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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 53 67
Rank change year-on-year +22 +14 -32
Contract jobs citing Microservices 158 70 76
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.78% 3.34% 2.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.66% 3.77% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 47 49
10th Percentile £353 £391 £411
25th Percentile £400 £428 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% - +3.53%
75th Percentile £538 £611 £623
90th Percentile £580 £638 £625
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 5
10th Percentile £58.75 £61.70 -
25th Percentile £62.63 £65.17 -
Median hourly rate £75.13 £74.39 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% +62.15% +31.09%
75th Percentile £90.25 £82.67 £48.43
90th Percentile £95.00 £85.57 -
England median hourly rate £74.63 £32.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +133.22% -48.80% -12.28%

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 2,373 1,856 2,452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 86.76% 88.63% 87.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,538 1,110 1,627
10th Percentile £213 £267 £307
25th Percentile £358 £380 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £568 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 98 217
10th Percentile £16.08 £16.19 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.85 £22.72 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.69 £31.51 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.46% +5.03% -19.57%
75th Percentile £61.25 £55.76 £46.18
90th Percentile £75.48 £75.58 £53.75
England median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -26.37% - -

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 February 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 14 February 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 14 February 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 +28 110 £477 -13.32% 51
Cheshire -5 42 £402 -1.95% 10
Lancashire -22 4 £650 +8.33% 19
Merseyside -17 1 £450 -5.26% 3
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 (4.43%) Confluence
2 3 (1.90%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.63%) Apache
3 1 (0.63%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.63%) JBoss
3 1 (0.63%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 5 (3.16%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 101 (63.92%) AWS
2 42 (26.58%) Azure
3 34 (21.52%) Serverless
4 25 (15.82%) AWS Lambda
5 24 (15.19%) GitHub
6 23 (14.56%) GCP
7 18 (11.39%) Amazon SQS
8 14 (8.86%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (7.59%) Amazon EKS
10 10 (6.33%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (6.33%) Apigee
11 9 (5.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (5.70%) Kong
12 8 (5.06%) Amazon EventBridge
12 8 (5.06%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (3.80%) Amazon MSK
13 6 (3.80%) Amazon S3
14 5 (3.16%) Amazon EC2
14 5 (3.16%) Azure AKS
14 5 (3.16%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.53%) HTTP
1 4 (2.53%) HTTPS
2 2 (1.27%) Firewall
2 2 (1.27%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (14.56%) NoSQL
2 22 (13.92%) MongoDB
3 17 (10.76%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (8.86%) DocumentDB
4 14 (8.86%) MySQL
5 12 (7.59%) DynamoDB
6 7 (4.43%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.16%) Redis
8 4 (2.53%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (2.53%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (1.27%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.63%) Big Data
11 1 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.63%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 31 (19.62%) Git
2 29 (18.35%) GitLab
3 16 (10.13%) Jenkins
4 11 (6.96%) JIRA
5 9 (5.70%) Mockito
6 8 (5.06%) CircleCI
6 8 (5.06%) Cypress.io
6 8 (5.06%) JUnit
6 8 (5.06%) Mocha
7 7 (4.43%) Postman
7 7 (4.43%) Selenium
8 6 (3.80%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.53%) JMeter
10 3 (1.90%) Jasmine
10 3 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (1.27%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.27%) Gatling
11 2 (1.27%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.27%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.63%) Gradle
General
1 48 (30.38%) Public Sector
2 39 (24.68%) Finance
3 35 (22.15%) Social Skills
4 15 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (9.49%) Banking
5 4 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (1.90%) Billing
7 2 (1.27%) Retail
8 1 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.63%) Military
8 1 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 73 (46.20%) Developer
2 39 (24.68%) Java Developer
3 29 (18.35%) Senior
4 27 (17.09%) Architect
5 19 (12.03%) Lead
6 16 (10.13%) Full-Stack Developer
6 16 (10.13%) Software Engineer
6 16 (10.13%) Solutions Architect
7 13 (8.23%) Senior Developer
8 10 (6.33%) Backend Developer
8 10 (6.33%) Lead Developer
9 9 (5.70%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 8 (5.06%) Analyst
10 8 (5.06%) Business Analyst
11 7 (4.43%) Node.js Developer
12 6 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Senior Backend Developer
12 6 (3.80%) Senior Software Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Technical Analyst
12 6 (3.80%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (43.67%) Spring
2 66 (41.77%) Spring Boot
3 39 (24.68%) React
4 37 (23.42%) Kafka
5 34 (21.52%) Node.js
6 31 (19.62%) REST
7 29 (18.35%) RESTful
8 19 (12.03%) AngularJS
9 17 (10.76%) OAuth
10 15 (9.49%) Hibernate
11 13 (8.23%) Jest
11 13 (8.23%) Playwright
12 12 (7.59%) JAX-RS
13 11 (6.96%) JWT
13 11 (6.96%) OAuth2
14 10 (6.33%) JSON
14 10 (6.33%) XML
15 9 (5.70%) ActiveMQ
16 8 (5.06%) .NET
16 8 (5.06%) NestJS
Miscellaneous
1 33 (20.89%) Cloud Native
2 24 (15.19%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (8.86%) Onboarding
4 11 (6.96%) Mobile App
5 10 (6.33%) Product Ownership
6 5 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.27%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.27%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.27%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (1.27%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.63%) NHS
9 1 (0.63%) Online Banking
9 1 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.63%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 15 (9.49%) Linux
2 10 (6.33%) Unix
3 6 (3.80%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.63%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (49.37%) Agile
2 66 (41.77%) CI/CD
3 60 (37.97%) DevOps
4 42 (26.58%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (25.95%) Containerisation
6 40 (25.32%) Test Automation
7 37 (23.42%) TDD
8 33 (20.89%) Full-Stack Development
9 31 (19.62%) Software Engineering
10 30 (18.99%) Event-Driven
11 24 (15.19%) API Design
12 21 (13.29%) Mentoring
13 20 (12.66%) Continuous Improvement
14 19 (12.03%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 19 (12.03%) Observability
15 18 (11.39%) BDD
16 17 (10.76%) Architectural Patterns
17 16 (10.13%) API Development
17 16 (10.13%) Computer Science
17 16 (10.13%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 102 (64.56%) Java
2 31 (19.62%) TypeScript
3 25 (15.82%) SQL
4 16 (10.13%) JavaScript
5 12 (7.59%) Python
6 11 (6.96%) Kotlin
7 5 (3.16%) Bash
8 4 (2.53%) C#
8 4 (2.53%) Go
9 3 (1.90%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.90%) Ruby
10 2 (1.27%) Perl
10 2 (1.27%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.63%) PHP
Qualifications
1 25 (15.82%) Security Cleared
2 22 (13.92%) BPSS Clearance
3 16 (10.13%) Computer Science Degree
3 16 (10.13%) Degree
4 12 (7.59%) SC Cleared
5 7 (4.43%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.27%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.27%) CBAP
7 2 (1.27%) CSPO
7 2 (1.27%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.59%) Accessibility
2 10 (6.33%) ISO 20022
3 7 (4.43%) PCI DSS
3 7 (4.43%) WCAG
4 4 (2.53%) QA
5 3 (1.90%) GDPR
6 1 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.63%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.63%) HL7
6 1 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.63%) NIST
6 1 (0.63%) PSD2
6 1 (0.63%) SEPA
System Software
1 54 (34.18%) Docker
2 3 (1.90%) ISA Server
3 2 (1.27%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 46 (29.11%) Kubernetes
2 22 (13.92%) Terraform
3 7 (4.43%) Grafana
3 7 (4.43%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.63%) Ansible
4 1 (0.63%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (7.59%) Microsoft
2 9 (5.70%) Google
2 9 (5.70%) Splunk
3 7 (4.43%) Oracle
4 6 (3.80%) MuleSoft
5 5 (3.16%) Ping Identity
5 5 (3.16%) Virgin Media
6 3 (1.90%) Adobe
6 3 (1.90%) Guidewire
6 3 (1.90%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.27%) Atlassian
7 2 (1.27%) Databricks
7 2 (1.27%) Foundry
7 2 (1.27%) IBM
7 2 (1.27%) IBM Sterling
7 2 (1.27%) OpenAI
7 2 (1.27%) PagerDuty
8 1 (0.63%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.63%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.63%) Informatica