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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 33 56
Rank change year-on-year -31 +23 +46
Contract jobs citing Microservices 131 116 67
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.37% 5.39% 2.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.09% 6.10% 3.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 75 82 45
10th Percentile £419 £333 £425
25th Percentile £462 £386 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £452 £525
Median % change year-on-year +16.09% -13.86% +7.69%
75th Percentile £581 £544 £606
90th Percentile £650 £668 £729
England median daily rate £537 £528 £575
% change year-on-year +1.80% -8.26% -6.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 3 1
10th Percentile - £73.00 -
25th Percentile £62.50 £73.75 £82.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 £85.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% -11.76% +97.20%
75th Percentile £67.50 £78.13 £87.50
90th Percentile £71.30 £78.50 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.00 £47.00
% change year-on-year -2.99% +42.55% -36.27%

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 3,205 1,903 2,001
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.50% 88.47% 83.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,840 1,263 1,147
10th Percentile £295 £296 £294
25th Percentile £401 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £454 £493
Median % change year-on-year +10.25% -8.01% -1.40%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £680 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 134 109
10th Percentile £15.08 £13.61 £16.45
25th Percentile £24.16 £17.39 £28.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -40.82% +21.43%
75th Percentile £72.66 £49.84 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.06 £72.10
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.27%

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 21 September 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
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 21 September 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 -2 108 £525 +5.00% 147
Cheshire -33 16 £500 +17.65% 11
Merseyside -18 4 £575 +12.75% 4
Cumbria - 1 £357 - 3
Lancashire - 1 £538 - 22
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 (5.34%) Confluence
2 5 (3.82%) Camunda
3 1 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.76%) JBoss
3 1 (0.76%) Mule
3 1 (0.76%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.76%) nginx
3 1 (0.76%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 76 (58.02%) AWS
2 30 (22.90%) Azure
3 19 (14.50%) GCP
4 17 (12.98%) Serverless
5 16 (12.21%) GitHub
6 12 (9.16%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (8.40%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (6.87%) Amazon ECS
8 9 (6.87%) Amazon SQS
9 8 (6.11%) Amazon EKS
10 7 (5.34%) OpenShift
11 6 (4.58%) Anthropic Claude
11 6 (4.58%) GitHub Copilot
11 6 (4.58%) Google Gemini
12 4 (3.05%) Amazon EventBridge
12 4 (3.05%) Azure AKS
13 3 (2.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 3 (2.29%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (2.29%) Azure Functions
13 3 (2.29%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.29%) HTTP
2 1 (0.76%) Firewall
2 1 (0.76%) Network Security
2 1 (0.76%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (11.45%) MongoDB
1 15 (11.45%) NoSQL
2 12 (9.16%) SQL Server
3 11 (8.40%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (6.87%) DynamoDB
5 7 (5.34%) Relational Database
6 5 (3.82%) MySQL
7 3 (2.29%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 22 (16.79%) Git
2 14 (10.69%) JUnit
2 14 (10.69%) Mockito
3 13 (9.92%) GitLab
3 13 (9.92%) Jenkins
3 13 (9.92%) Selenium
4 10 (7.63%) Cucumber
4 10 (7.63%) JIRA
4 10 (7.63%) REST Assured
5 8 (6.11%) SonarQube
6 6 (4.58%) Claude Code
6 6 (4.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (3.82%) Maven
8 4 (3.05%) Gatling
8 4 (3.05%) Gradle
8 4 (3.05%) Postman
9 3 (2.29%) Bitbucket Server
9 3 (2.29%) Serenity BDD
10 2 (1.53%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.76%) Robot Framework
General
1 29 (22.14%) Finance
2 25 (19.08%) Social Skills
3 23 (17.56%) Public Sector
4 13 (9.92%) Banking
5 12 (9.16%) Retail
6 9 (6.87%) Military
7 4 (3.05%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (2.29%) Retail Banking
9 2 (1.53%) iGaming
9 2 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.76%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.76%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 42 (32.06%) Developer
2 28 (21.37%) Senior
3 25 (19.08%) Architect
3 25 (19.08%) Software Engineer
4 24 (18.32%) Java Developer
5 20 (15.27%) Lead
6 15 (11.45%) Java Engineer
7 13 (9.92%) AWS Engineer
8 12 (9.16%) Full-Stack Developer
8 12 (9.16%) Solutions Architect
9 11 (8.40%) Java Software Engineer
10 10 (7.63%) Lead Developer
11 9 (6.87%) AWS Software Engineer
11 9 (6.87%) Principal Engineer
11 9 (6.87%) Senior Developer
11 9 (6.87%) Senior Software Engineer
12 7 (5.34%) Software Developer
13 6 (4.58%) Engineering Specialist
13 6 (4.58%) Senior Java Developer
13 6 (4.58%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (34.35%) Spring Boot
2 44 (33.59%) Spring
3 33 (25.19%) REST
4 31 (23.66%) Kafka
5 30 (22.90%) React
6 26 (19.85%) Node.js
7 18 (13.74%) Terraform
8 15 (11.45%) RESTful
9 14 (10.69%) AngularJS
10 13 (9.92%) .NET
11 11 (8.40%) HTML
12 9 (6.87%) CSS
12 9 (6.87%) Next.js
13 8 (6.11%) Nunjucks
14 6 (4.58%) ActiveMQ
14 6 (4.58%) JAX-RS
15 5 (3.82%) JPA
15 5 (3.82%) Middleware
15 5 (3.82%) Playwright
16 4 (3.05%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 48 (36.64%) Cloud Native
2 27 (20.61%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (8.40%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.11%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (6.11%) Public Cloud
5 5 (3.82%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (3.82%) Onboarding
6 4 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (3.05%) Greenfield Project
6 4 (3.05%) Mainframe
7 3 (2.29%) AI Agents
7 3 (2.29%) Culture of Ownership
7 3 (2.29%) Data Structures
7 3 (2.29%) Private Cloud
8 2 (1.53%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (1.53%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (1.53%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.76%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.76%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 14 (10.69%) Linux
2 6 (4.58%) Unix
3 3 (2.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.76%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.76%) Mac OS X
4 1 (0.76%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (59.54%) CI/CD
2 64 (48.85%) Agile
3 60 (45.80%) Software Engineering
4 51 (38.93%) DevOps
4 51 (38.93%) Test Automation
5 40 (30.53%) Event-Driven
6 37 (28.24%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 30 (22.90%) Observability
8 27 (20.61%) Technical Leadership
9 24 (18.32%) Continuous Improvement
9 24 (18.32%) TDD
10 23 (17.56%) Full-Stack Development
11 22 (16.79%) Containerisation
12 20 (15.27%) Code Quality
12 20 (15.27%) Infrastructure as Code
12 20 (15.27%) Mentoring
12 20 (15.27%) Problem-Solving
13 17 (12.98%) BDD
14 16 (12.21%) Architectural Patterns
15 15 (11.45%) API Design
Programming Languages
1 82 (62.60%) Java
2 24 (18.32%) JavaScript
3 21 (16.03%) SQL
4 15 (11.45%) TypeScript
5 12 (9.16%) Python
6 9 (6.87%) C#
7 5 (3.82%) Go
8 1 (0.76%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.76%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 29 (22.14%) Security Cleared
2 20 (15.27%) SC Cleared
3 7 (5.34%) Degree
4 6 (4.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.53%) CEH
6 2 (1.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.76%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (0.76%) CCSP
7 1 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.76%) CISM
7 1 (0.76%) CISSP
7 1 (0.76%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.76%) OSCP
7 1 (0.76%) SANS
7 1 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (7.63%) QA
2 9 (6.87%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.53%) NIST
4 1 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.76%) COBIT
4 1 (0.76%) GDPR
4 1 (0.76%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.76%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.76%) WCAG
System Software
1 43 (32.82%) Docker
Systems Management
1 43 (32.82%) Kubernetes
2 8 (6.11%) Grafana
2 8 (6.11%) Prometheus
3 4 (3.05%) Istio
4 1 (0.76%) Network Intrusion Detection System
4 1 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 10 (7.63%) Google
2 4 (3.05%) Microsoft
3 3 (2.29%) IBM
3 3 (2.29%) Oracle
3 3 (2.29%) Splunk
3 3 (2.29%) Veracode
4 1 (0.76%) Adobe
4 1 (0.76%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (0.76%) CheckPoint
4 1 (0.76%) Cisco
4 1 (0.76%) F5
4 1 (0.76%) Foundry
4 1 (0.76%) Intel
4 1 (0.76%) OpenAI
4 1 (0.76%) Sage
4 1 (0.76%) SAP