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 16 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 30 63
Rank change year-on-year -27 +33 +33
Contract jobs citing Microservices 136 121 66
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.55% 5.49% 2.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.30% 6.19% 3.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 87 50
10th Percentile £403 £337 £425
25th Percentile £449 £393 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £478 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.22% -8.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £640 £548 £655
90th Percentile £687 £651 £850
England median daily rate £528 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +0.48% -4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 0
10th Percentile - £69.00 -
25th Percentile £62.50 £71.25 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% - -
75th Percentile £72.25 £77.81 -
90th Percentile £84.20 £78.38 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -2.99% +61.45% -42.76%

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 3,166 1,956 2,027
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.71% 88.67% 84.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,849 1,264 1,215
10th Percentile £280 £282 £312
25th Percentile £400 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £599 £575 £588
90th Percentile £677 £668 £678
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 127 172
10th Percentile £16.11 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £24.72 £18.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.00 £27.38 £34.61
Median % change year-on-year +64.38% -20.89% +12.91%
75th Percentile £71.91 £56.88 £51.91
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.25 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.75
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.17% +3.59%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 16 August 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 +1 111 £525 -0.94% 42
Cheshire -33 19 £500 +24.38% 4
Merseyside -20 4 £575 +21.69% 2
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 5 (3.68%) Confluence
2 2 (1.47%) Camunda
3 1 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.74%) JBoss
3 1 (0.74%) Mule
3 1 (0.74%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.74%) nginx
3 1 (0.74%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 83 (61.03%) AWS
2 40 (29.41%) Azure
3 24 (17.65%) Serverless
4 22 (16.18%) GCP
5 16 (11.76%) GitHub
6 12 (8.82%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (8.09%) Amazon ECS
7 11 (8.09%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (7.35%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (6.62%) Amazon SQS
10 7 (5.15%) GitHub Copilot
11 6 (4.41%) Anthropic Claude
11 6 (4.41%) Google Gemini
12 5 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (3.68%) Azure Service Bus
13 4 (2.94%) Amazon EventBridge
13 4 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (2.94%) Azure Functions
14 3 (2.21%) Azure AKS
14 3 (2.21%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.74%) Firewall
1 1 (0.74%) Network Security
1 1 (0.74%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (13.24%) MongoDB
2 15 (11.03%) NoSQL
2 15 (11.03%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (9.56%) DynamoDB
4 11 (8.09%) SQL Server
5 7 (5.15%) MySQL
5 7 (5.15%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.21%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 24 (17.65%) Git
2 13 (9.56%) Mockito
3 12 (8.82%) Selenium
4 10 (7.35%) GitLab
4 10 (7.35%) Jenkins
4 10 (7.35%) JIRA
4 10 (7.35%) JUnit
5 8 (5.88%) Cucumber
6 6 (4.41%) Claude Code
6 6 (4.41%) REST Assured
6 6 (4.41%) SonarQube
7 4 (2.94%) Gatling
7 4 (2.94%) Postman
8 3 (2.21%) Serenity BDD
8 3 (2.21%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (1.47%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.74%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.74%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.74%) JMeter
10 1 (0.74%) Maven
General
1 30 (22.06%) Finance
2 25 (18.38%) Public Sector
3 24 (17.65%) Social Skills
4 14 (10.29%) Retail
5 12 (8.82%) Banking
6 7 (5.15%) Military
7 4 (2.94%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (2.21%) Retail Banking
9 1 (0.74%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.74%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.74%) iGaming
9 1 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.74%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 48 (35.29%) Developer
2 29 (21.32%) Senior
3 28 (20.59%) Java Developer
4 27 (19.85%) Architect
5 23 (16.91%) Software Engineer
6 22 (16.18%) Lead
7 14 (10.29%) Senior Developer
7 14 (10.29%) Solutions Architect
8 13 (9.56%) AWS Engineer
8 13 (9.56%) Java Engineer
9 12 (8.82%) Full-Stack Developer
10 11 (8.09%) Java Software Engineer
11 10 (7.35%) Principal Engineer
12 9 (6.62%) AWS Software Engineer
12 9 (6.62%) Lead Developer
12 9 (6.62%) Software Developer
13 8 (5.88%) Senior Software Engineer
14 6 (4.41%) Backend Developer
14 6 (4.41%) Senior Java Developer
14 6 (4.41%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (31.62%) Spring
2 39 (28.68%) Spring Boot
3 31 (22.79%) React
4 27 (19.85%) Kafka
4 27 (19.85%) REST
5 26 (19.12%) Node.js
6 20 (14.71%) RESTful
7 18 (13.24%) .NET
7 18 (13.24%) AngularJS
8 9 (6.62%) ActiveMQ
8 9 (6.62%) HTML
8 9 (6.62%) JAX-RS
8 9 (6.62%) Next.js
8 9 (6.62%) Nunjucks
9 7 (5.15%) CSS
9 7 (5.15%) OAuth
10 5 (3.68%) .NET Core
10 5 (3.68%) Middleware
10 5 (3.68%) OAuth2
10 5 (3.68%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 46 (33.82%) Cloud Native
2 22 (16.18%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (9.56%) Product Ownership
4 8 (5.88%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (4.41%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (4.41%) Public Cloud
6 5 (3.68%) Onboarding
7 4 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.94%) Mainframe
7 4 (2.94%) Private Cloud
8 3 (2.21%) Culture of Ownership
8 3 (2.21%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (2.21%) Legacy Applications
8 3 (2.21%) Mobile App
9 2 (1.47%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (1.47%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.74%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 1 (0.74%) Low-Code
10 1 (0.74%) Marketing Technology
10 1 (0.74%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 14 (10.29%) Linux
2 9 (6.62%) Unix
3 4 (2.94%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.74%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (59.56%) CI/CD
2 69 (50.74%) Agile
3 57 (41.91%) DevOps
4 51 (37.50%) Software Engineering
5 49 (36.03%) Test Automation
6 40 (29.41%) Event-Driven
7 37 (27.21%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 30 (22.06%) Continuous Improvement
9 28 (20.59%) TDD
9 28 (20.59%) Technical Leadership
10 27 (19.85%) Observability
11 25 (18.38%) Problem-Solving
12 24 (17.65%) Containerisation
12 24 (17.65%) Infrastructure as Code
12 24 (17.65%) Mentoring
13 23 (16.91%) Full-Stack Development
14 21 (15.44%) BDD
14 21 (15.44%) Code Quality
15 19 (13.97%) API Design
16 16 (11.76%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 78 (57.35%) Java
2 20 (14.71%) JavaScript
3 18 (13.24%) SQL
4 13 (9.56%) C#
4 13 (9.56%) TypeScript
5 12 (8.82%) Python
6 4 (2.94%) Go
7 3 (2.21%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.74%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 29 (21.32%) Security Cleared
2 19 (13.97%) SC Cleared
3 8 (5.88%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (4.41%) Degree
5 4 (2.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 4 (2.94%) Cisco Certification
5 4 (2.94%) CISSP
6 3 (2.21%) CEH
7 2 (1.47%) CCSP
7 2 (1.47%) CISM
7 2 (1.47%) GIAC
7 2 (1.47%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 2 (1.47%) OSCP
7 2 (1.47%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.74%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.74%) PMP
8 1 (0.74%) SANS
8 1 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (11.03%) QA
2 7 (5.15%) Accessibility
3 5 (3.68%) NIST
4 2 (1.47%) COBIT
4 2 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.47%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.74%) GDPR
5 1 (0.74%) GRC
5 1 (0.74%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.74%) PSD2
5 1 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.74%) SEPA
5 1 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.74%) WCAG
System Software
1 47 (34.56%) Docker
Systems Management
1 42 (30.88%) Kubernetes
2 25 (18.38%) Terraform
3 8 (5.88%) Grafana
3 8 (5.88%) Prometheus
4 4 (2.94%) Istio
5 2 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.74%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 9 (6.62%) Google
2 4 (2.94%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.94%) Oracle
3 3 (2.21%) Splunk
4 2 (1.47%) MuleSoft
5 1 (0.74%) Adobe
5 1 (0.74%) BiZZdesign
5 1 (0.74%) CheckPoint
5 1 (0.74%) Cisco
5 1 (0.74%) F5
5 1 (0.74%) Foundry
5 1 (0.74%) Intel
5 1 (0.74%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.74%) Sage
5 1 (0.74%) SAP