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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 52 55
Rank change year-on-year +17 +3 +1
Contract jobs citing Microservices 163 79 90
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.41% 3.94% 3.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.36% 4.36% 3.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 112 59 61
10th Percentile £355 £391 £413
25th Percentile £400 £405 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -15.09% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £553 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £628 £688
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 3 5
10th Percentile £58.75 £61.01 -
25th Percentile £66.51 £63.45 -
Median hourly rate £76.00 £70.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +8.57% +52.57% +31.09%
75th Percentile £95.00 £80.00 £48.43
90th Percentile - £84.50 -
England median hourly rate £74.63 £37.75 £48.43
% change year-on-year +97.70% -22.05% -33.20%

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 2,561 1,811 2,445
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 84.97% 90.32% 86.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,625 1,132 1,595
10th Percentile £220 £281 £309
25th Percentile £370 £391 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £675
England median daily rate £504 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 113 263
10th Percentile £18.67 £16.60 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.08 £22.98 £13.62
Median hourly rate £45.00 £31.76 £23.45
Median % change year-on-year +41.69% +35.44% -37.13%
75th Percentile £67.04 £59.90 £45.00
90th Percentile £76.30 £79.97 £52.61
England median hourly rate £31.45 £33.40 £32.50
% change year-on-year -5.84% +2.77% -10.41%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 +20 113 £500 -8.05% 43
Cheshire +5 44 £402 +1.13% 9
Lancashire -19 4 £650 +10.64% 8
Merseyside -18 1 £450 +1.41% 5
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 (4.29%) Confluence
2 3 (1.84%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.61%) Apache
3 1 (0.61%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.61%) JBoss
3 1 (0.61%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 5 (3.07%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 107 (65.64%) AWS
2 48 (29.45%) Azure
3 38 (23.31%) Serverless
4 25 (15.34%) GCP
4 25 (15.34%) GitHub
5 23 (14.11%) AWS Lambda
6 15 (9.20%) Amazon SQS
7 14 (8.59%) Amazon EKS
7 14 (8.59%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (7.36%) Amazon ECS
8 12 (7.36%) Apigee
9 8 (4.91%) Amazon EventBridge
9 8 (4.91%) Kong
10 7 (4.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 6 (3.68%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (3.68%) Amazon MSK
11 6 (3.68%) Amazon S3
11 6 (3.68%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (3.68%) GitHub Copilot
12 4 (2.45%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.45%) HTTP
1 4 (2.45%) HTTPS
2 2 (1.23%) Firewall
2 2 (1.23%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (12.88%) MongoDB
1 21 (12.88%) NoSQL
2 16 (9.82%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (9.20%) DynamoDB
4 14 (8.59%) DocumentDB
5 11 (6.75%) MySQL
6 7 (4.29%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.07%) Redis
8 4 (2.45%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.84%) SQL Server
10 2 (1.23%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.61%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.61%) Big Data
11 1 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.61%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 35 (21.47%) Git
2 28 (17.18%) GitLab
3 17 (10.43%) Jenkins
4 12 (7.36%) JIRA
5 9 (5.52%) Mockito
6 8 (4.91%) CircleCI
6 8 (4.91%) Cypress.io
6 8 (4.91%) JUnit
6 8 (4.91%) Mocha
7 7 (4.29%) Postman
7 7 (4.29%) Selenium
8 6 (3.68%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.45%) JMeter
10 3 (1.84%) Jasmine
10 3 (1.84%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (1.23%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.23%) Gatling
11 2 (1.23%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.23%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.61%) Gradle
General
1 48 (29.45%) Public Sector
2 41 (25.15%) Finance
3 34 (20.86%) Social Skills
4 15 (9.20%) Banking
5 12 (7.36%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.45%) Retail
7 3 (1.84%) Billing
7 3 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.61%) Military
8 1 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 76 (46.63%) Developer
2 39 (23.93%) Java Developer
3 30 (18.40%) Architect
4 29 (17.79%) Senior
5 21 (12.88%) Lead
6 16 (9.82%) Software Engineer
6 16 (9.82%) Solutions Architect
7 15 (9.20%) Senior Developer
8 14 (8.59%) Full-Stack Developer
9 13 (7.98%) Backend Developer
10 9 (5.52%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 9 (5.52%) Lead Developer
11 7 (4.29%) Node.js Developer
12 6 (3.68%) Analyst
12 6 (3.68%) Business Analyst
12 6 (3.68%) Mobile Developer
12 6 (3.68%) Senior Backend Developer
12 6 (3.68%) Senior Software Engineer
12 6 (3.68%) Technical Analyst
12 6 (3.68%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (41.72%) Spring
2 65 (39.88%) Spring Boot
3 39 (23.93%) React
4 36 (22.09%) Node.js
5 35 (21.47%) REST
6 32 (19.63%) RESTful
7 30 (18.40%) Kafka
8 24 (14.72%) OAuth
9 22 (13.50%) AngularJS
10 16 (9.82%) OAuth2
11 13 (7.98%) Hibernate
11 13 (7.98%) Jest
11 13 (7.98%) JWT
11 13 (7.98%) Playwright
12 12 (7.36%) .NET
12 12 (7.36%) JAX-RS
13 10 (6.13%) JSON
13 10 (6.13%) XML
14 8 (4.91%) ActiveMQ
14 8 (4.91%) NestJS
Miscellaneous
1 37 (22.70%) Cloud Native
2 26 (15.95%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (8.59%) Mobile App
4 12 (7.36%) Onboarding
5 10 (6.13%) Product Ownership
6 6 (3.68%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.23%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.23%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.61%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.61%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.61%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (0.61%) NHS
9 1 (0.61%) Online Banking
9 1 (0.61%) PMI
9 1 (0.61%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 14 (8.59%) Linux
2 12 (7.36%) Unix
3 8 (4.91%) Mac OS X
4 1 (0.61%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (51.53%) Agile
2 74 (45.40%) CI/CD
3 66 (40.49%) DevOps
4 48 (29.45%) Test Automation
5 41 (25.15%) Problem-Solving
6 40 (24.54%) TDD
7 37 (22.70%) Containerisation
8 36 (22.09%) Event-Driven
9 30 (18.40%) Full-Stack Development
10 27 (16.56%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 27 (16.56%) Mentoring
11 26 (15.95%) API Design
11 26 (15.95%) Software Engineering
12 25 (15.34%) Continuous Improvement
13 21 (12.88%) Observability
14 20 (12.27%) API Development
14 20 (12.27%) Infrastructure as Code
15 19 (11.66%) BDD
16 18 (11.04%) Integration Patterns
17 17 (10.43%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 100 (61.35%) Java
2 32 (19.63%) TypeScript
3 20 (12.27%) SQL
4 16 (9.82%) JavaScript
5 14 (8.59%) Kotlin
6 12 (7.36%) Python
7 7 (4.29%) C#
8 4 (2.45%) Go
9 3 (1.84%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.84%) Ruby
10 2 (1.23%) Bash
10 2 (1.23%) Perl
10 2 (1.23%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 26 (15.95%) Security Cleared
2 22 (13.50%) BPSS Clearance
3 16 (9.82%) Degree
4 15 (9.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (6.75%) SC Cleared
6 6 (3.68%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (1.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.84%) CISSP
8 2 (1.23%) GIAC
8 2 (1.23%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.61%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.61%) CCSP
9 1 (0.61%) CEH
9 1 (0.61%) CISM
9 1 (0.61%) OSCP
9 1 (0.61%) PMP
9 1 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.98%) Accessibility
2 8 (4.91%) ISO 20022
2 8 (4.91%) QA
2 8 (4.91%) WCAG
3 6 (3.68%) PCI DSS
4 4 (2.45%) NIST
5 3 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.61%) COBIT
6 1 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.61%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.61%) GDPR
6 1 (0.61%) GRC
6 1 (0.61%) HL7
6 1 (0.61%) PSD2
System Software
1 54 (33.13%) Docker
2 3 (1.84%) ISA Server
3 2 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 44 (26.99%) Kubernetes
2 25 (15.34%) Terraform
3 7 (4.29%) Grafana
4 6 (3.68%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.61%) Ansible
6 1 (0.61%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 11 (6.75%) Microsoft
2 9 (5.52%) Google
2 9 (5.52%) Splunk
3 8 (4.91%) MuleSoft
3 8 (4.91%) Oracle
4 5 (3.07%) Ping Identity
5 4 (2.45%) Virgin Media
6 3 (1.84%) Adobe
6 3 (1.84%) Guidewire
7 2 (1.23%) Atlassian
7 2 (1.23%) Databricks
7 2 (1.23%) Foundry
7 2 (1.23%) OpenAI
7 2 (1.23%) PagerDuty
8 1 (0.61%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.61%) Informatica