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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 39 47
Rank change year-on-year +9 +8 +40
Contract jobs citing Microservices 169 99 100
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.28% 5.10% 3.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.31% 5.66% 4.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 72 70
10th Percentile £350 £369 £416
25th Percentile £401 £404 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £565 £563 £625
90th Percentile £650 £615 £850
England median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 5
10th Percentile £58.75 £69.00 -
25th Percentile £63.06 £71.25 -
Median hourly rate £85.50 £75.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +63.47% +31.09%
75th Percentile £95.00 £77.81 £48.43
90th Percentile - £78.38 -
England median hourly rate £75.00 £50.00 £47.16
% change year-on-year +50.00% +6.03% -34.96%

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 2,678 1,749 2,286
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.61% 90.06% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,650 1,140 1,449
10th Percentile £287 £300 £308
25th Percentile £380 £389 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £576 £575 £594
90th Percentile £662 £660 £688
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 225 102 251
10th Percentile £17.58 £16.03 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.81 £13.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £31.88 £24.10
Median % change year-on-year +72.52% +32.28% -33.06%
75th Percentile £74.26 £62.25 £45.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £84.39 £62.50
England median hourly rate £47.00 £29.02 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.96% -20.49% -2.25%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 +10 126 £500 -5.66% 51
Cheshire -8 37 £402 - 11
Lancashire -12 3 £650 +10.64% 13
Merseyside -19 1 £450 +1.41% 4
Cumbria - 1 £357 - 2
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 5 (2.96%) Confluence
2 3 (1.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (1.18%) JBoss
4 1 (0.59%) Apache
4 1 (0.59%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.59%) Camunda
4 1 (0.59%) Mule
4 1 (0.59%) Mule ESB
4 1 (0.59%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.59%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 103 (60.95%) AWS
2 51 (30.18%) Azure
3 30 (17.75%) Serverless
4 25 (14.79%) GitHub
5 23 (13.61%) GCP
6 15 (8.88%) AWS Lambda
7 14 (8.28%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (6.51%) Amazon SQS
9 9 (5.33%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (5.33%) Apigee
10 7 (4.14%) Kong
11 6 (3.55%) Amazon EventBridge
11 6 (3.55%) Amazon S3
12 5 (2.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (2.96%) Azure Service Bus
12 5 (2.96%) GitHub Copilot
13 4 (2.37%) AWS Step Functions
13 4 (2.37%) Azure AKS
13 4 (2.37%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.18%) HTTP
1 2 (1.18%) HTTPS
1 2 (1.18%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (13.02%) NoSQL
2 21 (12.43%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (10.65%) MongoDB
4 14 (8.28%) DynamoDB
5 12 (7.10%) MySQL
6 8 (4.73%) DocumentDB
6 8 (4.73%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.37%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.78%) Amazon Aurora
8 3 (1.78%) Redis
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 32 (18.93%) Git
2 27 (15.98%) GitLab
3 15 (8.88%) Jenkins
4 12 (7.10%) JIRA
5 11 (6.51%) JUnit
6 10 (5.92%) Cypress.io
7 9 (5.33%) Mockito
7 9 (5.33%) Selenium
8 8 (4.73%) CircleCI
8 8 (4.73%) Mocha
9 6 (3.55%) Postman
10 5 (2.96%) SonarQube
11 4 (2.37%) JMeter
12 3 (1.78%) Cucumber
12 3 (1.78%) Gatling
12 3 (1.78%) Jasmine
12 3 (1.78%) REST Assured
12 3 (1.78%) Serenity BDD
13 1 (0.59%) Robot Framework
13 1 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 53 (31.36%) Public Sector
2 37 (21.89%) Finance
3 31 (18.34%) Social Skills
4 12 (7.10%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (6.51%) Banking
6 8 (4.73%) Retail
7 3 (1.78%) Billing
7 3 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.78%) Retail Banking
8 2 (1.18%) Military
9 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.59%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 81 (47.93%) Developer
2 44 (26.04%) Java Developer
3 33 (19.53%) Architect
4 30 (17.75%) Senior
5 24 (14.20%) Lead
6 20 (11.83%) Full-Stack Developer
7 19 (11.24%) Software Engineer
8 16 (9.47%) Senior Developer
9 15 (8.88%) Solutions Architect
10 14 (8.28%) Lead Developer
11 13 (7.69%) Backend Developer
12 10 (5.92%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 9 (5.33%) Senior Software Engineer
14 8 (4.73%) Software Developer
15 7 (4.14%) Full-Stack Java Developer
15 7 (4.14%) Lead Java Developer
16 6 (3.55%) Angular Developer
16 6 (3.55%) Mobile Developer
16 6 (3.55%) Node.js Developer
16 6 (3.55%) Senior Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (39.64%) Spring
2 61 (36.09%) Spring Boot
3 47 (27.81%) React
4 38 (22.49%) Node.js
5 32 (18.93%) REST
5 32 (18.93%) RESTful
6 30 (17.75%) AngularJS
7 25 (14.79%) Kafka
8 20 (11.83%) OAuth
9 15 (8.88%) Jest
9 15 (8.88%) Playwright
10 14 (8.28%) .NET
11 13 (7.69%) OAuth2
12 10 (5.92%) Hibernate
12 10 (5.92%) JAX-RS
13 9 (5.33%) HTML
13 9 (5.33%) JWT
13 9 (5.33%) Nunjucks
14 8 (4.73%) CSS
14 8 (4.73%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 44 (26.04%) Cloud Native
2 19 (11.24%) Distributed Systems
3 18 (10.65%) Product Ownership
4 14 (8.28%) Mobile App
5 12 (7.10%) Onboarding
6 6 (3.55%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (2.96%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.78%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (1.18%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (1.18%) Mainframe
9 2 (1.18%) NHS
10 1 (0.59%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.59%) Mobile Banking
10 1 (0.59%) Online Banking
10 1 (0.59%) PMI
10 1 (0.59%) Replication
10 1 (0.59%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.59%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 15 (8.88%) Linux
2 12 (7.10%) Unix
3 8 (4.73%) Mac OS X
4 2 (1.18%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (51.48%) Agile
2 81 (47.93%) CI/CD
3 67 (39.64%) DevOps
4 53 (31.36%) Test Automation
5 45 (26.63%) Event-Driven
6 44 (26.04%) Problem-Solving
7 39 (23.08%) Full-Stack Development
8 36 (21.30%) TDD
9 35 (20.71%) Containerisation
9 35 (20.71%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 30 (17.75%) Software Engineering
11 28 (16.57%) API Design
12 26 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
13 24 (14.20%) Mentoring
14 23 (13.61%) Observability
15 22 (13.02%) BDD
16 21 (12.43%) Technical Leadership
17 19 (11.24%) Design Patterns
17 19 (11.24%) Integration Patterns
18 18 (10.65%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 106 (62.72%) Java
2 32 (18.93%) TypeScript
3 28 (16.57%) JavaScript
4 23 (13.61%) SQL
5 14 (8.28%) Kotlin
6 10 (5.92%) C#
7 6 (3.55%) Python
8 3 (1.78%) Go
9 2 (1.18%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.59%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.59%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 32 (18.93%) Security Cleared
2 20 (11.83%) BPSS Clearance
3 16 (9.47%) SC Cleared
4 15 (8.88%) Degree
5 12 (7.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.37%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (1.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.78%) 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 16 (9.47%) Accessibility
2 12 (7.10%) QA
3 8 (4.73%) WCAG
4 3 (1.78%) ISO 20022
4 3 (1.78%) NIST
5 2 (1.18%) GDPR
5 2 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.18%) PSD2
6 1 (0.59%) COBIT
6 1 (0.59%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.59%) GRC
6 1 (0.59%) HL7
6 1 (0.59%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.59%) SEPA
System Software
1 53 (31.36%) Docker
2 3 (1.78%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 42 (24.85%) Kubernetes
2 22 (13.02%) Terraform
3 10 (5.92%) Grafana
4 7 (4.14%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.59%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 11 (6.51%) Microsoft
2 8 (4.73%) Splunk
3 7 (4.14%) MuleSoft
4 6 (3.55%) Google
4 6 (3.55%) Oracle
5 3 (1.78%) Adobe
5 3 (1.78%) Guidewire
5 3 (1.78%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.18%) Atlassian
6 2 (1.18%) Databricks
6 2 (1.18%) Foundry
6 2 (1.18%) PagerDuty
6 2 (1.18%) Virgin Media
7 1 (0.59%) Ab Initio
7 1 (0.59%) Informatica
7 1 (0.59%) SAP