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

6 months to
5 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 45 53
Rank change year-on-year +11 +8 +10
Contract jobs citing Microservices 170 86 91
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.42% 4.44% 3.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.42% 4.89% 3.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 60 63
10th Percentile £353 £391 £417
25th Percentile £400 £405 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year -14.69% -4.09% +2.09%
75th Percentile £570 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £638 £850
England median daily rate £525 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -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 £74.26 £63.79 £48.43
% change year-on-year +16.42% +31.71% -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 2,647 1,759 2,421
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 84.41% 90.76% 86.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,650 1,148 1,571
10th Percentile £256 £291 £311
25th Percentile £375 £390 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 112 251
10th Percentile £19.49 £16.37 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.72 £13.41
Median hourly rate £45.46 £31.64 £23.45
Median % change year-on-year +43.68% +34.93% -37.13%
75th Percentile £71.80 £60.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £84.88 £80.40 £51.91
England median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year +15.38% -1.71% -11.83%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +14 122 £500 -6.28% 56
Cheshire +5 42 £402 +2.29% 9
Lancashire -20 4 £650 +10.64% 13
Merseyside -21 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 (4.12%) Confluence
2 3 (1.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.59%) Apache
3 1 (0.59%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.59%) Camunda
3 1 (0.59%) JBoss
3 1 (0.59%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 3 (1.76%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 107 (62.94%) AWS
2 51 (30.00%) Azure
3 35 (20.59%) Serverless
4 25 (14.71%) GCP
4 25 (14.71%) GitHub
5 21 (12.35%) AWS Lambda
6 14 (8.24%) Amazon SQS
6 14 (8.24%) GitHub Actions
7 12 (7.06%) Amazon EKS
7 12 (7.06%) Apigee
8 10 (5.88%) Amazon ECS
9 8 (4.71%) Amazon EventBridge
9 8 (4.71%) Kong
10 7 (4.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 6 (3.53%) Amazon S3
11 6 (3.53%) GitHub Copilot
12 4 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (2.35%) AWS Step Functions
12 4 (2.35%) Azure AKS
12 4 (2.35%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.35%) HTTP
1 4 (2.35%) HTTPS
2 2 (1.18%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (13.53%) NoSQL
2 21 (12.35%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (11.18%) MongoDB
4 16 (9.41%) DynamoDB
5 13 (7.65%) MySQL
6 11 (6.47%) DocumentDB
7 8 (4.71%) Relational Database
8 4 (2.35%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (2.35%) Redis
8 4 (2.35%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.59%) Big Data
9 1 (0.59%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.59%) DataStage
9 1 (0.59%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 36 (21.18%) Git
2 27 (15.88%) GitLab
3 15 (8.82%) Jenkins
4 14 (8.24%) JIRA
5 9 (5.29%) JUnit
5 9 (5.29%) Mockito
6 8 (4.71%) CircleCI
6 8 (4.71%) Cypress.io
6 8 (4.71%) Mocha
7 7 (4.12%) Postman
7 7 (4.12%) Selenium
8 5 (2.94%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.35%) JMeter
10 3 (1.76%) Jasmine
11 2 (1.18%) Gatling
11 2 (1.18%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.18%) Serenity BDD
12 1 (0.59%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.59%) Gradle
12 1 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 50 (29.41%) Public Sector
2 41 (24.12%) Finance
3 33 (19.41%) Social Skills
4 12 (7.06%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (7.06%) Banking
5 5 (2.94%) Retail
6 3 (1.76%) Billing
6 3 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.18%) Military
8 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 82 (48.24%) Developer
2 45 (26.47%) Java Developer
3 32 (18.82%) Architect
4 30 (17.65%) Senior
5 21 (12.35%) Lead
6 18 (10.59%) Solutions Architect
7 17 (10.00%) Full-Stack Developer
8 16 (9.41%) Senior Developer
9 15 (8.82%) Software Engineer
10 13 (7.65%) Backend Developer
11 10 (5.88%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 10 (5.88%) Lead Developer
12 7 (4.12%) Software Developer
13 6 (3.53%) Analyst
13 6 (3.53%) Business Analyst
13 6 (3.53%) Node.js Developer
13 6 (3.53%) Senior Backend Developer
13 6 (3.53%) Senior Software Engineer
13 6 (3.53%) Technical Analyst
13 6 (3.53%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (41.76%) Spring
2 66 (38.82%) Spring Boot
3 45 (26.47%) React
4 38 (22.35%) REST
5 37 (21.76%) RESTful
6 35 (20.59%) Node.js
7 28 (16.47%) AngularJS
7 28 (16.47%) Kafka
8 24 (14.12%) OAuth
9 16 (9.41%) OAuth2
10 15 (8.82%) .NET
11 14 (8.24%) Jest
12 13 (7.65%) Hibernate
12 13 (7.65%) JWT
12 13 (7.65%) Playwright
13 12 (7.06%) JAX-RS
14 10 (5.88%) JSON
14 10 (5.88%) XML
15 9 (5.29%) HTML
16 8 (4.71%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 40 (23.53%) Cloud Native
2 26 (15.29%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (8.24%) Mobile App
3 14 (8.24%) Product Ownership
4 12 (7.06%) Onboarding
5 6 (3.53%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (3.53%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.18%) Mobile Banking
7 2 (1.18%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.59%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.59%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.59%) Legacy Applications
8 1 (0.59%) NHS
8 1 (0.59%) PMI
8 1 (0.59%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.59%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.59%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.59%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 14 (8.24%) Linux
2 12 (7.06%) Unix
3 8 (4.71%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.18%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (51.18%) Agile
2 80 (47.06%) CI/CD
3 65 (38.24%) DevOps
4 49 (28.82%) Test Automation
5 46 (27.06%) Problem-Solving
6 40 (23.53%) Event-Driven
7 39 (22.94%) TDD
8 35 (20.59%) Containerisation
8 35 (20.59%) Full-Stack Development
9 30 (17.65%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 29 (17.06%) API Design
11 27 (15.88%) Software Engineering
12 25 (14.71%) Continuous Improvement
13 23 (13.53%) Mentoring
14 22 (12.94%) API Development
14 22 (12.94%) Observability
15 21 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
16 20 (11.76%) BDD
17 19 (11.18%) Design Patterns
17 19 (11.18%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 104 (61.18%) Java
2 34 (20.00%) TypeScript
3 23 (13.53%) SQL
4 22 (12.94%) JavaScript
5 14 (8.24%) Kotlin
6 11 (6.47%) Python
7 10 (5.88%) C#
8 4 (2.35%) Go
9 2 (1.18%) Bash
9 2 (1.18%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.59%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.59%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 27 (15.88%) Security Cleared
2 20 (11.76%) BPSS Clearance
3 18 (10.59%) Degree
4 16 (9.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (6.47%) SC Cleared
6 4 (2.35%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.76%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (1.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.76%) CISSP
8 2 (1.18%) GIAC
8 2 (1.18%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.59%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.59%) CCSP
9 1 (0.59%) CEH
9 1 (0.59%) CISM
9 1 (0.59%) OSCP
9 1 (0.59%) PMP
9 1 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.65%) Accessibility
2 10 (5.88%) QA
3 8 (4.71%) WCAG
4 7 (4.12%) ISO 20022
5 4 (2.35%) NIST
5 4 (2.35%) PCI DSS
6 3 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (1.18%) PSD2
8 1 (0.59%) COBIT
8 1 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.59%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.59%) GDPR
8 1 (0.59%) GRC
8 1 (0.59%) HL7
8 1 (0.59%) SEPA
System Software
1 54 (31.76%) Docker
2 3 (1.76%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 45 (26.47%) Kubernetes
2 26 (15.29%) Terraform
3 8 (4.71%) Grafana
4 7 (4.12%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.59%) Ansible
6 1 (0.59%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 11 (6.47%) Microsoft
2 9 (5.29%) Splunk
3 8 (4.71%) Google
3 8 (4.71%) MuleSoft
4 6 (3.53%) Oracle
5 5 (2.94%) Ping Identity
6 4 (2.35%) Virgin Media
7 3 (1.76%) Adobe
7 3 (1.76%) Guidewire
8 2 (1.18%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.18%) Databricks
8 2 (1.18%) Foundry
8 2 (1.18%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.18%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.59%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.59%) Informatica