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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 42 62
Rank change year-on-year -21 +20 +37
Contract jobs citing Microservices 132 107 64
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.32% 4.87% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.01% 5.49% 3.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 74 80 42
10th Percentile £419 £331 £425
25th Percentile £462 £383 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £435 £550
Median % change year-on-year +18.39% -20.91% +10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £588
90th Percentile £650 £671 £650
England median daily rate £530 £528 £575
% change year-on-year +0.47% -8.26% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 2
10th Percentile - - £61.70
25th Percentile £62.50 - £65.17
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £74.39
75th Percentile £69.88 - £82.67
90th Percentile £80.53 - £85.57
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -2.99% +61.45% -44.67%

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 3,290 1,948 2,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.70% 88.71% 83.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,853 1,288 1,113
10th Percentile £300 £256 £294
25th Percentile £403 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £680 £650
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 144 111
10th Percentile £14.29 £13.93 £16.85
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £29.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +88.90% -37.64% +15.21%
75th Percentile £72.75 £45.37 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.25 £71.50
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -5.56%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 -3 108 £525 +7.69% 90
Cheshire -23 16 £500 +19.05% 7
Merseyside -12 4 £575 +12.75% 1
Cumbria - 2 £376 -
Lancashire - 1 £538 - 13
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 8 (6.06%) Confluence
2 6 (4.55%) Camunda
3 1 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.76%) nginx
Business Applications
1 1 (0.76%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.76%) SAP MM
1 1 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 72 (54.55%) AWS
2 30 (22.73%) Azure
3 24 (18.18%) GCP
4 18 (13.64%) GitHub
5 15 (11.36%) Serverless
6 14 (10.61%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (6.82%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (6.06%) Amazon ECS
8 8 (6.06%) OpenShift
9 7 (5.30%) Amazon SQS
10 6 (4.55%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (4.55%) Anthropic Claude
10 6 (4.55%) GitHub Copilot
10 6 (4.55%) Google Gemini
11 5 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 4 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (3.03%) Azure AKS
13 3 (2.27%) Azure Functions
13 3 (2.27%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.27%) HTTP
2 1 (0.76%) Firewall
2 1 (0.76%) Network Security
2 1 (0.76%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (10.61%) MongoDB
1 14 (10.61%) SQL Server
2 13 (9.85%) NoSQL
3 11 (8.33%) Relational Database
4 8 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (4.55%) DynamoDB
5 6 (4.55%) MySQL
6 1 (0.76%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.76%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.76%) SAP BW
6 1 (0.76%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 23 (17.42%) Git
2 18 (13.64%) Jenkins
3 17 (12.88%) Selenium
4 16 (12.12%) JUnit
5 15 (11.36%) Mockito
5 15 (11.36%) REST Assured
6 12 (9.09%) Cucumber
6 12 (9.09%) GitLab
7 8 (6.06%) JIRA
7 8 (6.06%) SonarQube
8 7 (5.30%) Claude Code
8 7 (5.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (4.55%) Maven
10 5 (3.79%) Gradle
10 5 (3.79%) Postman
11 4 (3.03%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (3.03%) Gatling
12 3 (2.27%) Cypress.io
12 3 (2.27%) Serenity BDD
13 2 (1.52%) TestNG
General
1 32 (24.24%) Finance
1 32 (24.24%) Social Skills
2 26 (19.70%) Public Sector
3 16 (12.12%) Banking
4 10 (7.58%) Retail
5 9 (6.82%) Military
6 3 (2.27%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.27%) Retail Banking
7 2 (1.52%) iGaming
8 1 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.76%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.76%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.76%) Marketing
8 1 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 38 (28.79%) Developer
2 28 (21.21%) Senior
3 25 (18.94%) Architect
4 23 (17.42%) Software Engineer
5 21 (15.91%) Java Developer
6 20 (15.15%) Java Engineer
7 13 (9.85%) Lead
8 12 (9.09%) AWS Engineer
9 11 (8.33%) Java Software Engineer
9 11 (8.33%) Solutions Architect
10 9 (6.82%) AWS Software Engineer
10 9 (6.82%) Senior Developer
11 8 (6.06%) Full-Stack Developer
11 8 (6.06%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 8 (6.06%) Test Engineer
12 6 (4.55%) Engineering Specialist
12 6 (4.55%) Principal Engineer
12 6 (4.55%) Senior Java Developer
12 6 (4.55%) Senior Software Engineer
13 5 (3.79%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (37.12%) Spring Boot
2 44 (33.33%) Spring
3 39 (29.55%) REST
4 38 (28.79%) Kafka
5 23 (17.42%) React
6 22 (16.67%) Node.js
7 16 (12.12%) RESTful
8 15 (11.36%) Terraform
9 10 (7.58%) .NET
10 9 (6.82%) AngularJS
10 9 (6.82%) Next.js
11 8 (6.06%) HTML
11 8 (6.06%) Playwright
12 7 (5.30%) CSS
13 6 (4.55%) JPA
14 5 (3.79%) ActiveMQ
14 5 (3.79%) GraphQL
14 5 (3.79%) Hibernate
14 5 (3.79%) JAX-RS
14 5 (3.79%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 52 (39.39%) Cloud Native
2 32 (24.24%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (7.58%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.06%) Public Cloud
5 7 (5.30%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (4.55%) Onboarding
7 5 (3.79%) AI Agents
7 5 (3.79%) Distributed Architecture
7 5 (3.79%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (3.79%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (3.03%) Data Structures
8 4 (3.03%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (2.27%) Culture of Ownership
9 3 (2.27%) Mainframe
9 3 (2.27%) Private Cloud
10 2 (1.52%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (1.52%) Virtual Team
11 1 (0.76%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 1 (0.76%) Low-Code
11 1 (0.76%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 12 (9.09%) Linux
2 5 (3.79%) Unix
3 3 (2.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.52%) Windows
5 1 (0.76%) Android
5 1 (0.76%) macOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (62.12%) CI/CD
2 71 (53.79%) Agile
3 60 (45.45%) Software Engineering
4 57 (43.18%) Test Automation
5 53 (40.15%) DevOps
6 39 (29.55%) Event-Driven
7 37 (28.03%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 35 (26.52%) Observability
9 29 (21.97%) Continuous Improvement
10 25 (18.94%) Containerisation
11 23 (17.42%) TDD
12 21 (15.91%) Infrastructure as Code
13 20 (15.15%) Full-Stack Development
13 20 (15.15%) Mentoring
13 20 (15.15%) Technical Leadership
14 19 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (12.12%) AI
16 15 (11.36%) BDD
16 15 (11.36%) Clean Code
16 15 (11.36%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 86 (65.15%) Java
2 21 (15.91%) SQL
3 17 (12.88%) JavaScript
4 13 (9.85%) TypeScript
5 12 (9.09%) Python
6 7 (5.30%) C#
7 6 (4.55%) Go
8 2 (1.52%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.76%) Perl
Qualifications
1 32 (24.24%) Security Cleared
2 23 (17.42%) SC Cleared
3 6 (4.55%) Degree
4 5 (3.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.52%) CEH
6 2 (1.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.76%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (0.76%) AWS Certification
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 (7.58%) Accessibility
1 10 (7.58%) QA
2 2 (1.52%) NIST
3 1 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.76%) COBIT
3 1 (0.76%) GDPR
3 1 (0.76%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.76%) Software Quality Assurance
3 1 (0.76%) WCAG
System Software
1 36 (27.27%) Docker
Systems Management
1 46 (34.85%) Kubernetes
2 7 (5.30%) Grafana
2 7 (5.30%) Prometheus
3 4 (3.03%) Istio
4 1 (0.76%) Network Intrusion Detection System
4 1 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 11 (8.33%) Google
2 5 (3.79%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.03%) IBM
3 4 (3.03%) Veracode
4 3 (2.27%) Splunk
5 2 (1.52%) Oracle
5 2 (1.52%) SAP
6 1 (0.76%) Adobe
6 1 (0.76%) BeyondTrust
6 1 (0.76%) BiZZdesign
6 1 (0.76%) CheckPoint
6 1 (0.76%) Cisco
6 1 (0.76%) CyberArk
6 1 (0.76%) F5
6 1 (0.76%) Foundry
6 1 (0.76%) Intel
6 1 (0.76%) Okta
6 1 (0.76%) Ping Identity
6 1 (0.76%) Sage