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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 45 49
Rank change year-on-year +11 +4 +9
Contract jobs citing Microservices 165 82 93
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.30% 4.21% 3.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.26% 4.63% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 58 63
10th Percentile £352 £391 £417
25th Percentile £400 £405 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -15.09% -3.64% +2.33%
75th Percentile £568 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £638 £850
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 5
10th Percentile £58.75 £62.64 -
25th Percentile £66.51 £67.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.00 £75.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +1.33% +63.47% +31.09%
75th Percentile £95.00 £77.50 £48.43
90th Percentile - £78.25 -
England median hourly rate £74.63 £44.50 £48.43
% change year-on-year +67.71% -8.11% -30.99%

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 2,635 1,770 2,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 84.70% 90.82% 86.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,649 1,140 1,590
10th Percentile £231 £280 £313
25th Percentile £375 £389 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £685
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 239 112 258
10th Percentile £19.32 £16.37 £10.99
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.92 £13.50
Median hourly rate £45.46 £31.88 £23.56
Median % change year-on-year +42.60% +35.34% -36.85%
75th Percentile £71.50 £60.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.40 £51.91
England median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +13.85% - -13.33%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 +13 116 £500 -6.93% 56
Cheshire +1 43 £402 +2.29% 9
Lancashire -21 4 £650 +10.64% 13
Merseyside -22 1 £450 +1.41% 7
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 (4.24%) Confluence
2 3 (1.82%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.61%) Apache
3 1 (0.61%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.61%) Camunda
3 1 (0.61%) JBoss
3 1 (0.61%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 4 (2.42%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 105 (63.64%) AWS
2 49 (29.70%) Azure
3 34 (20.61%) Serverless
4 25 (15.15%) GCP
5 24 (14.55%) GitHub
6 20 (12.12%) AWS Lambda
7 13 (7.88%) Amazon SQS
7 13 (7.88%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (7.27%) Apigee
9 11 (6.67%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (5.45%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (4.85%) Kong
12 7 (4.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (4.24%) Amazon EventBridge
13 6 (3.64%) Amazon S3
13 6 (3.64%) GitHub Copilot
14 5 (3.03%) AWS Step Functions
15 4 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
15 4 (2.42%) Azure Service Bus
15 4 (2.42%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.42%) HTTP
1 4 (2.42%) HTTPS
2 2 (1.21%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (12.73%) NoSQL
2 19 (11.52%) MongoDB
2 19 (11.52%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (9.09%) DynamoDB
4 13 (7.88%) MySQL
5 11 (6.67%) DocumentDB
6 8 (4.85%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.42%) Redis
7 4 (2.42%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (1.21%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.61%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.61%) Big Data
10 1 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.61%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 35 (21.21%) Git
2 27 (16.36%) GitLab
3 15 (9.09%) Jenkins
4 13 (7.88%) JIRA
5 9 (5.45%) JUnit
5 9 (5.45%) Mockito
6 8 (4.85%) CircleCI
6 8 (4.85%) Cypress.io
6 8 (4.85%) Mocha
7 7 (4.24%) Postman
7 7 (4.24%) Selenium
8 5 (3.03%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.42%) JMeter
10 3 (1.82%) Jasmine
11 2 (1.21%) Gatling
11 2 (1.21%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.21%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.61%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.61%) Gradle
12 1 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 48 (29.09%) Public Sector
2 39 (23.64%) Finance
3 32 (19.39%) Social Skills
4 13 (7.88%) Banking
5 12 (7.27%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.42%) Retail
7 3 (1.82%) Billing
7 3 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Military
8 1 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 80 (48.48%) Developer
2 44 (26.67%) Java Developer
3 30 (18.18%) Architect
4 29 (17.58%) Senior
5 19 (11.52%) Lead
6 16 (9.70%) Full-Stack Developer
6 16 (9.70%) Senior Developer
6 16 (9.70%) Solutions Architect
7 15 (9.09%) Software Engineer
8 13 (7.88%) Backend Developer
9 10 (6.06%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 9 (5.45%) Lead Developer
11 6 (3.64%) Analyst
11 6 (3.64%) Business Analyst
11 6 (3.64%) Mobile Developer
11 6 (3.64%) Node.js Developer
11 6 (3.64%) Senior Backend Developer
11 6 (3.64%) Technical Analyst
11 6 (3.64%) Technical Business Analyst
12 5 (3.03%) Angular Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (42.42%) Spring
2 66 (40.00%) Spring Boot
3 42 (25.45%) React
4 36 (21.82%) REST
4 36 (21.82%) RESTful
5 34 (20.61%) Node.js
6 28 (16.97%) Kafka
7 26 (15.76%) AngularJS
8 24 (14.55%) OAuth
9 16 (9.70%) OAuth2
10 14 (8.48%) Jest
11 13 (7.88%) .NET
11 13 (7.88%) Hibernate
11 13 (7.88%) JWT
11 13 (7.88%) Playwright
12 12 (7.27%) JAX-RS
13 10 (6.06%) JSON
13 10 (6.06%) XML
14 8 (4.85%) ActiveMQ
14 8 (4.85%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (23.03%) Cloud Native
2 27 (16.36%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (8.48%) Mobile App
4 12 (7.27%) Onboarding
4 12 (7.27%) Product Ownership
5 6 (3.64%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.21%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.21%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.61%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.61%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
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
9 1 (0.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 13 (7.88%) Linux
2 12 (7.27%) Unix
3 8 (4.85%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.21%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (51.52%) Agile
2 76 (46.06%) CI/CD
3 63 (38.18%) DevOps
4 49 (29.70%) Test Automation
5 45 (27.27%) Problem-Solving
6 39 (23.64%) TDD
7 36 (21.82%) Event-Driven
8 35 (21.21%) Containerisation
9 33 (20.00%) Full-Stack Development
10 27 (16.36%) API Design
10 27 (16.36%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 26 (15.76%) Software Engineering
12 25 (15.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 24 (14.55%) Mentoring
14 21 (12.73%) API Development
14 21 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
14 21 (12.73%) Observability
15 20 (12.12%) BDD
16 18 (10.91%) Integration Patterns
17 17 (10.30%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 103 (62.42%) Java
2 33 (20.00%) TypeScript
3 21 (12.73%) JavaScript
3 21 (12.73%) SQL
4 14 (8.48%) Kotlin
5 11 (6.67%) Python
6 9 (5.45%) C#
7 4 (2.42%) Go
8 2 (1.21%) Bash
8 2 (1.21%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.61%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.61%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 25 (15.15%) Security Cleared
2 20 (12.12%) BPSS Clearance
3 18 (10.91%) Degree
4 16 (9.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (6.06%) SC Cleared
6 4 (2.42%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.82%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (1.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.82%) CISSP
8 2 (1.21%) GIAC
8 2 (1.21%) 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 (7.88%) Accessibility
2 9 (5.45%) QA
3 8 (4.85%) ISO 20022
3 8 (4.85%) WCAG
4 5 (3.03%) PCI DSS
5 4 (2.42%) NIST
6 3 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (1.21%) PSD2
8 1 (0.61%) COBIT
8 1 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.61%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.61%) GDPR
8 1 (0.61%) GRC
8 1 (0.61%) HL7
8 1 (0.61%) SEPA
System Software
1 53 (32.12%) Docker
2 3 (1.82%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 44 (26.67%) Kubernetes
2 25 (15.15%) Terraform
3 7 (4.24%) Grafana
4 6 (3.64%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.61%) Ansible
6 1 (0.61%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 11 (6.67%) Microsoft
2 9 (5.45%) Splunk
3 8 (4.85%) Google
3 8 (4.85%) MuleSoft
4 6 (3.64%) Oracle
5 5 (3.03%) Ping Identity
6 4 (2.42%) Virgin Media
7 3 (1.82%) Adobe
7 3 (1.82%) Guidewire
8 2 (1.21%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.21%) Databricks
8 2 (1.21%) Foundry
8 2 (1.21%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.21%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.61%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.61%) Informatica