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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 38 63 74
Rank change year-on-year +25 +11 -39
Contract jobs citing Microservices 126 59 66
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.12% 2.53% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.81% 2.98% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 35 48
10th Percentile £334 £425 £399
25th Percentile £369 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £546 £581 £625
90th Percentile £640 £626 £688
England median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 2
10th Percentile - £61.70 £38.38
25th Percentile - £65.17 £39.63
Median hourly rate £74.26 £74.39 £43.10
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% +72.59% -
75th Percentile - £82.67 £45.19
90th Percentile - £85.57 £45.60
England median hourly rate £67.50 £40.08 £75.77
% change year-on-year +68.42% -47.10% +3.79%

All Process and 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 2,169 1,977 2,373
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.13% 84.78% 88.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,447 1,068 1,627
10th Percentile £213 £294 £270
25th Percentile £358 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £670 £656 £675
England median daily rate £501 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.53% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 121 156
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £16.13
25th Percentile £19.23 £23.48 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £35.00 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year -15.43% -0.71% +46.88%
75th Percentile £45.88 £51.91 £46.35
90th Percentile £71.06 £69.75 £64.38
England median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +19.85%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025. 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 +19 67 £500 -9.09% 43
Cheshire +7 52 £402 -12.13% 9
Merseyside 0 6 £510 +7.37% 4
Lancashire -13 1 - - 32
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 11 (8.73%) JBoss
2 9 (7.14%) Confluence
3 8 (6.35%) Tomcat
4 3 (2.38%) WebSphere
5 2 (1.59%) Mule
5 2 (1.59%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.79%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.79%) nginx
6 1 (0.79%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.79%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.79%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (3.97%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.79%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 78 (61.90%) AWS
2 33 (26.19%) Azure
3 31 (24.60%) Serverless
4 27 (21.43%) AWS Lambda
4 27 (21.43%) GCP
5 24 (19.05%) GitHub
6 22 (17.46%) Amazon SQS
7 17 (13.49%) Amazon ECS
8 14 (11.11%) OpenShift
9 13 (10.32%) Apigee
10 12 (9.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 12 (9.52%) Amazon EventBridge
11 10 (7.94%) Amazon EC2
11 10 (7.94%) Datadog
11 10 (7.94%) SaaS
12 9 (7.14%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (6.35%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (5.56%) AWS Step Functions
14 7 (5.56%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (5.56%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.17%) HTTP
1 4 (3.17%) HTTPS
2 3 (2.38%) Firewall
2 3 (2.38%) SAN
3 2 (1.59%) X.509
4 1 (0.79%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (14.29%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (13.49%) MongoDB
2 17 (13.49%) NoSQL
3 16 (12.70%) MySQL
4 15 (11.90%) DynamoDB
4 15 (11.90%) Relational Database
5 12 (9.52%) Redis
6 10 (7.94%) Amazon Aurora
7 9 (7.14%) Amazon RDS
7 9 (7.14%) DocumentDB
7 9 (7.14%) RDBMS
8 5 (3.97%) BigQuery
9 4 (3.17%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (3.17%) SQL Server
10 3 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (1.59%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (0.79%) DataStage
12 1 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 1 (0.79%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 42 (33.33%) Git
2 35 (27.78%) Jenkins
3 27 (21.43%) JIRA
4 20 (15.87%) GitLab
4 20 (15.87%) JUnit
5 19 (15.08%) SonarQube
6 15 (11.90%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (11.11%) Maven
8 11 (8.73%) Gradle
9 10 (7.94%) Cucumber
10 8 (6.35%) Mockito
10 8 (6.35%) Postman
11 6 (4.76%) Bitbucket
12 5 (3.97%) SonarLint
13 4 (3.17%) Selenium
13 4 (3.17%) TeamCity
14 3 (2.38%) Bitbucket Server
14 3 (2.38%) CA Release Automation
15 2 (1.59%) Artifactory
15 2 (1.59%) SpecFlow
General
1 34 (26.98%) Social Skills
2 31 (24.60%) Public Sector
3 27 (21.43%) Finance
4 21 (16.67%) Banking
5 16 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (3.17%) Military
7 2 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.59%) Retail
8 1 (0.79%) Automotive
8 1 (0.79%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.79%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.79%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 53 (42.06%) Developer
2 35 (27.78%) Java Developer
3 24 (19.05%) Architect
4 19 (15.08%) Software Engineer
5 18 (14.29%) Senior
6 14 (11.11%) Lead
7 11 (8.73%) Solutions Architect
8 9 (7.14%) Java Architect
8 9 (7.14%) Technical Architect
9 8 (6.35%) AWS Developer
9 8 (6.35%) Java Technical Architect
9 8 (6.35%) Senior Developer
10 7 (5.56%) Lead Software Engineer
10 7 (5.56%) Senior Java Developer
11 6 (4.76%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (4.76%) Cloud Engineer
12 5 (3.97%) Analyst
12 5 (3.97%) Business Analyst
13 4 (3.17%) Infrastructure Architect
13 4 (3.17%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (50.00%) Spring Boot
2 51 (40.48%) Spring
3 39 (30.95%) RESTful
4 36 (28.57%) Kafka
5 31 (24.60%) React
6 25 (19.84%) REST
7 21 (16.67%) Node.js
8 15 (11.90%) JSON
9 14 (11.11%) AngularJS
9 14 (11.11%) Hibernate
9 14 (11.11%) JWT
10 10 (7.94%) .NET
10 10 (7.94%) OAuth
10 10 (7.94%) SOAP
10 10 (7.94%) XML
11 9 (7.14%) JAX-RS
12 8 (6.35%) J2EE
13 7 (5.56%) OAuth2
13 7 (5.56%) Spring MVC
13 7 (5.56%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 19 (15.08%) Cloud Native
2 18 (14.29%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (7.94%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.35%) Onboarding
5 6 (4.76%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (4.76%) N-Tier
6 3 (2.38%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (2.38%) Legacy Applications
6 3 (2.38%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.59%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.59%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.59%) PKI
8 1 (0.79%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.79%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.79%) Mobile Banking
8 1 (0.79%) NHS
8 1 (0.79%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 22 (17.46%) Linux
2 15 (11.90%) Unix
3 8 (6.35%) Windows
4 7 (5.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (2.38%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.59%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (49.21%) Agile
2 61 (48.41%) CI/CD
3 42 (33.33%) Containerisation
4 41 (32.54%) DevOps
5 38 (30.16%) TDD
6 35 (27.78%) Problem-Solving
7 28 (22.22%) Software Engineering
8 22 (17.46%) Mentoring
9 20 (15.87%) API Development
10 19 (15.08%) API Design
10 19 (15.08%) Design Patterns
10 19 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
11 18 (14.29%) Test Automation
12 17 (13.49%) Event-Driven
13 16 (12.70%) AI
13 16 (12.70%) MVC
14 15 (11.90%) BDD
14 15 (11.90%) Full-Stack Development
14 15 (11.90%) SDLC
14 15 (11.90%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 84 (66.67%) Java
2 30 (23.81%) SQL
3 26 (20.63%) Python
4 10 (7.94%) JavaScript
5 9 (7.14%) TypeScript
6 7 (5.56%) Shell Script
7 6 (4.76%) Bash
7 6 (4.76%) C#
7 6 (4.76%) Perl
8 3 (2.38%) PL/SQL
8 3 (2.38%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.59%) PHP
9 2 (1.59%) Ruby
10 1 (0.79%) Go
Qualifications
1 18 (14.29%) Security Cleared
2 15 (11.90%) Degree
3 13 (10.32%) BPSS Clearance
3 13 (10.32%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (3.97%) AWS Certification
5 4 (3.17%) SC Cleared
6 2 (1.59%) CBAP
6 2 (1.59%) CSPO
6 2 (1.59%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.79%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.14%) ISO 20022
1 9 (7.14%) QA
2 7 (5.56%) PCI DSS
3 4 (3.17%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.59%) GDPR
5 1 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.79%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.79%) HL7
5 1 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.79%) NIST
5 1 (0.79%) SEPA
System Software
1 52 (41.27%) Docker
2 5 (3.97%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.59%) Virtual Servers
4 1 (0.79%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 47 (37.30%) Kubernetes
2 23 (18.25%) Terraform
3 4 (3.17%) Kibana
3 4 (3.17%) Progress Chef
4 3 (2.38%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.79%) Ansible
5 1 (0.79%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 18 (14.29%) Oracle
2 12 (9.52%) Splunk
3 9 (7.14%) Microsoft
4 8 (6.35%) Google
5 7 (5.56%) AppDynamics
5 7 (5.56%) Red Hat
6 6 (4.76%) Gigya
7 5 (3.97%) IBM
7 5 (3.97%) Ping Identity
8 4 (3.17%) Cloudera
8 4 (3.17%) Dynatrace
8 4 (3.17%) MuleSoft
9 3 (2.38%) Citrix
9 3 (2.38%) F5
9 3 (2.38%) HP
9 3 (2.38%) Veracode
9 3 (2.38%) Virgin Media
9 3 (2.38%) VMware
10 2 (1.59%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.59%) IBM Sterling