Software Architecture Contract Job Trends in the North West

Software Architecture
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Software Architecture skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 121 117 -
Rank change year-on-year -4 - -
Contract jobs citing Software Architecture 10 6 0
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.46% 0.25% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.53% 0.30% -
Number of daily rates quoted 4 3 0
10th Percentile £589 £471 -
25th Percentile £628 £484 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £510 -
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% - -
75th Percentile £659 £533 -
90th Percentile £676 £543 -
England median daily rate £510 £565 £625
% change year-on-year -9.69% -9.60% +6.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £90.00 £53.00
% change year-on-year -25.00% +69.81% +6.00%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North West

Software Architecture 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 1,903 2,000 2,513
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.47% 83.51% 87.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,263 1,147 1,697
10th Percentile £296 £294 £270
25th Percentile £375 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £454 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.01% -1.40% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £680 £675 £675
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 109 163
10th Percentile £13.61 £16.45 £15.80
25th Percentile £17.39 £28.50 £18.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% +21.43% +57.30%
75th Percentile £49.84 £62.50 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.06 £72.10 £65.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -41.51% -2.05% +51.38%

Software Architecture
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Software Architecture as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Software Architecture in the North West

Software Architecture
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Software Architecture.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Software Architecture

Software Architecture
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Software Architecture.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Software Architecture

Software Architecture
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 Software Architecture within the North West region over the 6 months to 21 September 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 +5 9 £650 +26.83% 5
Cheshire - 1 - - 3
Software Architecture
England

Software Architecture
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (10.00%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 1 (10.00%) AWS
1 1 (10.00%) Azure
1 1 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
1 1 (10.00%) Azure Service Bus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (50.00%) MongoDB
2 1 (10.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (50.00%) Git
1 5 (50.00%) Jenkins
2 4 (40.00%) JIRA
2 4 (40.00%) Rational DOORS
3 1 (10.00%) Artifactory
3 1 (10.00%) Bitbucket
3 1 (10.00%) GitLab
3 1 (10.00%) Gradle
3 1 (10.00%) JUnit
3 1 (10.00%) Maven
3 1 (10.00%) Rational Rhapsody
3 1 (10.00%) SonarQube
General
1 5 (50.00%) Public Sector
2 4 (40.00%) Military
2 4 (40.00%) Social Skills
3 1 (10.00%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 10 (100.00%) Software Engineer
2 5 (50.00%) Lead
2 5 (50.00%) Lead Software Engineer
3 3 (30.00%) DevSecOps Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Java Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Java Software Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Senior
4 1 (10.00%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (50.00%) Kafka
2 1 (10.00%) .NET
2 1 (10.00%) .NET Core
2 1 (10.00%) .NET Framework
2 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET
2 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET MVC
2 1 (10.00%) CSS
2 1 (10.00%) Entity Framework
2 1 (10.00%) HTML
2 1 (10.00%) HTML5
2 1 (10.00%) JavaFX
2 1 (10.00%) OAuth
2 1 (10.00%) React
2 1 (10.00%) RESTful
2 1 (10.00%) Spring
2 1 (10.00%) Swing
2 1 (10.00%) Vue
2 1 (10.00%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 1 (10.00%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 4 (40.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 5 (50.00%) Agile
2 5 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 5 (50.00%) DevOps
2 5 (50.00%) Mentoring
2 5 (50.00%) Microservices
3 4 (40.00%) Coaching
3 4 (40.00%) Containerisation
3 4 (40.00%) Technical Leadership
3 4 (40.00%) UML
3 4 (40.00%) Unit Testing
4 3 (30.00%) Configuration Management
4 3 (30.00%) DevSecOps
4 3 (30.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (30.00%) Kanban
4 3 (30.00%) Scaled Agile Framework
4 3 (30.00%) Scrum
4 3 (30.00%) Security Hardening
5 2 (20.00%) Design Patterns
6 1 (10.00%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 9 (90.00%) Java
2 3 (30.00%) Bash
2 3 (30.00%) C++
2 3 (30.00%) Python
3 1 (10.00%) C#
3 1 (10.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (90.00%) Security Cleared
2 4 (40.00%) SC Cleared
System Software
1 3 (30.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (30.00%) Ansible
1 3 (30.00%) Kubernetes
1 3 (30.00%) Podman
1 3 (30.00%) SELinux
2 1 (10.00%) Single Sign-On
2 1 (10.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (10.00%) Atlassian
1 1 (10.00%) Microsoft