile £334 £428 £329
25th Percentile £385 £455 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £494
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +11.39% -10.23%
75th Percentile £575 £597 £623
90th Percentile £650 £638 £688
England median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 2
10th Percentile - £61.70 £38.38
25th Percentile - £65.17 £39.63
Median hourly rate £74.26 £74.39 £43.10
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% +72.59% -
75th Percentile - £82.67 £45.19
90th Percentile - £85.57 £45.60
England median hourly rate £67.00 £46.83 £75.77
% change year-on-year +43.08% -38.19% +4.50%

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 2,141 1,996 2,425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.00% 83.94% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,405 1,082 1,669
10th Percentile £213 £294 £270
25th Percentile £360 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £593
90th Percentile £678 £656 £675
England median daily rate £507 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.43% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 115 163
10th Percentile £15.18 £16.35 £15.80
25th Percentile £19.07 £24.19 £17.88
Median hourly rate £29.60 £35.36 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.29% +1.03% +59.09%
75th Percentile £45.88 £52.20 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.32 £70.90 £63.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £36.17 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.46% -18.73% +27.14%

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 14 November 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 14 November 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 +20 62 £525 -4.55% 104
Cheshire +1 41 £404 -15.05% 11
Merseyside +2 6 £510 +27.50% 8
Lancashire -11 1 - - 46
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 11 (10.00%) JBoss
2 9 (8.18%) Confluence
3 8 (7.27%) Tomcat
4 3 (2.73%) WebSphere
5 2 (1.82%) Mule
5 2 (1.82%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.91%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.91%) nginx
6 1 (0.91%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.91%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.91%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (4.55%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.91%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 69 (62.73%) AWS
2 31 (28.18%) Azure
3 27 (24.55%) Serverless
4 24 (21.82%) AWS Lambda
4 24 (21.82%) GCP
5 21 (19.09%) GitHub
6 19 (17.27%) Amazon SQS
7 17 (15.45%) Amazon ECS
8 14 (12.73%) OpenShift
9 12 (10.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 12 (10.91%) Amazon EventBridge
10 10 (9.09%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (9.09%) Datadog
10 10 (9.09%) SaaS
11 9 (8.18%) Amazon EKS
11 9 (8.18%) Apigee
12 8 (7.27%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (6.36%) GitHub Actions
13 7 (6.36%) PaaS
14 6 (5.45%) Amazon MSK
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.73%) Firewall
1 3 (2.73%) SAN
2 2 (1.82%) HTTP
2 2 (1.82%) HTTPS
2 2 (1.82%) X.509
3 1 (0.91%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (14.55%) MongoDB
1 16 (14.55%) NoSQL
2 14 (12.73%) DynamoDB
2 14 (12.73%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (10.91%) MySQL
4 11 (10.00%) Relational Database
5 10 (9.09%) Amazon Aurora
6 9 (8.18%) Amazon RDS
6 9 (8.18%) RDBMS
6 9 (8.18%) Redis
7 6 (5.45%) DocumentDB
8 5 (4.55%) BigQuery
9 4 (3.64%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (3.64%) SQL Server
10 3 (2.73%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.91%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.91%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.91%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 33 (30.00%) Git
2 32 (29.09%) Jenkins
3 26 (23.64%) JIRA
4 20 (18.18%) JUnit
5 16 (14.55%) SonarQube
6 15 (13.64%) GitLab
6 15 (13.64%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (12.73%) Maven
8 11 (10.00%) Gradle
9 10 (9.09%) Cucumber
10 7 (6.36%) Mockito
11 6 (5.45%) Bitbucket
11 6 (5.45%) Postman
12 5 (4.55%) SonarLint
13 4 (3.64%) Selenium
13 4 (3.64%) TeamCity
14 3 (2.73%) Bitbucket Server
14 3 (2.73%) CA Release Automation
15 2 (1.82%) Artifactory
15 2 (1.82%) SpecFlow
General
1 33 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 23 (20.91%) Finance
2 23 (20.91%) Public Sector
3 20 (18.18%) Banking
4 14 (12.73%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (3.64%) Military
6 2 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (1.82%) Retail
7 1 (0.91%) Automotive
7 1 (0.91%) Digital Healthcare
7 1 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.91%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.91%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 42 (38.18%) Developer
2 29 (26.36%) Java Developer
3 23 (20.91%) Architect
4 19 (17.27%) Software Engineer
5 18 (16.36%) Senior
6 14 (12.73%) Lead
7 10 (9.09%) Solutions Architect
8 9 (8.18%) Java Architect
8 9 (8.18%) Technical Architect
9 8 (7.27%) Java Technical Architect
9 8 (7.27%) Senior Developer
10 7 (6.36%) Lead Software Engineer
10 7 (6.36%) Senior Java Developer
11 6 (5.45%) AWS Developer
11 6 (5.45%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (5.45%) Cloud Engineer
12 4 (3.64%) AWS DevOps
12 4 (3.64%) Cloud Security Engineer
12 4 (3.64%) Payments Architect
12 4 (3.64%) Payments Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (49.09%) Spring Boot
2 42 (38.18%) Spring
3 34 (30.91%) Kafka
4 32 (29.09%) RESTful
5 26 (23.64%) React
6 22 (20.00%) REST
7 18 (16.36%) Node.js
8 11 (10.00%) AngularJS
8 11 (10.00%) JSON
9 10 (9.09%) JWT
10 9 (8.18%) .NET
11 8 (7.27%) Hibernate
11 8 (7.27%) J2EE
11 8 (7.27%) SOAP
12 6 (5.45%) Dropwizard
12 6 (5.45%) JAX-RS
12 6 (5.45%) Micronaut
12 6 (5.45%) NestJS
12 6 (5.45%) OAuth
12 6 (5.45%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (17.27%) Cloud Native
2 17 (15.45%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (9.09%) Product Ownership
4 6 (5.45%) N-Tier
4 6 (5.45%) Onboarding
5 5 (4.55%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (2.73%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (2.73%) Legacy Applications
6 3 (2.73%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.82%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.82%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.82%) PKI
8 1 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.91%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.91%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.91%) Mobile Banking
8 1 (0.91%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 1 (0.91%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 21 (19.09%) Linux
2 13 (11.82%) Unix
3 8 (7.27%) Windows
4 7 (6.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (2.73%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.91%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (49.09%) Agile
2 51 (46.36%) CI/CD
3 36 (32.73%) Containerisation
3 36 (32.73%) DevOps
4 32 (29.09%) TDD
5 29 (26.36%) Problem-Solving
6 28 (25.45%) Software Engineering
7 22 (20.00%) Mentoring
8 19 (17.27%) Design Patterns
9 18 (16.36%) API Development
10 17 (15.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 16 (14.55%) Event-Driven
12 15 (13.64%) Technical Leadership
13 14 (12.73%) BDD
13 14 (12.73%) SDLC
14 13 (11.82%) AI
14 13 (11.82%) API Design
14 13 (11.82%) Architectural Patterns
14 13 (11.82%) Full-Stack Development
14 13 (11.82%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 73 (66.36%) Java
2 28 (25.45%) SQL
3 25 (22.73%) Python
4 9 (8.18%) JavaScript
4 9 (8.18%) TypeScript
5 6 (5.45%) Bash
5 6 (5.45%) C#
5 6 (5.45%) Perl
5 6 (5.45%) Shell Script
6 3 (2.73%) PL/SQL
6 3 (2.73%) PowerShell
7 2 (1.82%) PHP
7 2 (1.82%) Ruby
8 1 (0.91%) Go
Qualifications
1 13 (11.82%) Security Cleared
2 9 (8.18%) BPSS Clearance
3 8 (7.27%) Degree
4 6 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (4.55%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.73%) SC Cleared
7 2 (1.82%) CBAP
7 2 (1.82%) CSPO
7 2 (1.82%) TOGAF Certification
8 1 (0.91%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (7.27%) ISO 20022
1 8 (7.27%) QA
2 7 (6.36%) PCI DSS
3 4 (3.64%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.82%) GDPR
5 1 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.91%) NIST
5 1 (0.91%) SEPA
System Software
1 45 (40.91%) Docker
2 5 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.82%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 40 (36.36%) Kubernetes
2 23 (20.91%) Terraform
3 4 (3.64%) Kibana
3 4 (3.64%) Progress Chef
4 3 (2.73%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.91%) Ansible
Vendors
1 15 (13.64%) Oracle
2 9 (8.18%) Splunk
3 8 (7.27%) Google
3 8 (7.27%) Microsoft
4 7 (6.36%) AppDynamics
4 7 (6.36%) Red Hat
5 6 (5.45%) Gigya
5 6 (5.45%) Ping Identity
6 5 (4.55%) IBM
7 4 (3.64%) Cloudera
7 4 (3.64%) Dynatrace
8 3 (2.73%) Citrix
8 3 (2.73%) F5
8 3 (2.73%) HP
8 3 (2.73%) Veracode
8 3 (2.73%) Virgin Media
8 3 (2.73%) VMware
9 2 (1.82%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.82%) IBM Sterling
9 2 (1.82%) MuleSoft